Scientists discovered a planet 20.5 light years from here that seems to have the right stuff for sustaining life.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18293978/
The scientists named the planet Gliese 581 C, evidently to showcase the reason scientists can’t get laid. Science fiction writers all over the Earth are muttering, “Fuck you very much.” No one is going to buy a book titled “Escape From Gliese 581 C.”
And if we discover advanced life on that planet, what do we call them? It won’t be something easy like Martians, or Venutians. No, they will be Gliese 581 Csians – a name that practically demands we discriminate against them.
Seriously, don’t the discovering scientists have a neighbor or a friend who works in marketing? Watch me spend all of thirty seconds to come up with five better names for that bad boy. And I won’t even use New Earth or Earth V2.0. Time me.
Vektron
Albutoral
Skype
Androgena
Heedro
Done! See? How hard was that?
We don’t know if the planet already has life. I suggest we play God and put some there. 20.5 light years is too long for human travel, but we could place some hearty bacteria and whatnot in a probe and fire it in that direction. If there isn’t already life on Gliese 581 C, the bacteria and whatnot can evolve into zebras and Creationists over time. If there already is life on the planet, our bacteria and whatnot will probably infect them and wipe out their civilization. So we might want to put a Mars license plate on the probe.
Infotainment questions for the day:
1. Do we have the technology to seed that planet with life?
2. How do we know the Gliese 581 Csians didn’t seed life on Earth?
It seems to me that we now have a falsifiable hypothesis for Intelligent Design on Earth. My hypothesis is that it came from Gliese 581 C. I call that science. We should teach it in schools.
Go.
[Update: See this link for a technology that could make space travel at vast distances feasible: http://space.newscientist.com/article/mg18925331.200-take-a-leap-into-hyperspace.html]
i say take a probe satelite tak pics .... then nukem
Posted by: miven | March 02, 2008 at 03:07 PM
the name is undecided the sun fir that planet is called Gliese 581 C!!! sorry but who ever wrote this is a dumbass!
Posted by: katelin | August 23, 2007 at 02:01 PM
Well, Bekka, good to see you kept your sense of bad grammar, but I can spend 15 seconds thinking up 10:
Ambulka
Glookas VI
Hewark
Holaste
Glork
Hetachondraes
Kratos
Dlopgas
Frondli
Kloopan
Posted by: NielJ | May 20, 2007 at 05:42 AM
Well, Bekka, good to see you kept your sense of bad grammar, but I can spend 15 thinking up 10:
Ambulka
Glookas VI
Hewark
Holaste
Glork
Hetachondraes
Kratos
Dlopgas
Frondli
Kloopan
Posted by: NielJ | May 20, 2007 at 05:40 AM
hello !! miss this site is really funni lol hello fran
hu is sad enough to get up at 2:00 am in the morning and put a comment on this site!!!! dearie me i think the doctor who idea wasa good one lol keep that one
lol :D :) :D :)
Posted by: Bekka | May 18, 2007 at 04:59 AM
hello !! miss this site is really funni lol hello fran
hu is sad enough to get up at 2:00 am in the morning and put a comment on this site!!!! dearie me i think the doctor who idea wasa good one lol keep that one
lol :D :) :D :)
Posted by: Bekka | May 18, 2007 at 04:59 AM
Thinking this through;
1. It's possible that the planet has life
2. If 1 is true, then it is possible that this life is intelligent
3. If 2 is true, then it is possible that they are hostile
Granted, we don't know any of this for sure, but can we afford to take the chance?
Or do we want to wait until the smoking gun arrives in the form of forty-foot titanium alloy robots with 10 gigawatt destructor beams coming out of their eyes?
I say nuke 'em
Posted by: radagast_the_brown | May 04, 2007 at 07:37 AM
Yes, alright the name Gliese 581 C doesn't exactly evoke feelings of... well, anything except for a nasty flashback to high-school algebra. But this should be regarded as a triumph, not a failing of the scientific community. It marks one of the few areas of scientific discovery where the name hasn't been messed around with so as to sound appealing to a bunch of induhviduals. No doubt if anything interesting is found on Gliese 581 C it will rapidly be renamed
Nova Americana or something equally ghastly, but for this short while we should be happy that it's not an image-concious planet.
And, of course, a much more satisfying name for it would be Gallifrey.
Posted by: Bel | May 01, 2007 at 03:01 AM
Hey! there are people posting on this who can't spell or be bothered with grammar! On the Dilbert Blog! Don't they realise they're setting themselves up for induhvidualism..?
Blimey, they'll let any old eejit leave posts.
Posted by: Qukiti | April 30, 2007 at 04:52 AM
Skype is name of some software used to make phone calls through your comp...
Posted by: Sri | April 28, 2007 at 08:03 PM
Hello. Vulcan. Astrologers have been saying for hundreds of years that the "yet under discovered planet, Vulcan" has always been the influence on Virgos.... hence the character Spock was created.
Posted by: Charmaine | April 28, 2007 at 01:54 PM
The new plant already has a name - always had it. I'm reading the first line of the Bible, in the original, Hebrew, my mother langauge. It literally says: "In the beginning God created the Sky and the Earth.". Sky - not heaven. Well, the Hebrew word for sky is "sham-mayim", literally saying "there be water". So it's "In the beginning God created ThereBeWater and the Earth". So, plainly, we have two planets: Earth and ThereBeWater or Sham-mayim. That's the name, and at it seems that Sham-mayim literally came first. Yours. Yoav
Posted by: Yoav | April 28, 2007 at 01:03 PM
I think we should send a probe filled with weed Seeds(black berry or Dandy lion, not the other kind).
we have enough trouble kill them here, they must be able to grow in any environment we send them to.
if they seeded the earth, would that prove intelligent design?
