Seven times as massive as earth, uh? I guess that's good, considering my ecological imprint is 7.

"which would make human explorers feel awfully sluggish."

makes me think it could be a planet of Giants, with cleaner air and greener earth.

do you think we could keep this one clean once we got used to weighing 1400 lbs. LOL:)

Hmmm I'll bet someone is already planning Strip Malls and Big Box stores.

Starbucks?

Once humans get used to the gravity and atmosphere, upon return to Earth, they will probably have Superman like speed and jump. Not to mention things will be lighter for them so they may border on superhuman strength.

Yeah, that pesky speed of light. We'll have to work on that. Pity that there are no ;jump-gates' in our vicinity...

7 times big as earth, would this mean if there are people there and they came here would they be 7 times stronger and 7 times better than us in everything? LOL

FAKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Remember that gravity is a function of not only mass, but of volume too. If my math holds out, even with 7 times the mass, if the new planet is as little as twice the size of Earth, it's gravity would be less than Earth's at about .9g.

dude....why cant they just put domes on Mars untill they can fully terraform it.....and really and truly from my point of view all it needs is a little CO2.....now.....where would we get that? *sarcastic*

Only 350,000 years to get there, that is not much !!!

not fake, stfu

terra-forming isnt just a simple "put some trees on there, and we're good" as i once thought as well. We'd need to set up some generators to supply energy to said bio-domes and equipment, as well as keeping water supplies in check, and also getting the nutrients into the soil that we have here on earth. key thing is: we'd need a stable atmosphere, and we're busy with creating efficient and viable fuel supplies here on earth.

It's Photoshopped. I can tell by the pixels.

duh, man. it's 20.5 light years away. it's an artist's renditioning. they say there's an ocean of some sort on it, so they thought "it's blue", among other things.

man, who took the photograph?
somebody is holding out on us.

It's an artists's idea of what it might look like, you idiot. You didn't seriously think they were trying to pass this off as a real photo of something that is nearly 20 light years away did you?

Hey, CHAOS: Terraform Mars...never been quite sure about that idea. Seems to me we'd be going the wrong way, trying to revive a deadened planet. The "right" way might be to jump-start Venus.

Yea, CHAOS, we cant Terraform mars or any planet that doesn't have plate tectonics. For a planet to even hold an atmosphere it needs to have a magnetic cocoon like earths, generated by the rotating molten core. Also, the planet needs plate tectonics to regulate temperature. However, I do have hopes for this newly discovered planet, if the whole planet's an ocean then it might have a salt water core, which will also generate an atmosphere. Possibly a fine place for life!

Seriously, if you were able to land on a planet that is Earth like but way bigger. Would you really care about the exploration? I'd explore and try to find all I could. Kinda sounds like fun...for a little while at least.

I really wish we could do something about the time it takes to get to planets and stuff such as this. I would love to venture out to a new planet and see what all there is to see.
I bet it's pretty :)

Sure, lets terraform Venus, it only has a crushing atmosphere (90 times the pressure on earth) and a surface temperature hot enough to melt lead. Oh and the day is longer than the year. And there is the lack of plate tectonics and a magnetic field. (heavy sigh) Outer space was so much more fun in the 50s and 60s.

stupid scientists. just because we (humans) wouldnt be able to live there doesnt mean other creatures or civilizations couldnt or dont. and time is man made, it doesnt exist in space. also, we already can travel faster than the speed of light, doing it right now as we speak, according to the expanding universe theory, everything in space is getting further apart, which means everything would have to be moving at faster speeds the further away from the center of the universe, in which the slowest speed could be no less than the speed of light. therefore just walking around or even not moving at all, we are still soaring through space at insanely fast levels of speed! think about it!

This story is old news i heard about it on bbc news a while back. the habitable zone was refered to as the goldy locks zone becouse any planet within this zone would be just the right distance for life. zone distance relative to star size and intensity of course.

Frankly, knowing what I know about propulsion and the required amount (I didn't say exact) of oxygen/fuel mix needed to generate enough of it to stop a 1969 spaceship traveling toward the Moon at 17,000 mph .. I dont even believe men (or women) ever will (or did) land on the moon - let alone find the magnetic propulsion to elevate off from it in that century. I certainly am not going to continue keeping the fantasy alive that NASA ever did accomplish such a mission for (pardon) ... mankind.

I hate how scientists consider theories fact. The same people that discovered Venus thought it was earth like.

This is kinda old news. But thanks for sharing anyway DVICE.
Smith - As for scientific theories, these aren't guesses, hunchs, or speculation, they are rigorously tested ideas that both account for everything we already know about a topic but also make future predictions. If at any point a piece of evidence comes along that seems to falsify any piece of a theory then the theory is re-evaluated and either changed if their is only a small disagreement (refinement) or discarded and a new hypothesis is created, tested and if it withstands testing, it becomes the new theory. As for Venus, I'm pretty sure that the earliest civilizations (all of whom were well aware of Venus) did not really know what they were talking about if they had tried to describe Venus' surface conditions.

That is one of the best discoveries astronomers have made. That new planet looks cool.

If it is going to take 350,000 years we need to get working on RAMA!

@HOW37: This is not old news at all. You must be thinking about some other planetary discovery, such as the other one linked in this story.

