First Earth-sized exoplanet found

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I will date the girl from Venus
Flowers die and so will I
Yes, I will kiss the girl from Venus FOR SCIENCE!

You'll make a fine starship captain one of these days

[Jasper]

Someone's got to do it right.

Kirk style.  Fuck yeah.

[AFK]

That Frankenstein-looking SOB Brian Williams was covering this on the NBC Evening News last night.  He ended the bit by saying (paraphrasing), "It's good to know if we screw this place up there is somewhere else to go."  Completely glossing over the whole idea that the place could support life.  You know, life that might not be super cool about 40 Billion Ass-hat Earthlings descending upon their planet to pound their flags into their planet's crust.  I mean, if it were the other way around, and they were coming here, it would be fucking Star Wars baby.  The US and Russia would be pointing their nukes into space and blasting the bastards. 

[Jasper]

Attackers have the advantage, if they know how to drop rocks down the gravity well.

[Don Coyote]

Attackers have the advantage, if they know how to drop rocks down the gravity well.

Great now you have me thinking about how to devastate a planetary population quickly from orbit but not devestat the planet to the extent that easy initial colonization would occur.

[Jasper]

I'd say just drop shit on the cities.  It couldn't take more than 200 earth tons of material to destroy almost all the cities of a planet similar to ours.

[Don Coyote]

I'd say just drop shit on the cities.  It couldn't take more than 200 earth tons of material to destroy almost all the cities of a planet similar to ours.

The question is how much shit would be knocked into the atmosphere and for how long.

[Requia ☣]

Interesting destination for future colonization prospects though, once we figure out to go a little bit faster.

This planet is probably tidally locked (the day night cycle is very very long).  On the very off chance it actually has an atmosphere, there would be constant winds taking scorching hot air to the night side and bringing cold air back from a place that makes Antartica look like the tropics.  Red Dwarfs aren't stable either, I don't have the specifics for this star, but output of Red Dwarfs can drop by as much as 40% (lasting months) and some of them will also occasionally double in brightness for a brief period, so be prepared for the fucked up weather to get even *more* fucked up as soon as the star decides it doesn't want to play ball anymore.

To top it all off the narrow habitable dusk band will *move* which means next year, or maybe next millennium (these things can be very slow), your brand new colony is going to slip right out of the habitable zone, and everyone there will either freeze or roast, depending on which way it goes.

[Jasper]

I'd say just drop shit on the cities.  It couldn't take more than 200 earth tons of material to destroy almost all the cities of a planet similar to ours.

The question is how much shit would be knocked into the atmosphere and for how long.

The more, the better.  Remember:  You're in a starship, and they're at the bottom of a gravity well.  You've got time to wait while crop-killing dust settles, and resistance fighters die off.

[Don Coyote]

I'd say just drop shit on the cities.  It couldn't take more than 200 earth tons of material to destroy almost all the cities of a planet similar to ours.

The question is how much shit would be knocked into the atmosphere and for how long.

The more, the better.  Remember:  You're in a starship, and they're at the bottom of a gravity well.  You've got time to wait while crop-killing dust settles, and resistance fighters die off.

That gave me a thought. Given a society with the technology for interstellar travel at sub-luminary velocities I guess if that society sent several waves of large kinetic kill projectiles decades or centuries ahead of the initial colonization force, by the the time the colonists arrived much of the indigenous life would have been kill off and there might possibly be more favorable conditions due to the dust having settled.

[Jasper]

That is ridiculously convenient!  Nice thinking!

Hell, you could even calculate how long it would be between impact and arrival, and salt the projectiles with radioactive substances with an appropriate decay cycle, to aid in biological life extermination.

This idea has a certain deadly perfection to it.

[Don Coyote]

That is ridiculously convenient!  Nice thinking!

Hell, you could even calculate how long it would be between impact and arrival, and salt the projectiles with radioactive substances with an appropriate decay cycle, to aid in biological life extermination.

This idea has a certain deadly perfection to it.

I sometimes have moments of insight into weird shit while impaired by alcohol. Although it was you who sparked the initial train of thought.

[Freeky]

This thread is a good example of why we can't have nice things.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Interesting destination for future colonization prospects though, once we figure out to go a little bit faster.

This planet is probably tidally locked (the day night cycle is very very long).  On the very off chance it actually has an atmosphere, there would be constant winds taking scorching hot air to the night side and bringing cold air back from a place that makes Antartica look like the tropics.  Red Dwarfs aren't stable either, I don't have the specifics for this star, but output of Red Dwarfs can drop by as much as 40% (lasting months) and some of them will also occasionally double in brightness for a brief period, so be prepared for the fucked up weather to get even *more* fucked up as soon as the star decides it doesn't want to play ball anymore.

To top it all off the narrow habitable dusk band will *move* which means next year, or maybe next millennium (these things can be very slow), your brand new colony is going to slip right out of the habitable zone, and everyone there will either freeze or roast, depending on which way it goes.

Well, the main concern would be radiation. Also because it is tidally locked, it means that whatever core it may have is likely not spinning either. The fact that the Earth has a molten iron core which rotates faster than the crust, creating a strong magnetic field, which protects us from all sorts of background radiation and solar radiation. Unless the atmosphere is significantly thicker (which is a possibility) and has the right sort of gasses, it maybe of more concern than fluctuations in the habitable zone (if we can travel 20 light years in a short amount of time, I imagine we'd be able figure out a way to deal with the planet's other conditions.

Specifics on Gliese 581:

Mass 0.31[5] M☉
Radius 0.29[2] R☉
Surface gravity (log g) 4.92±0.10[6]
Luminosity (bolometric) 0.013[2] L☉
Temperature 3,480 ± 48[6] K
Metallicity [M/H] = −0.33 ± 0.12[6]
Age 7 to 11[5][7] Gyr


And:

In 1994 Edward Weis concluded that Gl 581, like half the 43 dwarf M stars he studied over a multi-year period, showed long term variability (and page 1137, Fig 1 shows Gl 581 had magnitude 10.58 in 1982 and between 10.57 and 10.56 from 1985 to 1990).[27] Bonfils noted in 2005 that "Gl 581 has been classified as a variable star (HO Lib), but its variability (Weis 1994) is only marginally significant. If real it would be on a time scale of several years, with short term variability being at most ∼0.006 mag."[28] Measurements by MOST showed short term variability of about 5 mmag (half a percent) over a period of a few weeks.

I'm not entirely certain what the second cut and paste means, but if I have some grasp on it, it's about as stable as the sun, just smaller and older.

[Requia ☣]

You don't need the magnetic field to block radiation, even in interplanetary space the radiation level is barely high enough to be dangerous (can't find the specific level, but NASA was running rat tests to see if they could actually cause problems or not with the radiation levels involved), standing on a planet cuts it in half (less whatever the local rocks put out) and an atmosphere (which is the biggest part of Earth's shield) drops it even farther.

IIRC a magnetic field is important in limiting atmosphere loss from solar wind, but weaker solar winds or increased vulcanism would balance that.