A light year is the distance light travels in one year.
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A ROCKY planet that might have aliens on it has been found, close enough that we could travel there. The only thing we know for sure is that a rock orbits Proxima Centauri at a distance that would allow liquid water. It’s in the southern sky, but it’s too dim to see with the naked eye.
About four light years away from our planet sits Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our solar system, and orbiting it is its just-discovered companion, a small Earth-like planet that, for now at least, holds the unassuming name of Proxima b.
In an independent and upcoming paper, now available online here, Kaltenegger and Carl Sagan Institute research associate Jack O’Malley-James explore how life could survive around a flare star – like Proxima Centauri – and how those flares could actually uncover a hidden biosphere on another world.
But the new planet, Proxima b, orbits about eight times closer to its star than Mercury does to the sun, the team that led the discovery said in an Reddit Ask Me Anything session. That star is the nearest one to our solar system.
A planet roughly the same size as Earth has been discovered. You see, the little planet is tidal locked – meaning that the same side of Proxima b always faces its star, leaving half the planet in perpetual darkness. Proxima Centauri lies 4.218 light years from the sun. The Atlantic reports that if there were plant life on the planet, it would probably be crimson-colored to best absorb the rays.
A potentially Earth-like planet has been discovered orbiting a star located right next door to the sun. Researchers wanted to observe it for a long period of time and did so during the Pale Red Dot Campaign, a nod to the original “pale blue dot” image of Earth.
Because Proxima Centauri is so close, astronomers have been looking at it for years in hope of finding an exoplanet.
British researcher Nick Pope called this discovery “game-changing” and said that every effort should be made to find out more about Promixa b, to look for evidence of life, even intelligent life.
This would indicate whether the plant was rich with water in its early days or started out dry, as well as whether there was any high-energy radiation that could have blasted away an atmosphere during formation of the planet.
“There’s no reason to know whether or not there is life there, but the fact that the planet exists and is in the zone where liquid water might exist on the surface is very exciting”.
Could we ever get there?
What do you think of Proxima b?
But there may be a way to send something there.
There are some problems with Starshot Breakthrough that still need to be worked out, however: there’s no way to slow the nanocraft down once they reach the earthlike planet, nor is there a plan to protect the tiny speeding ships from space debris.
This laser would accelerate the probes to 20 percent the speed of light (about 134.12 million miles per hour, or 215.85 million km/h), according to the program scientists.
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Everyone’s favorite astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has not yet brought his particular Debbie Downer charm to this issue, but plenty on social media were ready to deflate the Proxima Centauri B hype balloon.
