Trust me…

Gliese 581

This morning at about 7.30 I got a message on my phone and whilst I racked my brains to think who might be sending me a message at that time I said exactly that to Charlotte. When I looked it was from Ben, and even stranger it was about a new planet that has been spotted, now whilst I’m not quite as excited as Ben about it, it’s quite a find.

Scientists - well astronomers have found (who lost it?) the planet orbiting around a star called Gliese 581 in the Libra constellation 20.5 light years away. The planet falls into the so called ‘Goldilocks’ zone, i.e. a band of space that means a planet could support life. This means that the planet could have liquid water flowing over its surface and it’s size means that it should be a lump of rock like ours. So all the precursors of life are there…? Well not quite, they may be but there’s a whole lot of other factors that we have no idea about. For a start we don’t know what the precursors of life are! But if we’ve found another planet that could support life then that does open the door to finding a lot more of them and therefore increases the chances that we are not alone.

Richard Dawkins wil be put to the test now, in one of his books (I can’t remember which one off the top of my head - I’m inclinded to go with Unweaving the Rainbow) said that given the right conditions life is almost enevitable because once it’s got started there’s no stopping it, and that though the moment of beginning although very unlikely (Too many zeros to write) it only has to happen once in the billion or so years that it could happen in.

So could we be looking at a different form of life? Are they looking back? Who knows? Apparently they might start to look for methane in the atmosphere…

Good Hunting