A rocky planet that may harbour life has been discovered in another solar system just four light years from Earth – close enough to be reached by future space missions.
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Also, because it orbits so closely to its star, it’s possible that Proxima b is bombarded with ultraviolet and X-ray flares from its host star, making the existence of life (as we know it) potentially more hard. “Proxima b” probably has an average surface temperature of around minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit, and liquid water could exist in places on the planet. The planet is also located 4.3 million miles away from Proxima Centuri, which is just 5% of the Earth’s distance from the sun.
Astronomers may have found another Earth-like planet, and it is very close to us in cosmic terms. It is said liquid water could exist on it and dream of astronomers could come true with follow-up observation. 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. The majority of the sun’s closest stellar neighbors are red dwarfs.
“My colleague Dr Mikko Tuomi had discovered the planet’s fingerprints in archived data taken before 2009, but we didn’t have enough evidence to conclusively support such a major discovery”.
Days are long on Proxima b too, taking 11.2 days for each orbit.
Earlier this year, researchers in Chile looked at Proxima Centauri using the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher, or HARPS, a high-resolution instrument that specializes in the search for extrasolar planets. The spacecraft could also measure the mass of the planet and its magnetic field environment.
Guillem Anglada-Escudé explains the background to this unique search, “The first hints of a possible planet were spotted back in 2013, but the detection was not convincing”.
Because it’s a cool, red star, the Goldilocks Zone for Proxima Centauri is considerably closer than the Goldilocks Zone for our Sun (outside the space shown in the infographic above). They were able to spot a “wobble” in the star’s position being caused by the interaction with the planet’s gravity.
“I kept checking the consistency of the signal every single day during the 60 nights of the Pale Red Dot campaign”.
“It is the closest possible exoplanet to us and may be the closest to support life outside the solar system”.
Proxima b is far from the first exoplanet to be discovered.
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The Proxima Centauri is quite dim by the standards of the stars. Some researchers believe that this might prevent the existence of an atmosphere, but again we’re only speculating.
