Gliese 581g: The Tantilizing Possibility of Life Elsewhere.

For all the exploration of space we’ve done to date we have still found no evidence of life outside our own biosphere. We’ve found many of the building blocks scattered around our solar system but all our attempts to find even the most simplistic of life forms have been met with failure. Still with the raw ingredients being so common in just our own back yard it follows that there’s a high likelihood that somewhere in the deep blackness of space lies another planet that teams with life like our own. Still with the number of exoplanets only numbering in the hundreds and the technology strongly skewed to finding large gas giants close to their parent stars we had yet to come across another planet that life as we know it could call home. That was until just recently.

The news spread like wildfire when astronomers at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii released information regarding a planet who’s characteristics looked very familiar:

An enticing new extrasolar planet found using the Keck Observatory in Hawaii is just three times the mass of Earth and it orbits the parent star squarely in the middle of the star’s “Goldilocks zone,” a potential habitable region where liquid water could exist on the planet‘s surface. If confirmed, this would be the most Earth-like exoplanet yet discovered and the first strong case for a potentially habitable one. The discoverers also say this finding could mean our galaxy may be teeming with prospective habitable planets.

“Our findings offer a very compelling case for a potentially habitable planet,” said Steven Vogt from UC Santa Cruz. “The fact that we were able to detect this planet so quickly and so nearby tells us that planets like this must be really common.”

Vogt and his team from the Lick-Carnegie Exoplanet Survey actually found two new planets around the heavily studied red dwarf star Gliese 581, where planets have been found previously. Now with six known planets, Gliese 581 hosts a planetary system most similar to our own. It is located 20 light years away from Earth in the constellation Libra.

Gliese 581 is one of the most studied stars in our sky with no less than 6 exoplanets being discovered orbiting it. It’s a red dwarf star meaning it’s much less bright than our sun and is quite a bit less massive. Still the planets that are orbiting it look very familiar with one of it’s planets being very much like Venus (very close to the sun, probably a planetary hot house) and another quite like Mars (much further out, could potentially have or hosted life). The Gliese 581 system provides evidence that our kind of solar system, one with a diverse range of planets and several habitable candidates, is quite possibly very common. Gliese 581g is exciting because unlike it’s two sister planets it’s right smack bang in the middle of the habitable zone, and with that comes the chance of life.

In this picture Gliese 581 resides right near the bottom with the habitable zone being quite close to the parent star, right up to a mere 10% of the distance from earth to our star. Gliese 581g lies right in the middle of this zone and due to the close proximity this leads to a few interesting characteristics. A year on Gliese 581g is a little over 36 days long which is amazing when you consider Mercury, the closest planet to our star, still takes around 88 days to complete one rotation around our sun. Because of this close proximity to its parent Gliese 581g is also tidally locked to it, forcing the same side of the planet to always face the red dwarf star. Because of this I do not believe that life as we know it could exist on this planet. However that does not mean life could not survive (or even thrive) there.

Our version of life is the only model we’ve got to go on right now since we really haven’t come across anything different. Whilst many forms of life might look completely alien to us they all shared the same basics that enabled other life to thrive on earth. The key to all life as we know it is water as nearly everywhere on earth where there’s some form of water we tend to find life teaming there, even in the most inhospitable conditions. Gliese 581g is big enough that it should be able to hold onto a tenable atmosphere and the temperatures at the surface should be sufficient to support liquid water. However the weather on the surface would be anything but calm as cold wind from the night side of the planet would be constantly blowing thanks to the constant heating of the day side. The terminus boundary between eternal night and day could serve as a habitable strip all across the entire planet, but this is where things get tricky.

The day/night and seasonal cycles of this planet have greatly influenced how life formed on this planet. Gliese 581g would have none of these things with no orbital tilt to speak of to generate the seasons and either constant day or night depending on which side of the planet you were on. This means that any life that evolved there would have to cope with such conditions, eliminating the need for a circadian rhythm and any kind of seasonal behaviour. Since nearly all species of life on earth rely on both these mechanisms for survival the life on Gliese 581g would be wildly different from our own, probably lacking the need for sleep and being almost constantly active. Of course there would be other selection pressures at work here as well, leading to even more alien forms of life.

Is life guaranteed to exist there as so many articles claim? Not in the slightest. There are so many factors that lead up to the development of life that we just can’t be certain one way or another. There are some theories that the Moon played a large part in kick starting life on earth and right now we can’t tell if Gliese 581g even has one. There’s also the real possibility that our new celestial cousin has a thick, acidic atmosphere killing any early stages of life well before they had the chance to adapt. Until we can get more data on the planet anything we say about life there is purely speculative and really it will always be that way until we send a probe there to investigate.

Still Gliese 581g means so much to us for what it symbolises. It shows us that our solar system isn’t unique in the galaxy and gives evidence to support the idea that there are untold numbers of planets that are potentially habitable. We’re on the brink on discovering many, many more of planets like Gliese 581g and each one will give us some insight into the formation of our universe and ultimately life itself. We’re still a long way from being able to explore them for ourselves but I know that one day we mere humans will journey to those stars and revel in their beauty.