Planet Gliese 581d Livable Ascertained

Gliese 581d, a rocky planet orbiting a giant red dwarf stars (stars with masses lower than the sun and the temperature below 4000 degrees Kelvin) is confirmed as the first planet that meets the requirements to accommodate life.

Planet which is about 20 light-years from Earth is one of our closest neighboring planet. He estimated temperature is warm enough and wet enough to cultivate a similar life-owned planet Earth.

Orbiting Gliese 581d in the Goldilocks zone (the area where possible life forms) belonging to the star Gliese 581. As is known, in the Goldilocks zone, the temperature not too hot, causing the water to boil or not too cold to make it freeze but it was in the right temperature so that water remains in liquid form.

"With a dense atmosphere of carbon dioxide will, which is the most probable scenario for giant planet, Gliese 581d stable climate and warm enough to have oceans, clouds, and rainfall," researchers said the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).

Quoted from the Daily Galaxy, May 19, 2011, according to research published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, Gliese 581d has a mass of at least 7 times bigger than the Earth is about 2 times the planet Earth.

Before this, the attention of astronomers precisely the focus to his brother, the planet Gliese 581g, after it emerged that the planet has a mass similar to Earth's mass and also near Goldilocks zone.

Was first discovered in 2007, Gliese 581d candidate was not originally signed as a place to search for extraterrestrial life. One reason is that he only gets a third of solar radiation as Earth and possibly get 'tidally locked' or just one side that always faces its sun and have a permanent day and night.

However, the latest model made by Robin Wordsworth, Francois Forget, colleagues and other CNRS researchers show a surprising result. Planet's atmosphere is able to store heat thanks to the dense gas CO2 and warmed by the light from the star.

"Overall, there temperature allows liquid water is present on the surface of the planet," said the researcher. "The mass of the planet that also means the gravity on its surface approximately two times higher than Earth's gravity," he said.

However, researchers can not simply send astronauts to the planet. From Earth, the spacecraft that can fly at speeds approaching the speed of light takes more than 20 years to get there. Unfortunately, the rocket technology that has been owned human beings has been only able to deliver us to Gliese 581d in 300 thousand years.