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Super Earth
Archived From April 26, 2007
Of course, you've already heard.
A team of European astronomers have discovered a planet five times as massive as the Earth orbiting a distant, dim red star known as Gliese 581. I've already started lamenting the proto-future, the first contact with extraterrestrial life, that I imagine my generation -- already so media savvy, so keen to negotiate alternative spaces with their own sets of digital constraints -- will probably just miss out on. I could cry, just weep, thinking about it.
Although most scientific developments of this magnitude -- including the recent discovery of another new planet within our the confines of our own solar system -- leave only blips on the cultural radar, this latest one is being bandied around like it was season 3 of LOST. We know very little about it, of course, considering it was detected like all extrasolar planets initially are: by measuring the infinitesimal gravitational wobble it causes in its home star, in this case, a red dwarf, a star a fraction as bright as our "sun." Our picture of it is not exactly in HD, to say the least.
What has everyone buzzing, however, is that Gliese 581 exists just within the slim parameters necessary for biological life. Not too close, nor too far, from its neighboring star, the planet's surface temperature vacillates inside of a tepid margin conducive to liquid water. The SETI people, chuffed, happy to be quoted about something people are interested in, tell us they've already checked Gliese 581 for signs of a radio signal, twice, to no avail. "We'll try again," they offer, eternally hopeful.
But this is as much as we know, at least until the planet's orbit crosses beams, so to speak, with the light emitted from its home star, in which case the fluctuations in wavelength and light-intensity will give us a few clues about its composition. Despite this profound intangibility, the headlines are all the same; the phrases "new Earth," and "super-Earth" are ubiquitous, while the selling point of the story is the potentially rocky, potentially water-friendly nature of the planet. Rocky, the articles specify, like Earth.
This attitude of immediately referring to the Gliese 581 object as being a "Super Earth" already adheres a first-generation science fiction mythology to something that is, pragmatically, only a faintly-detectable stirring in the gravitational balance of a distant star system. Why are we so eager to symbolically bequeath to Gliese 581 the nominal future of our own planet? Is it because we have no other conception of planetary "life" that we so quickly equate potential life with being inherently Earth-like? Can we not conceive of other modes of existence?
It says a great deal about our lack of imagination that we would throw such a loaded term around outer space; on a cosmic level, we are still conquistadors, feebly imaging ourselves 20 light years away, at home.
<< | Posted on April 26, 2007 at 12:00 PM | >>
Comments (7):
They should have come up with a better official name, like Earth 2 or New Earth as you mention. Maybe Universe could write a song about it and perform with space visuals.
Posted by Rob @ April 26, 2007 9:23 AM
I think it's because if they can convince people that there is another Earth or SuperEarth, then the new surge of environmentalism will lose some steam.
Posted by dalas v @ April 26, 2007 10:31 AM
I think there should be a competition to name the new planet.
Posted by Joyce Robertson @ April 26, 2007 10:48 AM
Gliese 581 is next door is cosmic terms, fantastically far away in human ones. However I have faith - and it might be a dirty word but there it is - that humanity will get there one day.
Will we make it our home? Probably not - twice the gravity of Earth, close to a red dwarf, probably tidally locked .. it's not a garden spot.
Yet - people live in places as diverse as the Kalahari and Los Angeles. Why NOT a tidally locked planet around a red sun?
Posted by Brian @ April 27, 2007 2:38 PM
I always dreamed that "New Earth" would be part of a dual star system. Twin sunrises over space palm trees.
Posted by Claire @ April 27, 2007 3:35 PM
I like the name super earth it bigger then are planet and one day we will end up going there and make it home and one day our planet will not be abel to sport life and we should go to other plants and make them home as well as to find other life out there coz there must be somthink or some one out there but us
Posted by joey @ September 5, 2007 12:27 PM
[-_-]
Posted by [-_-] @ April 26, 2007 8:01 AM