Scientists have said it is easily the closest potentially habitable planet ever detected outside our solar system.
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Proxima B is 4.3 light years away.
Efforts to send some type of man-made probe to the Alpha Centauri system may have gotten a huge boost Tuesday as the European Southern Observatory (ESO) confirmed the existence of a planet around Proxima Centauri that could potentially harbor (or support) life.
Using facilities operated by the European Southern Observatory and other telescopes, the worldwide team discovered the planet, called Proxima b, which orbits Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Solar System. However, as we’re quickly (or maybe too slowly) learning here on Earth, lots of factors affect how warm a planet is and whether or not it’s habitable, and Proxima b could very well be missing an atmosphere entirely due to X-Ray bursts from its own star.
In order to exclude this possibility, the team also monitored the changing brightness of the star very carefully. Even though Proxima b has an orbit closer to its home star than Mercury, Proxima Centauri’s cooler temperature leads scientists to believe liquid water could form on Proxima b’s surface.
Most importantly, it orbits its sun at the right distance to create a similar temperature range as Earth, which means that it is possible Proxima B contains water.
Proxima b is only 4.6 million miles from Proxima Centauri, or one-twentieth of the distance between Earth and the sun.
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”.
The planet doesn’t rotate, so one side is always facing its star and the other side is always dark and colder.
For now, life on Proxima b is merely science fiction, but the researchers hope their work will be carried on.
“What’s wonderful is how close it is”, says Jeff Coughlin, a SETI astronomer working with NASA’s Kepler planet-hunting mission, who was not involved in the discovery. Despite this, “Proxima b” could have developed alien life. However, Proxima is 1,000 times fainter than the Sun. And now we’re finding an Earth-like planet in the next stellar neighborhood?
The planet receives about 60 times more radiation from its star than Earth does from the Sun.
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It’s tempting to get excited about an Earth-like planet that couldn’t be any closer, but there are some big unknowns.
