The Goldilocks Planet?

Not too warm - not to cold -just right! You gotta love it - and only 20 light years away. So how long would it take us to get there. Well for the betsof our current technology here's what we can achieve:

It would take Dawn 10,000 days and 5,000 pounds of propellant to get up to 150,000 miles per hour, which is only .02 percent of the speed of light, “which is nothing,” said Dr. Rayman.

Nothing, that is, in term of having to cover 20 light years. The NYT covers it all beautifully here.

Here are the basics on the new planet:

Distance: 20.5 light years

Size: 1.5 times larger and five times more massive than the earth (Thatbig, but smaller than the 200por-so other planets detected outside our solar system.

Star: Gliese 581, a red dwarf, smaller and colder than our sun and less than half as masive. They also live alot, lot longer because theyd on't burn their energy as fast.

Goldilocks? - Well, a planet has to be orbiting in just the right zone from its parent star. That distance varies with the heta output of the star but theide ais it needs to be able to support liquid water.

Personally. i can't take any of this too seriously. For me it is simply another piece of confirmation for what is an obvious conclusion - there are lots of places in the universe where life can - and almost undoubted has - evolved. That said, it's hard to separate the facts from the extremely clever guess work in situation such as this, but as near as I can tell we certainly don't have hard evidence that this is an Earth-like planet - only that it is orbiting in the zone that makes an Earth-like planet possible. And it is far, far cry from saying there is life there, let alone intelligent life, let alone intelligent life that has evolved a technological civilization.

And, of course, evolving a technological civilization may be the worst thing intelligent life can do - itmaybe a formula for quick extinction. Unless, of course, the intelligent life is more intelligent than we have thus far shown ourselves to be.

Hmmm . .. myabe I need to get back into the Goldilocks mode - it's more fun ;-)