Scientists Discover Earth-Like Planet Orbiting Star Closest To Our Sun
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An Earth-sized planet that could boast water, even an ocean, has been found circling the star nearest our sun, hinting that the conditions for life could exist next door.
Researchers have identified a plethora of planets outside our solar system that both resemble Earth in size and dwell in the “habitable zone,” where liquid water is possible. But no other Earth-like planet outside our solar system is as close to humans and their observatories as this new world, making it the best possible hunting ground for living organisms.
The find, reported in a study published Wednesday in Nature, has scientists reaching for superlatives.
“An absolutely amazing discovery,” says Victoria Meadows of the University of Washington. “This will be the most accessible, closest planet in the habitable zone to our solar system.”
“The excitement is that it’s around the closest star to our sun,” says Rory Barnes, also of the University of Washington, adding that it’s “exciting, too, to realize perhaps the next star over has a planet with life on it.”
Announced after a search by astronomers from around the world, the new planet circles a small star called Proxima Centauri. That star, though invisible to the naked eye, is only 4.2 light-years from Earth, making it our nearest stellar neighbor.
The specs of the new planet, called Proxima b, sound much like Earth’s. It is 1.3 times the mass of the Earth or bigger. It is probably rocky, like Earth, and not a Jupiter-like ball of gas. And it’s just the right distance from its star that it would be warm enough for liquid water to pool on the surface, assuming the planet has an atmosphere.
Of course, it may not have an atmosphere, a prerequisite for life. Tipping the odds against life a bit, Proxima b’s star blasts it with far more high-energy radiation than our planet receives from the sun.
All the same, the planet may still be hospitably wet, Meadows says, depending on how and where it formed billions of years ago and how its star behaved during the planet’s infancy.
Picking out the planet has taken some of the most powerful telescopes in the scientific arsenal. The first signals of a world orbiting Proxima Centauri were recorded more than a decade ago, and more such signals have continued to trickle in – but never enough to be convincing. So astronomers recruited multiple telescopes to stare at the star earlier this year.
The intensive observations confirmed that the star quivers slightly, the result of a slight perturbation induced by its small planet. That quiver translates into barely detectible changes in the light streaming from the star.
Other planets outside our solar system have been announced with fanfare, only to quietly fade away when they couldn’t be confirmed. But “the fact that we have been able to see a signal over so many years tells us that there really is a bona fide planet,” says study co-author Richard Nelson of Britain’s Queen Mary University of London. “If you’ve got one in your backyard, it tells you that through the galaxy there are going to be many, many of these types of planets.”
To determine whether organisms thrive on Proxima b, scientists will need to take a picture of the planet itself. Analysis could reveal molecules that would be telltale signs of life.
No existing instrument could snap such pictures. But such technology is under design, and the new discovery will likely galvanize construction of observatories that could take a portrait of this new world. The planet is even close enough that perhaps someday robots could reach it.
A space mission to reach exoplanets won’t be ready until the “coming centuries,” says David Armstrong of Britain’s University of Warwick. “But the first one we’ll send it to will be this.”
Researchers have identified a plethora of planets outside our solar system that both resemble Earth in size and dwell in the “habitable zone,” where liquid water is possible. But no other Earth-like planet outside our solar system is as close to humans and their observatories as this new world, making it the best possible hunting ground for living organisms.
The find, reported in a study published Wednesday in Nature, has scientists reaching for superlatives.
“An absolutely amazing discovery,” says Victoria Meadows of the University of Washington. “This will be the most accessible, closest planet in the habitable zone to our solar system.”
“The excitement is that it’s around the closest star to our sun,” says Rory Barnes, also of the University of Washington, adding that it’s “exciting, too, to realize perhaps the next star over has a planet with life on it.”
Announced after a search by astronomers from around the world, the new planet circles a small star called Proxima Centauri. That star, though invisible to the naked eye, is only 4.2 light-years from Earth, making it our nearest stellar neighbor.
