nearby inhabitable planets

Thanks CK for killing an entire genre of SF horror (Orson Welles is bloating in his grave). Now that I know we should just appreciate digital copies of the universe, I might as well put all my savings in AI stock and spend the rest of my money on more guns just to protect myself from the zombies.

If you're going to write a

If you're going to write a cynical, sarcastic article, at least get your facts right. The mass of the planet doesn't fully indicate the gravitational pull; you also need to take into account its radius. Scientists estimate (as far as anyone can tell) that the gravitational pull of the planet is about 1.8 times that of Earth.

In any case, if something doesn't capture your interest because you can't physically come in contact with it, I feel very sorry for you, EDITED FOR PERSONAL INSULTS TO WRITER -- MODERATOR

"The 1930's encyclopedias

"The 1930's encyclopedias that I had to read as a child claimed spaceships were impossible as there was no air for propellers to grip or rocket exhaust to push on. "

Citation needed.

Anyway, the most common argument for space travel is to invoke the age of discovery as some kind of altruistic search for knowledge. The reality is that there was a strong business case for sending small groups of men on relatively short voyages using current technology. Columbus didn't look for a secret passage to India because he thought we would one day have airplanes.

I think we should worry about keeping Spaceship Earth provisioned and properly equipped for its instellar voyage. We're going to be here a while yet. Maybe we should turn our telescopes towards the slums and refugee camps on this planet, and then worry about sending people to infinity and beyond.

No excuses for trashing Earth!

"And when we realize we really have nowhere else to go, we might start to take proper care of this literally priceless planet"

No thanks to Steven Hawking !

Think twice about polluting this planet

...it's the only one we've got. I agree that Stephen Hawking has lost it.

As a lover of science fiction, it's too bad that much of it is wishful thinking, and/or propaganda for a space age that will probably never happen.

Have a listen to this 2007 segment from CBC's Quirks and Quarks: Mars or Bust, where a NASA program manager describes the truly overwhelming obstacles to a manned Mars mission. And Mars is close to Earth - roughly 55 million kilometers. Proxima Centauri is 3.97 × 10^13 km away.

We've all been watching too much Star Trek and not paying enough attention to what's happening on Earth. I'm afraid that we've come to believe that we have some kind of divine right to explore space, when we haven't demonstrated that we can live sustainably on the only habitable planet we know of.

media coverage

Mr. Killian is correct to point out that media speculations about Gliese 581g being habitable for humans are silly. I think it's equally incorrect to speculate that deep space may only offer bacteria-like organisms. That could be true, but we really haven't got a clue. Complex life could be widespread, or it may be rare. There is no data. We do know that there are planets where organic life could conceivably exist given what we know about life existing on earth.

Reply to "Who Cares If some Planet Is Inhabitable?"

Sir,

Probably not many, but a few DO. In Mr. Kilian's opinion essay, he gives two arguments to negate any attempt by humanity to reach the distant stars in order to focus our attention on planet Earth instead. His first argument is that Gliese 581g is not a suitable candidate, which is correct. His second argument is that traveling to the stars is too difficult, to which I disagree. He concludes by saying humanity therefore has no place to go and should stay home.

His conclusion is false if the reader is willing to believe that faster means of propulsion are going to be possible one day in the near future. This assertion is not impossible.

I find it ironic that India, a country that has one of the still highest child malnutrition rates in the world, is willing to develop a space industry in order to "look towards their future". Can not Earth do the same?

The Real Point

Many (including Mr Kilian) are missing the real point of these extrasolar planetary studies—that being the dawning realisation, backed now by evidence, that there may be many hundreds of thousands or even hundreds of millions of earthlike planets in systems throughout our galaxy, which in turn massively increases the likelihood that life has developed (or will develop) elsewhere. In other words, as a result of these discoveries, the Drake Equation may have a lot more specific numbers with which to fine tune its answer.

Somebody mispelled Wookiee

We can look to the stars and work to fix our problems at home at the same time. Who's saying we can't?

Thanks for these comments

As one who's been reading SF since 1948 or thereabouts, I yield to no one in my love of the idea of interstellar travel. And as I said in my article, we should certainly pursue the search for extrasolar planets--a search that 60 years ago seemed impossible.

