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Extraterrestrial

Super Earth is 'best chance for finding life'

By T.K. Randall
April 19, 2017 · Comment icon 10 comments

Could this distant world be a habitable environment for alien life ? Image Credit: NASA
A large terrestrial planet located 40 light years away could be the perfect place to search for ET.
Situated in the constellation Cetus, LHS 1140b was discovered by researchers using the European Space Observatory's High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) instrument.

The planet is ten times closer to its parent star than the Earth is to the Sun, however because its star is a red dwarf, which is a much dimmer and cooler type of star than the Sun, its surface temperature should be "just right" for liquid water to exist.
With a diameter 1.4 times larger than the Earth and a mass seven times greater, the scientists believe that LHS 1140b is likely to be made of rock with a dense iron core.

"This is the most exciting exoplanet I've seen in the past decade," said lead author Jason Dittmann of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

"We could hardly hope for a better target to perform one of the biggest quests in science -- searching for evidence of life beyond Earth."

Source: Telegraph | Comments (10)




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Recent comments on this story
Comment icon #1 Posted by paperdyer 7 years ago
Considering how "close" this planet is, if there was a advanced civilization, they would have sent signals back to usu nless they think the signals we send out are static.  Can we call it Krypton or Daxam?
Comment icon #2 Posted by Astra. 7 years ago
Well, hypothetically speaking of course. If they are far more advanced than us, and have already observed us from afar. Then maybe they'd rather avoid our species all together. Lets face it, from their point of view, I doubt we come over as a very friendly bunch. Or maybe, they aren't as advanced as we are...therefore don't have the same technology as we do to send out / receive signals yet. I guess it's also possible, that the planet might also be teaming with different types of teeny organisms. Either way, there are many exciting times ahead for space exploration with the new disco... [More]
Comment icon #3 Posted by taniwha 7 years ago
It's likely covered in forests of amphibious seaweed. Good luck communicating with that 
Comment icon #4 Posted by Codenwarra 7 years ago
Can't put it better or more pithily than taniwha did.     Seaweed might even be too advanced.  
Comment icon #5 Posted by paperdyer 7 years ago
@Astra - That did cross my mind about another civilization not want to bothered by us humans.  That's my typical response to this type of srticle.  I was just trying to be a bit more positive than usual.
Comment icon #6 Posted by Uber Doubter 7 years ago
It's always this talk about finding alien life. We should be more concerned with finding places to escape to, when **** hits the fan and this rock becomes inhabitable. If there is any alien life forms out there, chances are we'd better steer clear of them anyway. The notion that "highly advanced equals benevolent" is questionable. If we met some other species, it would probably boil down to "us or them".
Comment icon #7 Posted by taniwha 7 years ago
There's some pretty dumb seaweed out there is true.  
Comment icon #8 Posted by taniwha 7 years ago
Comment icon #9 Posted by bison 7 years ago
This star, LHS 1140, is over 400 million years older than the Sun. That's quite a lot of time for life more advanced than ourselves to develop. Being so nearby, an advanced species living on a planet of that star would probably have long known of our existence. If they wished us harm, why has Earth remained intact and unconquered?  
Comment icon #10 Posted by quiXilver 7 years ago
I must be different, as I don't even remotely assume that our human manner of existence is somehow the standard of quality or advancement of existences. Not even on our own biosphere would I place us in the top 10,000 species for advanced and quality existence.  But then, I don't believe everything I think, so... wait, what were we talking about?...      


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