Home from home?

[FB]

Astronomers have found a plant a mere 20 light years from Earth which sits in the so called "Goldilocks" zone (not too hot, not too cold) area around a star to make in habitable for life forms.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/ ... liese-581g

The Guardian article is fairly brief but quite interesting. Apparently the planet doesn't revolve (does that mean it doesn't have any gravity or is it the planet's mass which creates this?) so one side is very hot and the other very cold. Life forms could have evolved in the areas on the edge of the light and dark zones as these should be temperate enough. The planet's star is a red dwarf which, if I recall correctly, means that it's (in astronomical terms at least) on it's last legs so probably not somewhere the human race can rush off to when our own Sun starts to pack up.

Apparently Bernie has a Grand Prix planned there in 2013 as long as the planets government is prepared to offer some funding.

 

[fat jez]

Mass creates gravity. You don't revolve, but you do exert a very slight pull on the Earth.

 

[F1Yorkshire]

A bit like this:

 

[FB]

So if this planet is 3 times the size of Earth presumably the gravitational pull is higher and any living things on it will be a lot shorter than they would be had they developed here? I'm sure I read that Mars has much higher gravity than the Earth and if human life had developed there we would be about 50% of our Earth height.

p.s. Great clip F1Y