Next stop Gliese 581g

I'd be ecstatic with something as complex as a rabbit.

Actually, the fact that it is tidally-locked suggests it might have environment that are more stable than Earth. 581g has zones that are temperate all year. No winters to freeze out.

I'd be ecstatic with any life at all, let alone a rabbit.

A very stable environment could, I think, be a very bad thing for life in this case. Water vapor that falls on the dark side in the form of snow would well stay there a long time without a transport mechanism (e.g., weather). Eventually all of the water could migrate to the dark side. End result: No liquid water, no life.

There are, in my mind, too many unknowns to be jumping up and down about this planet as of yet. We don't know if it has an atmosphere. If it does, we don't know it's density, clarity, and makeup. We don't know if it has water, period, let alone liquid water. We don't know if the orbit is nearly circular or not. All of these things are worthy of study because this is the best candidate found yet and because the probability of CHON-based life hinges on these unknowns.

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However, much of the material is the result of supernova residue, so I would expect that such a star system would have planets even more matter rich than Sol's system.

In fact, when I compare the metallicity of the two, this is in fact the case:
Sol metallicity: Z = 0.0177
Gliese 581 metallicity: [M/H] = −0.33 ± 0.12

For example, I would expect Gliese 581 g to have an atmosphere with at least twice the amount of gaseous matter and at least twice as dense

and a magnetic field to be at least equivalent to or greater than that of Earth, including the rate at which its core would have cooled despite its age.

it most certainly had an ocean as well in its geologic history, probably at least twice the volume as Earth's ocean.

The Uranian system has a unique configuration among the planets because its axis of rotation is tilted sideways nearly into the plane of its revolution about the Sun, resembling a planet that is tidally locked, yet it has a complex, layered cloud structure, with water thought to make up the lowest clouds, and methane thought to make up the uppermost layer of clouds, therefore I would expect that hot solar driven winds to sweep from the hot side of the planet to the cooler side, and the cooler sided winds to sweep to the hot side of a tidally locked planet as opposed to just everything that is capable of freezing out to simply freeze completely out and condense on only one side.

If single sided freezing were the absolute case than the water vapor that composes the lower cloud bands on Uranus would have been swept to the cooler side, to simply freeze out into crystals and condense onto the surface of the cold side and remain trapped there, yet this is not the case.
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Am I the only one that HAS heard of this planet before it was talked about on the 29th? I forget what show but it was naked science or how the universe works or something like that. One of them (I forget which) has talked about a rocky planet bigger than the earth and closer to its star thats in the goldilocks zone around the star gliese 581.. Maybe its just another one in the goldilocks zone?

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It's what inspired me to write my Gliese primer.

though, I am wondering how would we be able to even in theory do acceleration of 1g for 10 years.

in fact that would need to increase over time as the ship's clock decelerates or it's mass increases (I think the effect is the same just explained differently).

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An astronomer picked up a mysterious pulse of light coming from the direction of the newly discovered Earth-like planet almost two years ago, it has emerged.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...#ixzz11eggOi2T

Just look how misleading this is:



http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/~drl/publications/clf+00.pdf