This artist’s impression shows a view of the surface of the planet Proxima b orbiting the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Solar System. The double star Alpha Centauri AB also appears in the image. Proxima b is a little more massive than the Earth and orbits in the habitable zone around Proxima Centauri, where the temperature is suitable for liquid water to exist on its surface. (Credit: ESO / M. Kornmesser)
After more than 15 years of research, astronomers have confirmed the existence of a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the small red dwarf star located some 4.2 light years, or 25 trillion miles away, from Earth. This may seem far, but it’s extremely close in cosmic terms; other exoplanets (planets outside our solar system) considered “close” to Earth are some 40 light years away. The newly discovered planet is located in the habitable zone around Proxima Centauri, meaning that liquid water could potentially flow on its surface, raising the possibility for life.
t’s being called one of the biggest astronomical discoveries of the century: a potentially habitable Earth-like planet is orbiting the closest neighbor to our sun, a red dwarf star known as Proxima Centauri. Scientists with the European Southern Observatory (ESO) confirmed the planet’s existence yesterday in a new study published in the journal Nature, on the heels of rumors reported earlier this month in the German weekly magazine Der Spiegel.
Proxima Centauri, a small red dwarf star, has only about 12 percent the mass of the sun and about 1/600th the luminosity. It is so dim that it cannot be seen from Earth with the naked eye. Proxima Centauri is located in the star system Alpha Centauri, which also includes the larger but more distant binary star pair known as Alpha Centauri AB.
Some of the researchers involved in the new study began searching for hints of an exoplanet orbiting Proxima Centauri back in 2000. During the first half of this year, telescopes around the world were trained on the star, looking for the slight movement in the colors of the starlight, called a “Doppler wobble,” that would be caused by a gravitational planet in orbit. These observations, combined with the earlier research, data and published studies, enabled the astronomers to confirm the existence of a planet at least 1.3 times the mass of Earth that orbits Proxima Centauri every 11.2 days.
The newly discovered planet, dubbed Proxima b, is only about 5 million miles away from Proxima Centauri. By contrast, some 93 million miles separate Earth from the sun. Because Proxima Centauri is so much cooler and fainter than the sun, however, the temperature on Proxima b is low enough that water could potentially exist on its surface without evaporating, a vital condition for life.
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- Another planet that isn`t flat.
