Diegetics

I can't wait until we start to leave the Earth and we begin to understand how finely tuned life on Earth is. We'll be confronted with lots of problems to solve regarding gravity, chromodynamics, etc... Problems we just haven't thought of on Earth yet.

When figuring out whether a planet is even habitable, do they consider the light emission of the Sun into that equation? We exist within a specific spectrum after all.

Tinker,

1) The Gliese star is a Class M (Red Dwarf) and emits mostly in the infrared (i recall reading about the peak being at .8 micrometeres - just shy of visible red). The luminosity is about 1% that of our Sun.
2) The Gliese g planet is at about .13 AU from its star (Earth is at 1AU from the Sun), and are therefore likely tidally locked - sort of like the moon is to the earth - our models of atmospheric circulation in such conditions are primitive.
3) The base equilibrium temperature at likely albedo values is about -50C, but this is of course modified by 2) above and by atmospheric greenhouse effects in practice. Even Earth's is -20C or so without GHE.

The assumption is that the planetary habitable zone would be a relatively narrow temperate band going from the north pole to the south pole.
From the "habitable zone" - assuming the planet has a solid surface - it would look like a really red eternal sunset.
It is unclear whether the geological carry-processes that have allowed life to survive (transfer of CO2 via subductions in oceans, mantle melting to re-emission in eruptions via volcanoes) would also take place in such a world.

Whether life exists or not on that world is impossible to determine today. In theory, if a Gliese-g like planet were found that were by chance orbiting by transiting in front of the star as seen from earth, we could with very powerful telescopes determine the spectral properties of that world's atmosphere. Unfortunately, we Gliese G does not transit its star in a way we can see it.

The cool thing here, in my view, is how incredibly accurate the measurements these guys made are. The way the detect these planets is by discovering the wobble of a star under the gravitational influence of a planet. To give a reference frame on how precise the measurement has to be, it's like measuring the difference in length between the length of a ruler placed horizontally on a table, and the same ruler's length when you put it vertically on a table, and thus subject part of it to a slightly weaker gravitational force.

What are the effects of Gravitation on the time of any human craft attempting to reach another star? What happenes when we get beyond the kuyper belt and the gravitational field of Sol's system loosen their hold on us?

I was in a place where the laws of physics were different. I was in a room in the student ghetto for UF, and there was this office chair in a bedroom , and it tilted and rotated . Well after the first two hits didn't work for like two hours, we took a second round. Right as the first kicked in, as it turned out.

That chair was pretty incredible. I'm pretty sure I made it through a full 360 backflip . Then Mike threw the volleyball into the ceiling fan on 'hi' , and it all went downhill from there.