An international team of astronomers have discovered a potentially Earth-like planet orbiting Proxima Centauri.
The planet is being called Proxima b. It's roughly the size of Earth and is rocky. It orbits at a mere 7.4 million km, which means it is tidally locked to Proxima Centauri (like the moon is to Earth), and has an 11 day orbit around it's parent star. As Proxima Centari is a red dwarf, this means that the planet would have a light side locked in perpetual sky-filling red sunlight, and a permanent dark side. However, the planet is technically within the Habitable Zone of Proxima Centauri, meaning that as long as the planet has an atmosphere and a strong enough magnetic field, liquid water (and therefore recognizable life) could exist on the planet.
Despite the name, Proxima Centauri is not a component of the Alpha Centauri binary system, though it may orbit around the system. The predicted orbital period is greater than 500,000 years.
This is incredible, and honestly, it should be front page news. I mean, this is a potentially habitable planet just 4.2 lightyears away! We could actually make it there in a feasible amount of time! A couple centuries may sound like a lot, but it's nothing compared to the dozens of millennia it would take to reach other potentially habitable stars.
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Followup: I found an old discussion of Exoplanets around red dwarfs. While I'm not going to post the entire thing, this image jumped out at me. It's a concept of a tidally-locked rocky planet, nicknamed Eyeball Earth. I feel like the effects of that much directed heat on a watery atmosphere would mean an actual planet would be covered by big hurricane clouds, but this is more striking. [link]
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The planet is being called Proxima b. It's roughly the size of Earth and is rocky. It orbits at a mere 7.4 million km, which means it is tidally locked to Proxima Centauri (like the moon is to Earth), and has an 11 day orbit around it's parent star. As Proxima Centari is a red dwarf, this means that the planet would have a light side locked in perpetual sky-filling red sunlight, and a permanent dark side. However, the planet is technically within the Habitable Zone of Proxima Centauri, meaning that as long as the planet has an atmosphere and a strong enough magnetic field, liquid water (and therefore recognizable life) could exist on the planet.
Despite the name, Proxima Centauri is not a component of the Alpha Centauri binary system, though it may orbit around the system. The predicted orbital period is greater than 500,000 years.
[Link to the study]
[Link to the news report]
Art is life itself.
"You say 'learn from history,' but that does not mean 'learn the same bull***** the people in history learned alongside phrenology and alchemy.'" - The Blinking Spirit
Followup: I found an old discussion of Exoplanets around red dwarfs. While I'm not going to post the entire thing, this image jumped out at me. It's a concept of a tidally-locked rocky planet, nicknamed Eyeball Earth. I feel like the effects of that much directed heat on a watery atmosphere would mean an actual planet would be covered by big hurricane clouds, but this is more striking. [link]
Art is life itself.