Mankind’s ongoing search to find Earth-like worlds may have taken a sizeable step forward this week after it came to light that a planet known to astronomers since 2007 could share more similarities with our own world than was originally thought.
It\'s the old \'final frontier\' cliche again. Image: dawnzy58/Flickr.
According to astronomer Michel Mayor of Geneva University in Switzerland, the orbit and location of planet Gliese 581d could potentially provide the right conditions for the existence of liquid water, which would suggest the possibility of a world capable of sustaining life.
“[Gliese 581d] lies in the habitable zone, and it could have an ocean at its surface,” explained Mayor during the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science presently being held at the University of Herefordshire in England.
Initially uncovered in 2007, the apparently lifeless ‘exoplanet’ was thought to be orbiting too far from its red dwarf star in the constellation of Libra, thereby making it too cold to carry liquid oceans.
However, Mayor and colleagues at Geneva University have since calculated that Gliese 581d actually orbits its host sun in a total of 66.8 days, which places it just within the habitable boundary.
While Mayor is enthusiastic that Gliese 581d could be well placed to offer deep oceans on its surface, further exploration by man isn’t likely any time soon as the promising exoplanet is approximately 20.5 light years from the Earth.
When viewing the larger overall picture regarding Mayor’s findings, fellow astronomers are keen to focus on the possibility of locating further Earth-like planets much more closely situated to our own solar system in the future.
“If life does exist elsewhere in the universe, then within the next 10 to 15 years I expect we may see the first signs of life, via spectroscopic signals from exoplanets,” commented astronomer Andrew Norton in a National Geographic report.
The latest information regarding Gliese 581d was uncovered by using the European Southern Observatory telescope in La Silla, Chile, which applies special instrumentation to split light from stars and find wavelength wobbles that announce the presence of orbiting worlds.
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