<story><title>Three Planets in Habitable Zone of Nearby Star</title><url>http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1328/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EsoTopNews+%28ESO+Top+News%29</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cryptoz</author><text>This is an amazing discovery! The star is only 22 lightyears away, and it&amp;#x27;s got three potentially habitable planets. That&amp;#x27;s astounding. This is probably going to be one of our first destinations, when humanity starts building interstellar craft. Of course, the discoveries are still very early right now and we&amp;#x27;ll probably find all sorts of Earth-like planets quite close. But three Super Earths in the habitable zone of a close-by star? That&amp;#x27;s almost as good as it gets.&lt;p&gt;Edit: And surely this will be a focus of searching for life as well. A high concentration of life-capable planets in the same radio direction? Yes please. Also, I&amp;#x27;ve often wondered if having a high density of habitable planets in the same system as your species would increase the chances and speed to becoming a spacefaring species. If you have a lot of places to go that are quite inviting and not that difficult to get to, you&amp;#x27;ll probably go.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>vbtemp</author><text>Just remember being in a &amp;quot;habitable zone&amp;quot; is but one, small necessary (and by itself absolutely insufficient) condition for actually being &amp;quot;habitable&amp;quot; or sustaining life.&lt;p&gt;Recall that the earth is gifted with an active planetary core inducing a strong magnetic shield around the planet, has a single moon of sufficient mass and distance to throttle earth&amp;#x27;s rotation back to just the right speed to have a stable atmosphere, as well as the proper chemical composition...</text></comment>
<story><title>Three Planets in Habitable Zone of Nearby Star</title><url>http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1328/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EsoTopNews+%28ESO+Top+News%29</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cryptoz</author><text>This is an amazing discovery! The star is only 22 lightyears away, and it&amp;#x27;s got three potentially habitable planets. That&amp;#x27;s astounding. This is probably going to be one of our first destinations, when humanity starts building interstellar craft. Of course, the discoveries are still very early right now and we&amp;#x27;ll probably find all sorts of Earth-like planets quite close. But three Super Earths in the habitable zone of a close-by star? That&amp;#x27;s almost as good as it gets.&lt;p&gt;Edit: And surely this will be a focus of searching for life as well. A high concentration of life-capable planets in the same radio direction? Yes please. Also, I&amp;#x27;ve often wondered if having a high density of habitable planets in the same system as your species would increase the chances and speed to becoming a spacefaring species. If you have a lot of places to go that are quite inviting and not that difficult to get to, you&amp;#x27;ll probably go.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>exratione</author><text>Seems unlikely to be the first choice of destination on that basis. By the time the technology exists to reliably transport people (or equivalent amounts of mass) to other planetary systems in a usefully short amount of time, then the technology will also exist to cost-effectively (a) make everything habitable for baseline humans via habitats and other forms of engineering, and (b) engineer sentient entities that can live comfortably in native conditions near anywhere in a star system.&lt;p&gt;So whether or not the system has habitable zone planets will be irrelevant. Our descendants will go to the closest one first.</text></comment>