Of course many other worlds may be hospitable to our kind of life, and we will likely find many of them in the next few years. But just because you see lights go on in a condo across Pacific Boulevard, that's no reason to go over there and move in. Those folks are trying to get on with their lives, not deal with uninvited visitors who want to go home with their granite kitchen counter.

Until someone comes along who does to Einstein what Einstein did to Newton, we have no means of propulsion convenient to short-lived humans that will put us on extrasolar planets in less than centuries if not millennia.

Those planets, after billions of years of independent evolution, are more likely to be utterly hostile to us than to be welcoming; H. G. Wells in The War of the Worlds was on to something, with his Martians succumbing to our bacteria.

Keith W. mentions India's space program; those malnourished Indian children are in effect subsidizing that program, which may advance India's future (though I doubt it) at the cost of their own shortened lives. The same is true of every other space program, including the Americans' and ours.

The interstellar SF we've grown up with is really just a retelling of the European conquest of the Americas, so it's a familiar and comforting narrative. But if Christopher Columbus's expedition had taken 420 years to cross the Atlantic, his descendants would have arrived in 1912. If he'd pitched Ferdinand and Isabella on those terms, they'd have sent him not west across the sea but directly to the Madrid insane asylum.

According to the Drake formula

... the chance of extra-terrestrial life elsewhere in the cosmos is almost certain although the extent is unknown.

For those worrying about protecting this planet -- which I whole-heartedly endorse -- consider how our religion from scriptures has caused our ruinous mindset where we are master of our world and all flora and fauna have been put here just for us, and for us to do with them what we please. Also consider how life on earth is effectively meaningless, ergo what we do here is effectively meaningless, to those who believe they will live in heaven for eternity. Maybe it will taking finding life elsewhere to awake the religious from their stupor and change the way humanity looks at things.

As far as offering a person a sense of proportionality on our planet, nothing rivals the cosmos in my opinion. Building on Darwin and evolution, the understanding made by Einstein with E=mc2 in 1905, the discovery of the expanding universe by Hubble in 1929, the discovery of background radiation in 1964, the moon landing in 1969, the work of the Voyageur, the expansionary Big Bang theory and string theory, and quite notably tying this together over the last 20 years with the space exploration made by the Hubble telescope which allows us to scientifically travel back in time to the singularity 13.7 billion years ago -- nothing offers us a sense of our good fortune to have won the cosmic lottery. And nothing drives home the point how inconsequential we are to it all, and how we must embark on being in balance with nature if we plan on surviving for more than a flash.

As for the expense in arriving at all this, well, if it was my planetary household, I would eliminate military warfare expenses, fictional bank expenses, and corporatism before I worried about man using his mind productively to find reason in this world.

'inflationary' Big Bang is what I meant...

but I get so excited thinking about this stuff :)

Interplanetary Space Exploration & Development is our Duty.

Kilian, your entire article is annihilated right here:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/10/nuclear-fission-nuclear-fusion.html

Interstellar Space Colonization is quite likely feasible in a century or so, by Nuclear Fusion, Mach Drive, Artificial Black Holes or Anti-Matter. It just would be enormously expensive, and would likely mean a huge spacecraft in which generations of humans would live comfortable lives in an environment far superior to most on this Earth. But the expenditure of the resources needed to achieve Interstellar Colonization would be comparable with the Ancient Pharaohs spending most of their nations wealth on giant monuments. Total exploration & colonization of our Solar System is however entirely practical, well within our present technology, a minor expenditure, far less than what we spend protecting the Wealth of Oil Interests on our planet.

Contrary to what Kilian states, BY-FAR-AND-AWAY the greatest and most Responsible Actions Human Civilization can do for Mother Earth is to carry Terrestrial Life to other planets & moons in this Solar System. The #1 goal of Life is to expand to new environments. In order for Life on Earth to expand it needs the help of humans, who can Terraform other planets to make them suitable for Terrestrial life. Mars is actually an easy planet to Terraform, and can actually be done in a trivial one hundred years. Expanding Terrestrial Eco-systems to another World, makes all the damage humans have done to the Earth, so trivial as to be not even worth discussing. We have abandoned our duty to Mother Earth by our failure to embrace Space Exploration. A run-of-the-mill, Nuclear Powered Transport would get to Mars in 39 days. Terraforming Mars would be the greatest achievement in the History of Human Civilization, and the most Environmentally Responsible Act Humans have EVER Undertaken.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/10/nuclear-fission-nuclear-fusion.html