This post was written just a few hours after the discovery of these planets was announced, so no, it's not old at all.

you want to see humans living on another planet? start selling mineral rights to the big oil exploration companies. ten years tops, they'll have refineries up and running. follow the money.

Re geekgirl,

Yes lets make the powerful oil companies even more powerful, thats a great way to better our exsitance

Hate to say it, but geekgirl, despite the cynical suggestion, has it right on the money.

I know the last any of us want is to make rich, snobbish corporations any richer, but consider your history. When the Spanish explorers traveled the world mapping it out and learning where everything was, did they do it for prestige? For the ability to say, "We got there first"? Were they even looking to set up new colonies? No, no, and no again. They were looking for gold. They heard of this wonderful place somewhere else on the other side of the ocean where gold was so plentiful you could dip your hands into the rivers and they would be flecked with gold dust when you pulled them out. The explorations of that age were financed in the hopes of getting rich.

What about the colonization of North America then? Well, same deal. They didn't have as much gold (at least not at first), but they *did* have furs, and other exploitable resources the old countries could exploit. And lets not forget that Africa was originally exploited as a source of cheap slave labor which was shipped in job lots to the new continent to work the exploitable resources for as cheaply as possible.

What this all means is that as a rule, major cultural expansion into new territory happens because someone was convinced there was money in it. We may not like it. We might like to think we're sociologically evolved to the point that we'd do it just for the science and prestige. But truthfully? Look around. The shuttle program is being scrapped soon. They're replacing it with old-school rockets. And they don't even have a model in place yet, and won't for several years after they scrap the shuttle program. We're not talking men on the moon anymore, we're talking probes the size of basketballs.

Like it or not, if you want to push man back out into space, you have to find a way to get the corporations to pony up the capital. Until then, it'll be no more than a pipe dream.

This is indeed old news as the descovery of this system and suspected habital zone planets occured around a year ago.

Sorry Dave, your math is well out! A planet 7 times as massive as earth would NOT have lower surface gravitational acceleration compared to earth!!!!!

If we assume similar density (not unreasonable if the planet is close in to the parent star) then the planet's volume will be around 7 times that of Earth and it's radius = around 1.9 times earth radius. Newton would also indicate that surface grav accel const would be about the same as earth

RE Dragonflight as per geekgirl,
Its a shame that many think the successes of industry are negative. Accross the board form drug development to making a sandwich, the private sector with out fail finds the most efficient way of accomplishing the task.
One might think you were sitting infront of you computer waving a red flag, geekgirl. This is a freemarket and, dispite the recent downtrun in our economy, we Americans enjoy an exceptionaly high standard of living based on a capitalist system. The competition encouraged by our evil empire-style big companies is far more productive than the excesses of any public sector entity.
Dragonflight, this is not a regretable occurance. Have you never worked a day in your life? Did you work for feeling of satisfaction? No. People work for compensation. For every Columbus and Lewis and Clark, thousands fail; they did something right. Ambition driven exploration is the way to go. A company that earned the money to fund such projects is bound to be more efficient than a gov't that endlessly siphones money from it's population.
What space police prevents private exploration anyway?

Of course the photo is 'shopped, it's an artists' rendering. We barely have the technology to photograph the planets in our own system. Besides, these new planets aren't found visually, they're found by the gravitational wobble they exert on their stars.

that pesky light speed problem isnt too bad, we have built a satellite that is powered by a concept known as solar sailing, it works by unfolding a massive parachute like mirror that faces the sun, the light given off emits electrons(which have some mass) that bounce off the mirror pushing it, it has a slow start speed but accelerates pretty fast, this means that eventually that satellite will travel very close to the speed of light because light it pushing it

Elstor99, I feel bad for you if you honestly believe that. Of course we've been to the moon and back. How close have you ever been to a Saturn V? I've touched one, I've stood in its shade. You're saying that something THAT massive with THAT much fuel capacity can't take us to the moon? I work in "The Rocket City" Huntsville, AL...if it was all a farce, Huntsville wouldn't be the city it is now. I get to look at that beautiful Saturn V every time I drive to work and think...my husband will be working with NASA or Lockheed Martin in a few years, you can bet your life on it. Dr. von Braun is his idol. He would laugh at you for your beliefs the same way you snicker and laugh at us for wanting something outside this world. I hope you live long enough to see it happen.

If we're all gonna feel sluggish when we get there, why not just use biomechanical exoskeletons to give out muscles a hand.

well msuppose that those earth-like planets are inhabited by creatures, how can we reach them? or how can they reach us >>>>even if we have light speed vessels !! after 20.5 light years !!!!

well i guess we just have to wait for Zefram Cochrane to make the phoenix and make a new chapter in human discovery

Terraforming Venus and Mars? I think in order to stop global warming, we should do it here 1st. Put domes over every major city, and let them breathe their own crap for awhile, then they'll be more willing to make a change for better cleaner air.

PLAG PLOG PLEEM PLEEM PLIM PLOOM PLAM APPLE PLEEM PLEEM PLEEM POG PAG PAG PLIOM PLEAM PLIEM.

Use magnetism to get to the speed of light, it the strongest and most abundant energy we have. find out the opposit of the planets magnetic field and use it to pull you there.