First inhabitable planet found outside of our solar system.

[EvangelionZeta]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/29/AR2010092907492.html

[letsride]

"This is our first Goldilocks planet - just the right size and the right distance from its sun,"
lol'd

[Cianyx]

Bout time. Now let's get there and fuck it up as well.

[chrisjb]

Take that earth, we don't need your stinkin' plannet.

[Spreadbury]

20 light years away, how depressing.

[Mao]

Now we can destroy the planet without worrying that there isn't a replacement

[happyhappyland]

Apparently it doesnt rotate so you pretty much live between where these sun and where these the shadow. imagine migrating a few metres just to sleep LOL

[Spreadbury]

Apparently it doesnt rotate

we just need a good visit from superman

[Cthulhu]

20 light years away, how depressing.

That's pretty damn close in the vast nothingness that is the universe.

[vea]

only 20 light years away

only

only

only

[vexx]

this is actually amazingg!

only 20 light years away

only

only

only

i found it funny that they had "The planet, called Gliese 581G, is quite close at 20 light years from Earth's solar system."
quite close? it appears i must have a distorted perception of distance then....

[Spreadbury]

That's pretty damn close in the vast nothingness that is the universe.

in the vastness of space, sure. however there's no possibility that any life from earth could make it there. it's not that close in terms of what humans can achieve

EDIT: what humans can currently* achieve

[Mao]

The solar system, counting all the rocks in the outer region, is a sphere of roughly 1 light year in radius. So 20 light years is really just.. a block away.

[/0]

That's pretty damn close in the vast nothingness that is the universe.

in the vastness of space, sure. however there's no possibility that any life from earth could make it there. it's not that close in terms of what humans can achieve

I reckon we could send a probe there within our lifetimes. As for manned missions, we probably wouldn't be able to yet, but with ships equipped with solar sails and nuclear reactors, perhaps we could reach it in a few generations. But I think we need to think about it in terms of the entire human timeline, in which a few generations mean very little. Perhaps in 400-500 years we could establish a colony there that could very much resemble the one on earth. And that would begin our conquest of the rest of the galaxy.

[Mao]

That's pretty damn close in the vast nothingness that is the universe.

in the vastness of space, sure. however there's no possibility that any life from earth could make it there. it's not that close in terms of what humans can achieve

I reckon we could send a probe there within our lifetimes. As for manned missions, we probably wouldn't be able to yet, but with ships equipped with solar sails and nuclear reactors, perhaps we could reach it in a few generations. But I think we need to think about it in terms of the entire human timeline, in which a few generations mean very little. Perhaps in 400-500 years we could establish a colony there that could very much resemble the one on earth. And that would begin our conquest of the rest of the galaxy.

Can you imagine how frustrating communication will be? We whinge about a few hundred ms of latency on the Internet, this has an inherent latency of.. TWENTY YEARS.