Astronomers find evidence of a third planet around the closest star to the sun.
“We are now able, in terms of instrumental precision, to detect such small signals, which opens the possibility of finding planets like the Earth around stars like the sun in the not-so-distant future,” Faria said.
Proxima Centauri is the third star of the Alpha Centauri system, which looks like a single bright star from Earth. It’s just over four light-years away, or about 25 trillion miles — but despite that vast distance, it’s the closest star system. Only the light from its two brightest stars, Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B, can be seen with the naked eye. They orbit each other, but far enough apart that they’re thought not to interfere with each other’s planets. And because Alpha Centauri A and B are both remarkably like the sun, it’s possible life could have evolved on their planets or moons — so scientists plan to look for them with aProxima Centauri, on the other hand, is a small and very dim red dwarf star discovered by telescope in 1915, far away from the system’s two main stars. Technically, Proxima is the closest star to the sun — about a trillion miles closer than the others — until its orbit takes it further away in about 25,000 years . Unlike Alpha Centauri A and B, where no verified planets have been found, three planets have now been detected around Proxima. None of them are thought to be very similar to Earth, however, because Proxima is an active “flare star” that regularly doses its planets with bursts of intense radiation. But it’s still possible that life could have evolved on at least one of its planets, said Guillem Anglada-Escudé, an astronomer at the Institute of Space Sciences in Barcelona, Spain.in 2016. That planet was found to be about the size of Earth and within Proxima’s narrow habitable or “Goldilocks” zone, where it’s neither too hot nor too cold — “just right” — for oceans of water on its surface. Observations now suggest there may actually be oceans there; and if that’s the case, they could replenish atmospheric gases stripped away by Proxima’s frequent flares, he said. Oceans could also act as a barrier to the flares, and so it’s possible that marine life may have evolved. Anglada-Escudé expects more planets will be found around Proxima Centauri and other stars as astronomical instruments and techniques improve. “Within a decade, we should be able to detect these planets directly,” he said. “The idea will be to search for life, to see from the spectrum of a planet if there are chemicals that cannot be explained by other natural processes.”
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