• Question: If you had the chance to go anywhere in the universe, where would you go?

    Asked by jennymacd to Amy, Grant, Martin, Shawn, Usman on 13 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Shawn Domagal-Goldman

      Shawn Domagal-Goldman answered on 13 Mar 2013:

      Gliese 581! (I wish there were a more poetic name for it!) That’s the name of a star that has a few planets around it, including some that we think have the best chances of having Earth-like oceans, and maybe life! There’s even a pretty big debate about one of those planets – some think there’s one that gets just the right amount of energy to be a lot like Earth. But other scientists don’t think that planet exists! So I could settle a debate, and while I’m there could also check out the other planets for life.

      One of the cool things about exoplanet science is I would probably give you a different answer a year from now, because by then we’ll probably know of another planet that has an even better chance of having life. This is changing so fast it’s hard to keep up sometimes! 😮

    • Photo: Grant Kennedy

      Grant Kennedy answered on 16 Mar 2013:

      Another cool thing about Gliese 581 is that star also has a “Kuiper belt” like our Solar System (google “Kuiper belt”, check out the images). It’s a ring of lots of smaller objects, maybe including dwarf planets like Pluto, Sedna, and Eris in the Solar System. I was the very first person in the world to know about it since I was the one that first analysed the images we got from the Herschel Space Observatory!

      Personally I’d go visit alpha Centauri, the closest star to the Solar System to see if there are any planets there.
      g

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