I believe some people in SMP think THIS planet makes et a lock. I personally don't think et affects Christianity at all, but some people do. Some atheists seem to think that the discovery of et completely nullifies Christianity, which is unintelligible to me. But if atheists think that maybe some Christians think that.

One benefit to Christians, who happen to think that not only is the universe fine tuned, but our solar system and planet are also incredibly fine tuned, is the comparison of other systems and planets, which underscores the so far utterly unique characteristics of ours. RTB is very good at explaining just how many different things have to occur for life and advanced life to arise and exist - which to me shows the greatness and love of God.

What they are talking about sounds like precession and that would move the strip somewhat. I don't think its going to happen so fast as to preclude the existence of life. The earth completes a precession cycle about every 24000 years which certainly has an inpact on life...but life can cope.

It depends on the scope of the guess. If someone guesses life exists elsewhere in the universe, they are much more likely to be right than someone guessing life exists on Gliese 581g.

Ya, that's not true at all.

So none of this is true as well.

You assume that life cannot adjust to this radiation, perhaps finding a way to thrive in it.

We didnt think life could exist in environments such as this:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30582524/

Then we started finding them. Life thriving in extremely acidic and hot conditions in complete darkness.

Of course we only have a limited understanding on abiogenesis and what forms and conditions life can exist in but the more we look into extremes on our own planet the clearer it is that evolution is always there ready to adapt life to the environment it finds itself in.

Btw the reason the term "goldilocks" exists for these planets (this is Gliese 581g if you want to google it) is it is "just right" in the zone of habitable distance from its star:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...le_zone-en.svg

The reason it is in the zone is because it orbits a much smaller and cooler star than our own so while it is closer in absolute terms it is also relatively similar. It is on the right:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...nGliese581.png

It is also the 87th closest star system to our own and 20 light years away, which is truly amazing when you think about it in statistical terms that we found the first planet capable of supporting life as we know it within such a short distance.

People are making a lot of this.

Isn't it at least potentially explained by the likely fact that 'capable of supporting life' planets are going to be smaller and harder to see - so we're going to find the close ones first?

Well, we aren't even sure if Goldilocks planets are common enough to where we should find any of them close to us. That is why this discovery is a pretty big deal. We would have to be pretty unlucky to find this planet if they are actually super rare.

I took it to mean that if I went looking for a person with 11 toes like me and the first person I checked out was my next door neighbor and he had 11 toes. WOW, who'd a thunk!
the reaction is "are they that bloody common that they're right next door? Wonder how many on the street."

What I have heard is people saying "The first one we found was really close. That means they must be really common (since we didn't have to look far to find one)."

I don't think it follows if (as I've also heard from admittedly third/fourth hand sources) planets in the region which supports life are predicted to be smaller (and thus harder to see) than average.

It's more relevant how many have been checked. If they've scanned thousands of star systems (and would have seen Goldilocks planets even amongst those a long way away) and just happened to get to this one recently then it loses it's 'who'd a thunk' impact. If you asked everyone in your street and everyone had ten toes and then finally asked your next door neighbour - would you still conclude they were common?

EDIT: I don't mean to imply it isn't amazing. It was a genuine question. It just doesn't seem amazing to me as a mildly interested outside observer of astronomy.

The fact that a planet in the GZ has been found so soon after the ability to detect one was developed may indicate such planets are relatively common, which shortens the odds somewhat.

Yeah, that is not really correct. It is more that we are terrible at detecting Earth like planets relative to how many stars there are and we already found one. So that is a pretty big hint that they could be fairly common.

Any idea on a ballpark figure of how many we've looked at? I had this idea that we'd scanned thousands (small on the scale of number of stars but big enough that I'm not overly impressed)
If 1/10,000 stars have a potentially habitable planet when we look at them (I presume that the planet in question wasn't habitable when the star was pre-dwarf?) it's not that amazing.

The Kepler mission is currently looking at 145,000 main sequence stars and has the capability to find earth sized planets in the parents star's GZ. In a couple more years we should have a good idea on how common these objects are.

Previous to the Kepler mission we looked at each star individually and haven't really looked at a lot.

Well there are 10^11 stars just in the Milky Way so 1/10000 means that there will be a ton of them.