So the "possibly habitable planet" probably isn't, as a number of people pointed out,
but the outer planet in the system may be, given some optimistic albedo and greenhouse assumptions
There was an interesting discovery last month, of a "super-Earth" formally within the habitable zone of a nearby star.
As a number of people pointed out, the habitability assumption was not really consistent, it looked more likely to runaway to a Venus like state if it had water and atmosphere.
Now there is a short formal analysis, but they also point out that while GJ581c may not be habitable, the outer planet, GJ581d may be.
Win one, lose one.
More like this
Planets, planets everywhere
and on some there will be drops to drink.
An interesting confluence of research occurred over the last few months, leading to:
The University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo has a very interesting facility that has put out some fun stuff
This brief exchange captures it all.
More than one-third of the giant planet systems recently detected outside our
solar system may harbor Earth-like planets, according to a new study by
scientists associated with NASA's Astrobiology Institute. Many of these planets
What a load of *%!@. Check out they paragraph where they say, "Valencia et al. show that super earths would have solid cores, but we assume a liquid one anyway with an unreferenced, unwritten other calculation."
Note also that they assume carbon as CO2, and a silicate weathering cucle, despite the fact that in our system, every body outsode th efrost line from a comet to jupiter has an fO2 that supports organic, no fully oxidized carbon.
Finally, why do people scale earth up by a factor of 8, instead of simply halving Uranus?
On a quasi-scientific note, does anyone know the C-O ratio of the host star? That will determine the O activity of the solar nebula, which in turn will govern the relative condensation temperatures for metals, silicates, and volitiles.