
Alien Life May Exist on Large Planet 30T Miles from Earth: Researchers - remg19
https://www.ntd.com/alien-life-may-exist-on-large-planet-30-trillion-miles-from-earth-researchers_276145.html
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mkl
5.1 light years, if you want comprehensible units. That's pretty close as far
as stars go.

Edit: It's also wrong; the actual distance is about 5.9 light years:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnard%27s_Star](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnard%27s_Star)

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Gustomaximus
To put this in context, Voyager 1 has traveled around 0.0019871 light years so
far.

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gus_massa
Blogspam of [https://www.theepochtimes.com/alien-life-may-exist-on-
large-...](https://www.theepochtimes.com/alien-life-may-exist-on-large-
planet-30-trillion-miles-from-earth-researchers_2765397.html) ?

Anyway, they didn't find any proof of life there. They only found liquid
water, that is a good sign, but the title is almost a linkbait.

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hermitdev
Except, they haven't found proof of water:

"But if there is water on the planet, geothermal heating could provide
conditions for life in an otherwise inhospitable environment, the researchers
add."

It's further noted later in the article that the environment would likely be
that of Europa.

Supposition is that _if_ liquid water exists, there could potentially be life.

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gus_massa
Thanks. I missed the "second" if.

Anyway, It would not be surprising that they confirm that there is water
there. IANAA, but water may be confirmed in the next 10-20 years. Water is
everywhere, and someone has measured the atmosphere composition of other
planet using the change of the spectrum just before/after partial occlusions
of the star by the planet.

Life is difficult to confirm and it would be a much greater news. [I expect
that there is (bacterial like) life in these kind of planets, but until
confirmation it's just an speculation.]

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aphextron
Clickbait title. This is a completely unsupported speculative hypothesis with
no new data.

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nneonneo
I would cite the original Villanova U press release
([https://www1.villanova.edu/villanova/media/pressreleases/201...](https://www1.villanova.edu/villanova/media/pressreleases/2019/0110.html))
rather than either NTD or The Epoch Times, as both of the latter are not
entirely reliable sources.

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davebryand
What does water on another have to do with life there? Yes, the form of matter
self-animation and replication that evolved on earth requires water, but won't
similar evolution on another planet have different dependencies based on the
environment of that place?

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roywiggins
Life that is recognizable to us definitely needs some sort of solvent to even
begin to exist. We know water can support life. We don't know that there are
any other solvents that can. We also know of a bunch of places that don't have
liquid water, like the moon, that don't appear to host life. Probably there
isn't life on objects that look like the moon or Mercury.

Water is also really common (if not usually liquid), so you might expect that
a good fraction of all the life in the universe would use water. Why worry
about looking for exotic life in galactic nebulas (or whatever) when we aren't
even sure how to detect it. Working out a way to detect watery life is way
easier, and if there's a nearbyish exoplanet with a rocky Earthesque planet
with water then we absolutely should look there first.

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rbanffy
Metallicity is low, but, hey, it's a rocky planet at a relatively safe
distance. There is a reasonable chance there is still something covering the
surface that resembles an atmosphere.

