Wolf 1061c Earth

Wolf 1061c the closest planet yet a large water planet that could support life.
As its beyond our solar system, it would be a risky venture. Then have a re-entry and have a never return card. As for decades we could see only stars and a few nearby planets from our own solar system. As when we looked to the heavens. Twenty years ago we started spotting exo-planets; then potentially habitable exoplanets; and now astronomers have pinpointed the closest exoplanet yet that might support life. The so-called "super-earth" is one of three planets orbiting a red dwarf star called Wolf 1061 that's just 14 light-years away. "While a few other planets have been found that orbit stars closer to us than Wolf 1061, those planets are not considered to be remotely habitable," said Duncan Wright, of the University of New South Wales in Australia. Wright is lead author of a study on the discovery that will be published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Wright says it's the middle planet, called Wolf 1061c, that orbits in the habitable "Goldilocks zone" of the star, where temperatures are not too hot and not too cold but just right for liquid water, making life as we know it theoretically possible. "It is fascinating to look out at the vastness of space and think a star so very close to us  a near neighbour could host a habitable planet," Wright says. "Near" is of course a very relative term. Current understanding of physical limitations mean it would take at least 14 years to make the journey to Wolf 1061c, and we would have to invent light-speed travel first. Still, this planet is a much closer neighbor than most other potentially habitable exoplanets spotted so far, which tend to be hundreds or thousands of light-years away. One notable exception is Gliese 667 Cc, which sits 22 light-years away. If future generations did make it to Wolf 1061c, they'd find an oversize rocky planet circling a star that's dimmer and smaller than our sun.

The UNSW team says it hopes to study the atmosphere of the planet in the future to see if it might be conducive to life. It could also make an excellent candidate for observation by the next generation of powerful telescopes, starting with the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and the James Webb Space Telescope, both set to launch in the next two to three years. Of course, by that time the math makes it seem likely that we'll have found a number of potentially habitable planets that are even closer still. Could a 'super-Earth' be even more habitable than our own planet? There's reason to believe that other planets might be better for supporting life as we know it, and they might not even be that far off, cosmically speaking.Could the redder planet be the better planet? Rene Heller It's popular to talk about how wonderful, beautiful and rare a treasure our planet is; I certainly say such things all the time, and many satellite, as photos testify to this truism. But let's be real for a minute, my fellow humans and A.I. beings we don't really have first-hand experience with an adequate sample size of habitable planets to say this for sure as Russian Photo Is Released. 

In fact, a pair of scientists have been looking into the possibility that there might be a distant planet (or a couple of them or maybe 3 billion) out there more suitable to supporting life as we know it. They even describe what such a "super-habitable" planet might look like a super-Earth with a mass double or triple that of our planet, orbiting in the habitable zone around a K-type dwarf star several billion years older than our sun. The basic explanation for why such a planet would make a "better Earth" is that it might have a long-lasting magnetic field, which protects the planet from the abundant radiation of space and stars, and plate tectonics activity, which keeps some of the key life-supporting elements in balance. Also, a planet with double or triple the mass of Earth would mean more surface gravity, likely forming more shallow lakes and oceans, more archipelago-like land masses and fewer deserts. More shallow waters might mean more biodiversity, as they typically do here on our planet?

The 7 confirmed exoplanets most likely to host life (pictures) In other words, a better Earth would be a little more than a "Water World" and a lot less of a film planet as in "Mad Max." It would also be awesome for snorkelling. That's part of the case that René Heller of McMaster University in Ontario and John Armstrong from Weber State University in Utah plan to make at the 2015 Astrobiology Science Conference in Chicago in June, according to an advance briefing on the session. The duo admit that they are refuting the "Rare Earth Hypothesis", which basically posits that the emergence of life on Earth was a result of amazing coincidences and everything being in the right place at the right time just once off in the milky way galaxy. "While we agree that the occurrence of another truly Earth-like planet is trivially impossible, we hold that this argument does not constrain the emergence of other inhabited planets," Heller and Armstrong write these have to have an atmosphere otherwise wouldn't survive as a specie.

In other words, keep your "Star Trek" dreams alive and always remember the Prime Directive, as it could come in handy in a distant future because humanity carbon dioxide could make for a whole oil deposit.
Especially if a superhabitable planet is discovered in orbit around Alpha Centauri B. This is one of the nearest stars to our solar system, at just "four light-years away". This next door neighbor, cosmically speaking, fits the requirements set by Heller and Armstrong for fostering possible super-snorkeling worlds as described above. Astronomers have already found one Earth-size planet in orbit around this star, but it is not in the habitable zone. However, there's no reason to believe that there isn't a super-Earth lurking a little farther away from Alpha Centauri B yet to be detected. For now, until we build our first warp drive or send out our first multi-generational ship of colonists to Alpha Centauri B, we'll just have to deal with the planet we've got, where frankly, even the deserts and the deep oceans are still pretty awesome and still full well wishers.