Dr. Mikko Tuomi says “It is the closest possible planet to us and may be the closest to support life outside the solar system”.
Advertisement
“Chinese scientists have paid close attention to the study since European scientists chose to reveal the findings half a year ago”, said Guo Jingjun, the director of Tsinghua University’s Geographic Information System, Remote Sensing, and Global Positioning System research center.
The discovered planet orbits close in – so close, in fact, that one year there takes only 11 days on Earth.
The rocky world “has a temperature suitable for liquid water to exist on its surface” and is just a little bigger than Earth, the ESO said.
Lead author Guillem Anglada-Escude, an astronomer at Queen Mary University of London, described the finding as the “experience of a lifetime. Since then we have worked hard to get further observations off the ground”.
“Succeeding in the search for the nearest terrestrial planet beyond our Solar System has been an experience of a lifetime, and has drawn on the dedication and passion of a number of worldwide researchers”, lead project author Guillem Anglada-Escudé, of QMUL’s School of Physics and Astronomy, said in a statement. Following a month of rumors and hints, Proxima B was unveiled today in a paper in the journal Nature.
Advertisement
Scientists announced yesterday that the star closest to the Sun has a planet similar to the Earth – which also makes it the closest possibly-habitable alien planet ever found. Much study was put into Proxima Centauri because Red Dwarf stars have processes that can mimic the presence of a planet.
