This is the first episode of a series on life in the universe. Looking for life in the universe isn't like looking for your car keys. It's hard to know where to even start. The best place to start is probably by NOT trying to find alien civilizations, but rather ANY kind of life we can.
Scientists find most Earth-like planet yet .. [link]
TODAY the 25/04/2007 European astronomers detected out of the solar system a planet “of terrestrial type livable”.
It is located at more than twenty light-years of the Earth.
A “ground (a)” was identified by a team of French, Swiss and Portuguese astronomers (1) within a planetary system extrasolaire located at 20,5 light-years of our planet (2). The planet in question “is lightest of the 200 planets extrasolaires [located out of the solar system] known to date”, according to a study published Thursday in the review Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Its mass, five times that of our planet (3), lets suppose “either a rock constitution (as for the Earth), or a surface covered by an ocean”, specify the discoverers. According to their calculations, the average temperature of this exoplanète lies between 0 and 40 degrees Celsius. “These conditions allow the liquid presence of water its surface”, underlines the team. And to indicate that all these “common points” with our planet “make it possible to imagine the existence of a possible extraterrestrial life”.... [link]
