Habitable planet found in the Libra constellation?

I really don't feel like waiting that long; where's the remote?

Someone seems to think it's 4.7 billion years old:

http://vo.obspm.fr/exoplanetes/encyclo/star.php?st=Gl 581

Ugh... seems its star is variable... that doesn't bode well for the chances of life.

^Life like us

Hard to have much of any life if the sun's habitable zone is constantly changing.

we're evolving all the time, selection pressures always exist, we've just got to point where we can tolerate a lot of 'noise'.

given we've extremophiles on earth theres a possibility that planet developed something similar which served as the base for a whole spectrum of lifeforms.

^Yeah, maybe their sun fluctuations are similar to the varying seasons experienced here on Earth. Some parts of the Earth experience temperatures ranging from 30 degrees Fahrenheit to 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

Or maybe their sun fluctuations cause more wildly varying temperatures than that. We don't know yet.

I don't see why existence of life should be discounted just because of a variable star. Evolution would just have it so that the ability to cope with the environment was intrinsic to any species

I meant that given "intelligent" life evolved, it is (much) more probable that it would take longer than a few billion years.

^Maybe maybe not... depends on how variable I suppose... if it's going from beyond the frost point to too close to the star and back, that pretty much nixes it. OTOH, if the fluctuations of the HZ are such that the planet stays within it, that might not be a problem. I seem to remember variable stars' light flux is based on mass... which means at M2.5, the fluctuations might not be too bad.

Still picturing Asgards with a flying saucer up on blocks in a yard overgrown with purple grass.

intelligent life is a whole other bag too, for intelligence to develop it must confer an advantage. which if it was an advantage on a scale of say, vision, we'd see a lot more intelligent ceatures having developed on earth. that we don't is an indication its only suitable for select conditions.

the universe may be teeming with life, but as to wether any of it's intelligent?

If presumed alien abductions are an indicator, they behave like trailer trash.

Exactly. They're not abducting Jim-Bob, Ray-Bob and Bobby-Bob for medical experimentation, they're just tryin' to gather up a mess of real, down-home folk for an interplanetary barbecue. Shit, why would they perform medical experiments on humans when they can't even figure out cows and goats yet?

Body parts.

This is in the Libra constellation? So its inhabitants are...Librarians??

Worse! Librals!

So..would the hardrives that have the pics be...Libral media?

Perhaps.. Libertarians?

Actually, you're all wrong, they would be Librans.

That assumes that they're interested in that sort of thing. We shouldn't assume that ET will share our own motivations.