You may have seen in the news today the exciting discovery of an Earth-like planet orbiting another star that is at the right distance from its parent star to have the possibility of running water, and therefore a possibility of life.

This is fantastic news, it is first of its kind. The 200 or so other exoplanets have mainly been gas giants such as Jupiter or too close or far away from their sun to have running water on them. Hopefully in the near future some of the missions to find out about exoplanets will be able to concentrate on this planet to find out whether it does actually have liquid water on it.

Yes I read about it in a newspaper. The headline stated it had water and gravity, which I thought was rather funny considering all planets have gravity no matter where they are!
This planet however has stronger gravity than the earth's, due to its greater mass

Very exciting news, how was this planet found? Is it actually proven that there is water on its surface? And how far away is it?

Sunshine, that headline just shows how much some of the media knows about science

The scientists are busy trying to figure out if there is liquid water...

Kingfisher

Yes, the planet is in the so called "habitable zone" where liquid water could be found, but there is no proof yet that there is still water there, although it seems likely.

In some ways i hope it is not habitable,because there will be people from this earth rushing up there trying to claim it for there selfs regardless of who lives there.

The planet is 20 light years from Earth, which is 116000000000000 miles away, so no-one will be going there any time soon! It is an interesting point though, if/when the human race does manage to make it to another habitable planet and assuming it didn't already have residents, who would it belong too? The people who discovered it? Or the people who got there first? Maybe it is a bit premature to be thinking about this, but it is still an interesting point.

I think the people who got there first actually discovered it (if it's inhabited, that is). Sounds like a Star Trek episode... .

Kingfisher

Sounds like a Star Trek episode... .

Kingfisher

It does! Lickilu/unluckily unless someone invents faster than light travel (which at the moment seems impossible) we won't have to worry about.

Has there been any other developments or discoveries on this subject? I'd be very interested in knowing if there has been a planet which has definitely got liquid water on it, how close are we to finding one like that?

An exoplanet gasgiant (like Jupiter and Saturn) has recently been the first found to have a high concentration water in its atmosphere. I assume not liquid water, but the techniques used are certainly capable of finding other planets which might contain liquid water.

I just read an article that the largest ever exoplanet has been found, about 1.7 times the size of Jupiter. In other words, BIG! It's probably not as exciting as an Earth like exoplanet, but as scientists can't explain why it is so big, it shows how little we really know and how much there is left to discover.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/07...lanet.html

There is so much we don't understand, it's very exciting to watch the discoveries come in that don't seem to fit in with our models. It is a brilliant time for science.