Posted by: rodbotic | April 27, 2007 at 10:02 PM
"Albutoral?
Sounds like my wife's policy on sex."
Posted by: Brian | April 25, 2007 at 10:27 AM
Leaving the name Albutanal still available? Kinda fits in with the Chair Buttocks theme...
Posted by: Leora | April 27, 2007 at 07:35 PM
Hi Scott.. I read the hyper drive article.. very interesting. But what bugs me a bit is the way we think about gravity. I think Einstein's model of a bowling ball bending a mattress creating a depression that another ball will roll into is inverted from the truth. A better analogy would be that space-time fabric is like a rubber mat plane under water. If a big bubble is released (the bowling ball) it rises and creates an upwards bend in the fabric. Any small bubble (another ball) released nearby will rise, follow the upwards curve and join the bigger bubble. Here's the obvious difference.. The big bubble did NOT attract the smaller bubble (gravity). Instead, the smaller bubble was pressured to join the larger bubble due to the pressure difference in warped space-time (the rubber mat). What this implies is that a vacuum is the true solid (I.e.: the water in the inverted model) and that matter is the less denser space (the bubbles). You and I are made of matter but, in fact, we are mostly vacuum, thus we are only slightly less dense than a solid vacuum. A black hole has most vacuum space taken out and is therefore, the least densest material. The pressure from vacuum space is tremendous around it. Another observation is that shock waves travel faster in a material that is denser. I.e.: Waves in Air are slower than waves in Water which is slower than waves in Steel. So electromagnetic waves should also travel faster in denser material. The fastest an electromagnetic wave can travel is in a hard vacuum (speed of light) and is always slower in less dense materials, I.e.: glass. This might explain why galaxies are all moving away from each other if one uses a model of a water sphere with bubbles being pressured away from the center towards the surface. The volumetric distances increases away from the center and distance between the bubbles will increase. By this model (4D hyper sphere) all matter is being pushed out to a low pressure surface. Thus; the universe will eventually end when all matter is squeezed out to the surface. By modern physics, it's like saying we live in an empty space surrounded by a black hole. The universe, thusly, wouldn't repeat... it ends when all matter is pushed out. The dark matter they are looking for... it's the vacuum! As long as we think of gravity as a force of attraction and not outside pressure, then we may never solve the riddles of our reality. Anyway, just a quick thought. Love your Blog. Best to ya from Dave :^)
Posted by: Dave Oblad | April 27, 2007 at 07:06 PM
I like the subheadline for that planet newsbite. "Planet could be "Rocky" OR "Covered with Oceans"
Wow!
That's some incredible scientific brainery that must have been used to figure that one out. Having absolutely no science skill or devices whatsoever, I, myself, Bill Tkach, could probably predict with 99% accuracy that the planet they discovered was either "Rocky" or "Covered in Oceans".
Posted by: Bill | April 27, 2007 at 04:04 PM
Well, I'll have to score around the clock to populate a planet, but send me there with 20 supermodels and a case of German beer and I'll do my best.
Posted by: Sam D | April 27, 2007 at 03:17 PM
All of those names are taken
Vektron - a corporation that makes ceiling panels
Albutoral - Albuteral a medication for quitting smoking)
Skype - a popular free voip program
Androgena - a testosterone replacement medication
Heedra - I'll give you that one but it's too much like Hydra
Posted by: Alex | April 27, 2007 at 07:30 AM
All inhabited planets are called "Dirt" in some form or another. What people outside the planet call it is another matter.
Posted by: Mike Bennett | April 27, 2007 at 03:40 AM
regardless of whether we find life there, we should definitely declare it an enemy planet.
Posted by: latsot | April 27, 2007 at 02:25 AM
regardless of whether we find life there, we should definitely declare it an enemy planet.
Posted by: latsot | April 27, 2007 at 02:21 AM
Sounds like Majipoor to me - they are only guessing at the surface gravity - the planet might have a really dense core (as piloted on this very blog) and nearly Earth-normal gravity. OK so the planet surface would be as soft as balsa wood, but heck, you never buy the first planet you see anyway . . .
Posted by: Richard | April 27, 2007 at 01:51 AM
What if we sent out a huge spaceship with various species (Noah's ark, anyone?) that will one day make it to this new planet?
Then a strange thought entered my head...
What if Earth itself was originally a huge spaceship, sent out to explore the universe, somehow lost its bearings and is now spiralling slowly but inexorably towards the sun?
Then I looked out my padded cell (actually my tiny cubicle), through the small window towards the horizon and had this creepy feeling... (*shivers*)
Posted by: wanderer | April 27, 2007 at 01:31 AM
You've had aliens in Dilbert before, apparently they weren't successfully sustainable characters. So, little chance for a C-bert to show up and spread mirth around Dilbert's domain.
Still, turning the tables around, you could do series of strips as an homage to Wallace & Gromit's "A Grand Day Out", and have Dilbert and Dogbert build a warp drive space vehicle, or for bigger laughs a matter transporter (on arrival on planet, their heads would be on the other guy's body), that lands them on this new giant Earth-like planet.
Feel free to use idea.
Posted by: Kevin Kunreuther | April 27, 2007 at 12:30 AM
If Gliese 581 Csians seeded life on earth, who, then, seeded life in Gliese 581 C? If inhabitants of another planet seeded life in Gliese 581 C, who, then, seeded life in that planet? And so on. So who was the first to seed life and where did this person/thing come from? Beats me. But I bet some Bible thumper will insists on the convenient way out by explaining all these away in the name of God.
Posted by: giselle | April 26, 2007 at 11:54 PM