Planet Found in Habitable Zone Around Nearest Star

[ScienceRocks]

Planet Found in Habitable Zone Around Nearest Star
Pale Red Dot campaign reveals Earth-mass world in orbit around Proxima Centauri
24 August 2016
Planet Found in Habitable Zone Around Nearest Star - Pale Red Dot campaign reveals Earth-mass world in orbit around Proxima Centauri

Astronomers using ESO telescopes and other facilities have found clear evidence of a planet orbiting the closest star to Earth, Proxima Centauri. The long-sought world, designated Proxima b, orbits its cool red parent star every 11 days and has a temperature suitable for liquid water to exist on its surface. This rocky world is a little more massive than the Earth and is the closest exoplanet to us — and it may also be the closest possible abode for life outside the Solar System. A paper describing this milestone finding will be published in the journal Nature on 25 August 2016.

Just over four light-years from the Solar System lies a red dwarf star that has been named Proxima Centauri as it is the closest star to Earth apart from the Sun. This cool star in the constellation of Centaurus is too faint to be seen with the unaided eye and lies near to the much brighter pair of stars known as Alpha Centauri AB.

During the first half of 2016 Proxima Centauri was regularly observed with the HARPS spectrograph on the ESO 3.6-metre telescope at La Silla in Chile and simultaneously monitored by other telescopes around the world [1]. This was the Pale Red Dot campaign, in which a team of astronomers led by Guillem Anglada-Escudé, from Queen Mary University of London, was looking for the tiny back and forth wobble of the star that would be caused by the gravitational pull of a possible orbiting planet [2].

Awesome and amazing news!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! A earth like planet in the habital zone of our closes star!!!!!

 

[Dont Taz Me Bro]

But do they have infrastructure????

 

[Moonglow]

And how many human years away?

 

[konradv]

And how many human years away?

If we could develop a ship going c/10, that would be 40 years.

 

[ScienceRocks]

But do they have infrastructure????

That would be very exciting as that would mean intelligent life...

 

[Harry Dresden]

But do they have infrastructure????

That would be very exciting as that would mean intelligent life...

our planet has infrastructure.....does that mean there is intelligent life here?....

 

[ScienceRocks]

But do they have infrastructure????

That would be very exciting as that would mean intelligent life...

our planet has infrastructure.....does that mean there is intelligent life here?....

If it can develop tech that can search for other life...I'd say yes.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Proxima b was added to the Habitable Exoplanets Catalog (HEC) [2] as one of the best objects of interest for the search for life in the universe. The planet orbits well within the conservative habitable zone of Proxima Centauri. Additionally, Proxima b is now not only the closest potentially habitable planet to Earth (4.2 light years away), but it is also the most similar to Earth (ESI = 0.87) [3], with respect to Earth’s mass and insolation.

A Potentially Habitable World in Our Nearest Star - Planetary Habitability Laboratory @ UPR Arecibo

I honestly think kepler 442b is still the better candidate for below 1.5 earth radius planets as it isn't tidally locked as it orbits a k-class star(112 day orbit) and is only slightly larger in radius. Secondly, if you look at the original source for Kepler k2-72e and not the PHL(which has twice the solar flex) it could also be argued to be nearly as good. The big news about this new planet is it is so close while these two are so far! And it is a awesome candidate as it is the best we could of hoped for around a small m-class star.

 

[sealybobo]

Planet Found in Habitable Zone Around Nearest Star
Pale Red Dot campaign reveals Earth-mass world in orbit around Proxima Centauri
24 August 2016
Planet Found in Habitable Zone Around Nearest Star - Pale Red Dot campaign reveals Earth-mass world in orbit around Proxima Centauri

Astronomers using ESO telescopes and other facilities have found clear evidence of a planet orbiting the closest star to Earth, Proxima Centauri. The long-sought world, designated Proxima b, orbits its cool red parent star every 11 days and has a temperature suitable for liquid water to exist on its surface. This rocky world is a little more massive than the Earth and is the closest exoplanet to us — and it may also be the closest possible abode for life outside the Solar System. A paper describing this milestone finding will be published in the journal Nature on 25 August 2016.

