Looking at how far the new earth is away from us we found that it is 2,004,112,800,000 miles... whats this number when spoken??

20 light years

2 trillion 4 billion one hundred twelve million 800 thousand

I agree with The Mule on how to say the number but I am a bit puzzled as to where the number came from as it is a little under half a light year.

The new planet, Gliese 581c, is 20.5 light years away.

1 light year is 5.87849981 × 10¹² miles or 5,874,998,100,000 (5 trillion, eight hundred billion, nine hundred and ninety eight million one hundred thousand miles).

That means Gliese 581c is 1.20509246 × 10¹⁴ miles miles from Earth. That is 120,509,246,000,000 (one hundred and twenty trillion, five hundred and nine billion, 246 million miles).

so according to your calculations, it is much closer than what we think.?

I just went by the OP as for how to say the number, and the 20 lights years from what i remembered reading in the article...

No, the opposite. mongoliandeathworm's figure is 2 trillion miles and mine is 120 trillion miles. What I am saying is that is considerably further away than mongoliandeathworm thinks.



I agreed 100% with your post, it is just the original post which is out by a large margin. That figure in miles is less that half a light year.

Waspie is of course, correct.


This planet is 20.5 LY distant. The figure that the OP gave in miles is incorrect by a factor of approximately 60 (in other words, this "new earth" is about 60 times farther away than the number the OP gave in his post).

This is, of course, cosmically close, but rediculously far away in a pragmatic sense.

At the speed of Voyager 1, the fastest moving man made object in deep space, as it traverses outward from the solar system, it will take it about 375,000 years to get as far away as Gliese 581c...


Cosmically, it's close, 20 years off at the speed of light is pretty close....but 15,000 generations will pass before Voyager 1 gets that far away.

Far it is....very, very far.

The "of course" in this statement suggests you have far my faith in my mathematical abilities than I do. I checked the figures using a spread sheet. Then just to make sure I had done that correctly I checked the spread sheet results with a calculator. (It's probably a good thing that I can't remember where I put my slide rule otherwise I may have re-checked the calculator results using that).

Having spent a while doing this I then discovered that the very handy calculator function of Google will handle light years. Simply type in the search term "20.5 light years in miles," hit return and Google will do this for you:

for some reason, i believe the world we're looking at is the world we live in but in 20.5 light years away. The universe is tricky science, many unknown elements can create delusion or even something we can't explain in our current language!

This really makes no sense what so ever. Apart from anything else this planet is totally different from Earth, with a different type of star from the sun so how can it possibly be the same world we live on?

on my google. there's no calculator anymore. how's this possible.. www.google.com.ph

Cool, Waspie.

You're right...I do have faith in your mathematical abilities!

It's always a reliable number you put up...I usually just guess!!!

I must agree with Waspie (which is of course not too hard to do all the time... ).



We do know some things about this planet, you know?

We know the following:


1)It's about 120 trillion miles away (i.e., out of reach).

2)It exists in a zone which makes its surface temperature range that in which liquid water could exist.

3) It's orbital period (year) is ~13 Earth days (~4% of an Earth year).

4) It's mass is likely in the range of 5 times that of Earth.

5) It's radius is probably 1.5 times that of Earth's.

6) It's gravity is between 1 1/4 and 2.2 g, depending on its composition (which is not known yet).

7) It's approximately 4.4E9 years old.

8) It likely experiences tidal forces that are ~400 times stronger than the tidal forces of the Moon on the Earth, and it may in fact be tidally locked, with one hemisphere perpetually facing the star it orbits.

9) It is orbiting a star which is an M Class dwarf...at a distance of ~7 million miles. (the Sun is a G Class star... a very different animal, which is of course located ~9.3E7 miles away from Earth (~13 times farther away that Gliese 381 c is from Gliese 381) .




There is alot we do not know about it, but from what we can ascertain through established astrophysical methodology, it should be apparent that this planet is not the Earth...whatsoever.


The science of this is somewhat complicated and , "tricky", as you say, but the science leads us to knowledge, not belief. And, although we actually know very little about this planet, we do know that it is not the Earth in any way, shape, or form. There is no delusion here, and we can explain some rudimentary information regarding this remarkable discovery in plain English.


It is not the Earth--20.5 LY away. It is Gliese 581c, a very different place, whose only similarity to our world is in its calculated average surface temperature range.


Beliefs about this obscure world are insignificant, and irrelevant to knowledge. What is significant is the level to which astronomy has advanced to.


Want to be awed?

Rather than consider obscure beliefs, consider this:

We have derived this scientifically verifiable, although obviously rudimentary knowledge about a planet that is 20.5LY away from us.


That means that we have been able to gain what is actually substantial knowledge about a world which equates to an object the size of a pea...located approximately 400,000 miles away from the Earth.


Now that's something to be awed about!

Well, it awes the hell outta me for sure. When I look *out there* at all the stars I can't help but wonder how many other worlds there might be. And naturally, I wonder if anyone is looking back wondering the exact same thing!

For me there is only one thought that is more awe inspiring than the thought that we are not alone, and that is the thought that we might be.

Yes, that thought freaks me out far more than the idea of ET. However, at this time there's simply no way for us to know...frustrating isn't it?

Wouldn't that be something. The whole universe all to ourselves. It's a shame it's so darn big though. But it's that way for a reason and i don't think we have discovered what that reason might be yet. I mean this in both scientific and spiritual viewpoints. God maybe wanted to make sure that we couldn't just go anywhere we please despite our evolution, we have to wait until we are ready. And scientifically that humans are radically out of shape so to speak to fit into such a vast universe, especially if we are indeed alone. So what is science up to or what is God intending?

In my terms, very, very far away! Lol.
It's just unbelievable how up to date we are in technology to figure these type of wonders out.

JJO

yes! but all we can do now is Observe. nothing more.

That is awe-inspiring.
Personally, when I think about it, it's a somewhat depressing idea, don't you think?





Yes, Lil, I thinks it's alot more freaky to contemplate the idea that we might be alone in the universe than to contemplate that we aren't...

Not depressing but concerning. I find it extremely hard to believe that in this vast Universe we are the only intelligent life. However reality pays little heed to what we believe or want to believe. It ignores what we consider common sense (if it didn't we wouldn't have quantum mechanics).

Carl Sagan said of mankind that, "we are a way for the Universe to know itself." If we are alone (or the first) that is a huge responsibility on our shoulders.

If we are one of many intelligent races in the Universe we need to grow up as a species so that we can meet them as a mature species.

If we are alone in the Universe we need to grow up as a species so that our uniqueness can survive and we can continue to allow "the Universe to know itself"

Yes, Waspie... perhaps "depressing" is not the most adequate term for my feeling on the subject.
I agree of course, with what you say.

My position is that Carl's comment, which you've provided above, and quite accurately, paints an immense responsibility on our species...

But I cannot get my arms around the concept that we might in fact be alone in this universe. I could almost say that it seems an impossibility (although I of course cannot say that scientifically).


I mean, with the bigness of the universe, a bigness that is so hugely big that it surpasses all other possible...bignesses... (I bet you recognize that phraseology, no?!...I wrote that with a decidedly British accent)...how could it be that we, in our utter smallness (also with heavy accent attached!), smattered about a tiny, teenie planet in an obscure corner of one of a billion galaxies, could be located...by chance, on the only little dust mote in the entire universe that happened to have the correct chemical and energetic composition to allow the formation of life which would evolve into intelligence???
That idea, to me, is so impossibly improbable that it almost seems irrational to discuss, you know? This feeling of mine, being elucidated despite the fact that it is in fact possible...