Another inexpensive method to mission to explore Mars. Once again proves that Kilian did ZERO Research on his Article:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/08/reaction-engines-of-uk-who-is.html

Kilian is also forgetting that every 100 million years a large asteroid destroys 90% of the life on Earth. A mere 10,000 yrs ago a comet destroyed most large animal life in North America, including wiping out the Clovis people. This is Eco-Destruction on a scale that makes everything humans have done look minor. Only humans can prevent these disasters from happening by traveling into Space where we can protect the Earth. And mining resources on the Moon & Asteroids is actually highly economical, once the infrastructure is in place. This will avoid the destructive mining of low grade minerals on the Earth.

Humans could also seed Terrestrial Life on other Solar Systems by sending drones.

Terraforming Mars

Wrong link on Terraforming Mars. Here is the correct one, detailing how fast & easy it would be to Terraform Mars:

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~mfogg/zubrin.htm

we are all in the gutter...

but some of us are looking at the stars - so said Oscar Wilde, although I do think he meant it more metaphorically than otherwise.

The human quest for knowledge is a beautiful thing, but I have to draw the line at the "irony" of India looking to develop a space industry to secure their future...or any other country, for that matter, (which certainly includes Canada and the US) that cannot feed, house, and clothe their own citizens...
It is most certainly much more than ironic, decidedly moronic, perhaps...
Somewhere in the neighbourhood of 3 million Canadians lack the money to secure adequate food...and the malnourished of India have already been mentioned, and then, of course, there are the outright starving of other developing (and developed) nations... The majority of these are children, which are the very definition of the future. Personally, I am fascinated by the cosmos and the discoveries of science...but the future of any nation, and the world, is best secured by ensuring the next generation is healthy and happy.But in light of some of the commentary here, I might go a little further and say I believe that caring for the well-being of all is essential - is the essence - of our humanness.

I suppose we could always put a few thousand of the starving and malnourished on a voyage of space exploration and see how they fare. I'd prefer it if some of you here might volunteer, though, since you seem extraneous to humanity.

Discovery in science

Sorry Glen, I didn't mean to be so subtle. Discovery in science comes about because certain people are passionate about what they do. That why we make advances in science from finding the acceleration of a falling object to discovering insulin to finding a planet that may be habitable by humans.
You should study some science and study the lives of scientists to find out what drove them to make their discoveries. If they didn't do it ,we would still be living in caves.

Humanity will of destroyed

Humanity will of destroyed ourselves long before we figure out how to get to another planet.

Development Permit Application for Gliese 581g

Lets find another planet to consume, trash, and then leave for the next one!

And on the way we can discover things lioke Tang, velcro and pens that write in zero gravity!

At least the Russians used pencils and saved some rubles!

Mars/Moon no problemo

We have figured out how to get to another planet. It's well within our current engineering expertise - almost trivial.

It's the brainless attorneys that run government that keep us grounded.

Since its the same moronic corrut politicians that are blocking the solution to global warmong/peak oil civilization ending crisis, we might need some of that going to another planet technology to buiild us a giant space based sunshade.

Think about it.

Backwater and provincialized

If we don't destroy ourselves first, we will one day travel between stars as easily as we now travel between cities. If you think we won't, you must be working on the assumption that mankind already knows everything about how the laws of physics work. Any reasonable person has to doubt that.

And as for why we should care whether Gliese 581 is habitable, consider that we found it so soon, and so nearby. Out of hundreds of billions of stars in our lonely little galaxy, we've already found one with planets that may look much like our own. A very pressing question has been answered: is the Earth special? Many of us knew it couldn't be, but we had no proof. Now the likelihood of earth-like planets is becoming clearer.

If our ease in finding Gliese is any indication, then there could be tens of billions of earths in the Milky Way alone.

Who cares of some planet is inhabitable?

Those who are so very busy destroying our planet might be VERY interested in moving to another planet - and then destroy that one too.