44 ly away, planet in goldilocks zone found

[Candlelight]

http://www.stuff.co.nz/science/7923922/Possible-life-supporting-planet-found/

An Anglo-German team of astronomers has discovered a new planet orbiting a nearby sun at just the right distance for an Earth-like climate that could support life.
The team actually found three new planets orbiting the star 44 light years away, but only one of them is in the so-called Goldilocks Zone, the band around a sun where temperatures are neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water to exist.
‘‘The star HD 40307 is a perfectly quiet old dwarf star, so there is no reason why such a planet could not sustain an Earth-like climate,’’ said Guillem Angla-Escude from Germany’s University of Goettingen, who led the research with Mikko Tuomi at the University of Hertfordshire in Britain.
The planet has a mass at least seven times that of Earth, but it orbits at about the same distance from its sun, meaning it receives a similar amount of solar energy as Earth gets.

Lets go!

 

[Starkers]

You go on ahead, I'll catch up. I have a few things to sort out first...

Inventing FLT for one...

 

[rhubarbodendron]

might take us a few millions of years to get there, I'm afraid. Still, it sounds rather interesting.
Personally, I am not 100% convinced that you actually need liquid water for life to evolve. After all, there are quite a lot of organisms on our own planet that live in or on solid ice and snow. In my experience, life always finds a way, no matter how unfriendly the circumstances seem. Some archaebacteria, for example, inhabit smoldering coal refuse piles or active volcanos.
(http://ethesis.helsinki.fi/julkaisut/maa/skemi/vk/jurgens/molecula.pdf page 27, 2nd paragraph)

 

[Deranged Nasat]

Well done to the people at Goettingen and Hertfordshire. Keep up the good work.

 

[RJDiogenes]

There have actually been a number of interesting discoveries of exoplanets recently (including a planet only 10% larger than Earth around Alpha Centauri B-- not in the habitable zone, though). Recently another gas giant about double the mass of Jupiter was found in the habitable zone of a star-- there could be clement moons. All in all, I think they have about fifty planets or possibles in habitable zones.

Anyone who has an iPhone should get the Exoplanet app. It has a complete database of all exoplanets discovered so far, has a mapping feature that shows the planet's position, with a habitable zone overlay (the new planet in the OP has an irregular orbit that brings it just from the inner edge of the zone to near the outer edge), and it beeps you whenever a new planet is found.

 

[Lindley]

What's the planet's radius? It's possible the gravity might not be 7x stronger on the surface if the radius is larger...

 

[RJDiogenes]

Radius, density and surface gravity are not available. Actually, the app says that it's still unconfirmed. It "might correlate with chromospheric emission from the star."

 

[RJDiogenes]

The Bad Astronomy Blog has an article about this discovery. If you're into Astronomy, this is a great blog to follow.