I was silently absorbed about what a CNN anchor was announcing just a few days ago. It has something to do with European astronomers discovering what might be an "extrasolar planet" where life could possibly be existing. Whence as before, scientists were focused on studies about the planet Mars as a probable planet where human being could exist, the discovery of the earthlike planet could spawn another recourse in our astronomer’s efforts.
Truly man’s advancements and the continuous exploration of our space for the past 30 years or so had caused as well major alterations in our science subjects. The satellite shuttles launched into space were armed with high tech facilities that were able to capture more new and accurate perspective that had erased what we can now consider as ancient facts about our solar system. During my grade school days, I was made to believe that earth is not flat and we tend to gravitate toward our planet’s center even if it’s round. Further, our basic knowledge then about the solar system is that it consists of a sun, 9 planets and each planet with corresponding satellites or moons, asteroids, meteors, shooting stars, and zillions upon zillions of stars. The Earth had only one moon while the bigger planets like Jupiter and Saturn have many. We cannot even accept the fact that Mars has two moons while we only have one.
What is this new planet all about? Please take note of the following background about the discovery:
"The planet was discovered by the European Southern Observatory's telescope in La Silla, Chile, which has a special instrument that splits light to find wobbles in different wavelengths. Those wobbles can reveal the existence of other worlds.
What they revealed is a planet circling the red dwarf star, Gliese 581. Red dwarfs are low-energy, tiny stars that give off dim red light and last longer than stars like our sun. Until a few years ago, astronomers didn't consider these stars as possible hosts of planets that might sustain life.The discovery of the new planet, named 581 c, is sure to fuel studies of planets circling similar dim stars. About 80 percent of the stars near Earth are red dwarfs."
Here are more suppositions about the planet that were hypothesized by the observers:
The new planet is about 20 years light away in the constellation of Libra
13 days on that planet is about one year in ours.
A person would weigh a lot more there
Temperature is almost the same as Earth, between 32 and 104 degrees
The planet is about 5 times heavier than Earth
Gravity is 1.6 times stronger
There is still doubts about the atmosphere which could possibly be conducive
It could probably full of liquid water which is critical to life
These findings are of course hypothetical at this stage and needs further evaluation and more efforts, logistics, high tech inventions, and definitely time to confirm. What is amazing about all of this is the capability of the satellites and the high tech gadgets that were launched onto space to explore more and more new discoveries that could cause major alterations about man’s knowledge of astronomy. This would of course have a major offshoot as well in everyone’s future. And in case there will truly be another life out there beyond our planet, what would be its form? Could they possibly the same forms that we see on big budget Hollywood movies depicting alien visits coming from extraterrestrial entities. Or perhaps life there is only about to start forming and would have to undergo more years of evolution until eventually they would also be like intelligent and creative human beings who would continue to cause so much impact perhaps not only on their own planet but on the whole unbounded, and timeless macrocosm called universe.
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