Video of the Discovery of "Earth's Twin" -Gliese 581c
Do not pass up this extraordinary, polished video of the Geneva and Chile-based team of astronomers and their discovery of the first "Super Earth" exoplanet, produced by the renowned journal Nature.
As we wrote two weeks ago in Cruising the Goldilocks Zone -Search for Super Earths, this newly discovered planet, known as Gliese 581c, is five times as massive as the Earth and inhabits a rare sweet zone around a dim red star in the constellation Libra where it is neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water.
This is apparently a new planet, not Gliese 581c. Gliese 581c is 20.5 light years away, and is 14 times closer to its star than we are to the sun. This apparently as yet unnamed planet is, according to the video, 25,000 light years away, and 3 times as far from its star as we are from the sun. In addition, the method of discovery is entirely different.
Posted by: Jack Butler | May 24, 2007 at 06:58 AM
Is it possible to go there, to this second earth or twin earth like planet, or would it take to long.
Posted by: Glenn Jenkins | April 23, 2009 at 11:34 AM
Glenn - This planet is 20.5 light years away from Earth. A light year is the distance we could travel in one year IF we could travel at the speed of light. So IF we could travel at the speed of light, it would take 20.5 years to make the journey. We do not have the capacity to travel at the speed of light. As it stands, we can travel at Mach something which barely breaks the speed of sound.
Posted by: Sissy | October 22, 2009 at 12:02 AM