Just over four light-years from the Solar System lies a red dwarf star that has been named Proxima Centauri as it is the closest star to Earth apart from the Sun. This cool star in the constellation of Centaurus is too faint to be seen with the unaided eye and lies near to the much brighter pair of stars known as Alpha Centauri AB.

During the first half of 2016 Proxima Centauri was regularly observed with the HARPS spectrograph on the ESO 3.6-metre telescope at La Silla in Chile and simultaneously monitored by other telescopes around the world [1]. This was the Pale Red Dot campaign, in which a team of astronomers led by Guillem Anglada-Escudé, from Queen Mary University of London, was looking for the tiny back and forth wobble of the star that would be caused by the gravitational pull of a possible orbiting planet [2].

Awesome and amazing news!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! A earth like planet in the habital zone of our closes star!!!!!

Maybe there is life surrounding most stars. What makes us think we are special?

This is amazing news. We should focus our attention on getting those spacebots to this planet. The ones that use sails to travel real fast. The size and cost of an iPhone.

Still an incredibly long distance away

 

[sealybobo]

And how many human years away?

Hundreds of thousands

 

[rightwinger]

Planet Found in Habitable Zone Around Nearest Star
Pale Red Dot campaign reveals Earth-mass world in orbit around Proxima Centauri
24 August 2016
Planet Found in Habitable Zone Around Nearest Star - Pale Red Dot campaign reveals Earth-mass world in orbit around Proxima Centauri

Astronomers using ESO telescopes and other facilities have found clear evidence of a planet orbiting the closest star to Earth, Proxima Centauri. The long-sought world, designated Proxima b, orbits its cool red parent star every 11 days and has a temperature suitable for liquid water to exist on its surface. This rocky world is a little more massive than the Earth and is the closest exoplanet to us — and it may also be the closest possible abode for life outside the Solar System. A paper describing this milestone finding will be published in the journal Nature on 25 August 2016.

Just over four light-years from the Solar System lies a red dwarf star that has been named Proxima Centauri as it is the closest star to Earth apart from the Sun. This cool star in the constellation of Centaurus is too faint to be seen with the unaided eye and lies near to the much brighter pair of stars known as Alpha Centauri AB.

During the first half of 2016 Proxima Centauri was regularly observed with the HARPS spectrograph on the ESO 3.6-metre telescope at La Silla in Chile and simultaneously monitored by other telescopes around the world [1]. This was the Pale Red Dot campaign, in which a team of astronomers led by Guillem Anglada-Escudé, from Queen Mary University of London, was looking for the tiny back and forth wobble of the star that would be caused by the gravitational pull of a possible orbiting planet [2].

Awesome and amazing news!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! A earth like planet in the habital zone of our closes star!!!!!

What good is it to us?
Too far to reach

 

[konradv]

There are two factors that would lessen the likelihood of advanced life on the planet. The X-ray influx could be as much as 400X that of Earth and it could be tidally locked to its sun, leaving only a thin band of the planet that isn't either searingly hot or very cold.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/24/health/proxima-b-centauri-rocky-planet-habitable-zone-neighbor-star/

 

[CrusaderFrank]

How much CO2 do they have

 

[sealybobo]

And how many human years away?

Proxima Centauri alone claims the honor of being our true nearest stellar neighbor at only 4.24 light years

78,000 years to get there.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Wonders why advanced life hasn't "evolved" there. They must have chemical elements randomly bumping together there too.

Odd. It's almost like the force of "evolution " is limited only to planet Earth

 

[sealybobo]

Proxima b is now not only the closest potentially habitable planet to Earth (4.2 light years away), but it is also the most similar to Earth (ESI = 0.87) [3], with respect to Earth’s mass and insolation.

Either Proxima b was a lucky find or these worlds are more common than previously thought.

The most exciting aspect of this discovery is that Proxima b is relatively close enough to Earth for detailed studies in the next years by current and future observatories. Other known, potentially habitable worlds, especially those from the NASA Kepler primary mission, are too far away to get any information about their atmosphere or composition with current technology. Projects like StarShot are even considering the possibility of reaching the stars with miniaturized space probes, but this exciting approach might take many decades.

