Habitable Exoplanet Found?

[Piscivore]

But, I swear to you that Blossom is off the air! It was just a dumb mistake, it won't happen again!

That's nothing... wait 'til they find out we cancelled Firefly.

 

[scrummie02]

Hmmm, only 20 light years away? That means they may have been getting our radio transmissions for decades, only 20 years late.

And if there is intelligent life there, we should be able to pick up radio transmissions? Time to re-tune/re-aim SETI ? Perhaps bring in a state of the art phased array antenna? How big would it need to be? Inverse square law, 20 light years distant, not very strong signal...? Hmm, could we /they pick up the radiation blast of an atom bomb at that range ?

This actually is an interesting question. How abundant intelligent life? When we look at ourselves we see the following:
Earth has been around billions of years.
Humans have existed in our modern state (as homo Sapiens sapiens) for what? about 30,000 years, maybe a little longer.

In Earth's history there has been several mass extinctions due to both terrestrial and celestial events. It's taken billions of years for a fully self aware species to evolve and become the dominate species on the planet. In that time period, our species has been relatively unscathed and we haven't really suffered any world shattering events - perhaps you can argue bubonic plague - and yet we've only made it "here". We have not achieved any way to come up with a renewable sustainable form of energy that doesn't destroy the planet let alone the ability to achieve any sort of efficient form of space travel. What are the possibilities that on some planet somewhere someone has achieved technology to not only rise to become the dominate species on the planet but the ability to manipulate time to travel the vast expanses of space?

Unfortunately we only have one example - us. So we really don't have any other variable to compare ourselves to. But let's ask the question, if advance species are out there, why broadcast ourselves? Say we travel the 20+ light years to this planet to discover there already is a bunch of primitive beings not much more advanced then our cavemen all over the place? What do we do? How do we know an alien race would be benign if they found out we're here?

 

[Simon39759]

I guess a major, as yet unresolved, issue is going to be the composition of the atmosphere.

Venus is in the habitable zone, but it's heavy CO2 content still make it too hot for life. Mars also is within that zone, but the atmosphere is too thin and the planet as a whole most likely is too cold for life...

So, it all boils down to the atmosphere, as far as I know...
And, so far, we can only guess... The planet is heavier than earth, so that would contribute to it retaining more atmosphere. And, considering the weaker output of the sun, the effect of the solar wind are likely to be weaker (I am talking out of my butt here, please somebody correct me) so, that suggest a thicker atmosphere.
I will talk from my butt once more and think to recall that Red dwarf have a lower proportion of heavy element, does not that suggest that the planet's atmosphere would too? And wouldn't that counter-act the greenhouse effect somewhat?

It seems, to me, like the likelihood of the surface temperature to be within the acceptable range is also quite good...