In any case, Proxima b is now one of the prime targets to understand the extention of our habitable universe in years to come. Red-dwarf stars are the most common star in our galaxy, comprising about 75% of the stars. If we find out that planets around red-dwarf stars, such as Proxima b, are in fact not habitable then the ‘real estate’ for life in the universe will be instead very small. The answer lies 4.2 light years away waiting for us.

 

[Harry Dresden]

And how many human years away?

Proxima Centauri alone claims the honor of being our true nearest stellar neighbor at only 4.24 light years

78,000 years to get there.

not at warp 5.....

 

[sealybobo]

And how many human years away?

Proxima Centauri alone claims the honor of being our true nearest stellar neighbor at only 4.24 light years

78,000 years to get there.

not at warp 5.....

We can actually reach it in 20 years with real technology. Maybe.

Using a giant set of lasers to catapult thousands of miniature spacecraft 25 trillion miles to the Alpha Centauri star system may sound like the stuff of science fiction.

But Internet entrepreneur and science philanthropist Yuri Milner, in collaboration with renowned cosmologist Stephen Hawking and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is placing a $100-million bet that he can turn this into science reality within a generation.

Milner announced on Tuesday the creation of “Breakthrough Starshot,” a research project meant to prove that it’s possible to propel nanoscale spacecraft at one-fifth the speed of light. (See animation below.)

That’s equal to 60 million meters per second, or 134 million miles per hour. At this speed, the craft would reach our nearest star system in about 20 years, or more than a thousand times quicker than today’s fastest spacecraft, Milner says.

This 20-Gram Nano-Spacecraft Could Usher In A New Era In Space Exploration

 

[Harry Dresden]

And how many human years away?

Proxima Centauri alone claims the honor of being our true nearest stellar neighbor at only 4.24 light years

78,000 years to get there.

not at warp 5.....

We can actually reach it in 20 years with real technology. Maybe.

Using a giant set of lasers to catapult thousands of miniature spacecraft 25 trillion miles to the Alpha Centauri star system may sound like the stuff of science fiction.

But Internet entrepreneur and science philanthropist Yuri Milner, in collaboration with renowned cosmologist Stephen Hawking and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is placing a $100-million bet that he can turn this into science reality within a generation.

Milner announced on Tuesday the creation of “Breakthrough Starshot,” a research project meant to prove that it’s possible to propel nanoscale spacecraft at one-fifth the speed of light. (See animation below.)

That’s equal to 60 million meters per second, or 134 million miles per hour. At this speed, the craft would reach our nearest star system in about 20 years, or more than a thousand times quicker than today’s fastest spacecraft, Milner says.

This 20-Gram Nano-Spacecraft Could Usher In A New Era In Space Exploration

be hard to fit a person in one of them things bobo.....

 

[sealybobo]

And how many human years away?

Proxima Centauri alone claims the honor of being our true nearest stellar neighbor at only 4.24 light years

78,000 years to get there.

not at warp 5.....

We can actually reach it in 20 years with real technology. Maybe.

Using a giant set of lasers to catapult thousands of miniature spacecraft 25 trillion miles to the Alpha Centauri star system may sound like the stuff of science fiction.

But Internet entrepreneur and science philanthropist Yuri Milner, in collaboration with renowned cosmologist Stephen Hawking and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is placing a $100-million bet that he can turn this into science reality within a generation.

Milner announced on Tuesday the creation of “Breakthrough Starshot,” a research project meant to prove that it’s possible to propel nanoscale spacecraft at one-fifth the speed of light. (See animation below.)

That’s equal to 60 million meters per second, or 134 million miles per hour. At this speed, the craft would reach our nearest star system in about 20 years, or more than a thousand times quicker than today’s fastest spacecraft, Milner says.

This 20-Gram Nano-Spacecraft Could Usher In A New Era In Space Exploration

be hard to fit a person in one of them things bobo.....

Maybe we get the technology to shrink a human. Or maybe we just send DNA/Seed and plant the planet and on the space ship it will give them instructions on how to find us and communicate with us. We can do it!