The specs of the new planet, called Proxima b, sound much like Earth’s. It is 1.3 times the mass of the Earth or bigger. It is probably rocky, like Earth, and not a Jupiter-like ball of gas. And it’s just the right distance from its star that it would be warm enough for liquid water to pool on the surface, assuming the planet has an atmosphere.
Of course, it may not have an atmosphere, a prerequisite for life. Tipping the odds against life a bit, Proxima b’s star blasts it with far more high-energy radiation than our planet receives from the sun.
All the same, the planet may still be hospitably wet, Meadows says, depending on how and where it formed billions of years ago and how its star behaved during the planet’s infancy.
Picking out the planet has taken some of the most powerful telescopes in the scientific arsenal. The first signals of a world orbiting Proxima Centauri were recorded more than a decade ago, and more such signals have continued to trickle in – but never enough to be convincing. So astronomers recruited multiple telescopes to stare at the star earlier this year.
The intensive observations confirmed that the star quivers slightly, the result of a slight perturbation induced by its small planet. That quiver translates into barely detectible changes in the light streaming from the star.
Other planets outside our solar system have been announced with fanfare, only to quietly fade away when they couldn’t be confirmed. But “the fact that we have been able to see a signal over so many years tells us that there really is a bona fide planet,” says study co-author Richard Nelson of Britain’s Queen Mary University of London. “If you’ve got one in your backyard, it tells you that through the galaxy there are going to be many, many of these types of planets.”
To determine whether organisms thrive on Proxima b, scientists will need to take a picture of the planet itself. Analysis could reveal molecules that would be telltale signs of life.
No existing instrument could snap such pictures. But such technology is under design, and the new discovery will likely galvanize construction of observatories that could take a portrait of this new world. The planet is even close enough that perhaps someday robots could reach it.
A space mission to reach exoplanets won’t be ready until the “coming centuries,” says David Armstrong of Britain’s University of Warwick. “But the first one we’ll send it to will be this.”
Comments
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The user and all related content has been deleted.
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The radiation doesn't have to be a problem. There could be lifeforms who have developed away to utilise it through evolution somehow.
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CeLLaR-DooR wrote: »The radiation doesn't have to be a problem. There could be lifeforms who have developed away to utilise it through evolution somehow.
Yup so fishes evolved like that -
CeLLaR-DooR wrote: »The radiation doesn't have to be a problem. There could be lifeforms who have developed away to utilise it through evolution somehow.
We see that in Chernobyl -
Ajackson17 wrote: »CeLLaR-DooR wrote: »The radiation doesn't have to be a problem. There could be lifeforms who have developed away to utilise it through evolution somehow.
We see that in Chernobyl
Yo expand on this a lil my ? @Ajackson17
That was the radioactive meltdown of the 80s right? I only kno' that it was the biggest of its kind and it touched a lotta people.
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? found Namek
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The user and all related content has been deleted.
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Niburu?
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"only 4.2 light years away"
That's still a brick away -
Better watch for them transformers
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The user and all related content has been deleted.
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Black_Samson wrote: »
Techno organic beast wars ? ?Black_Thunder wrote: »Better watch for them transformers
Orrr
The og version
Yes this matters.
Og 1986 version obviously
Yall go up there and run into optimus prime if you want -
Black_Samson wrote: »
Techno organic beast wars ? ?Black_Thunder wrote: »Better watch for them transformers
Orrr
The og version
Yes this matters.
Beast Wars Megatron was hilarious " We'll destroy them all yeeeessssss" -
Black_Samson wrote: »
Techno organic beast wars ? ?Black_Thunder wrote: »Better watch for them transformers
Orrr
The og version
Yes this matters.
Beast Wars Megatron was hilarious " We'll destroy them all yeeeessssss"
That was my ? ,
On topic tho i don't believe these muha fukkas. One min ? is 80 light years away next min we got a satellite taking pictures of it, how many earth like joints have they found?? ? in a while different galaxy but yeah it has earth like features. I'm on the fence with all this space ? . 1 min I'm reading all the planets and the sun can fit between the earth and the moon, next there's an asteroid field surrounding earth but yet we sent a ship through that to Mars, Pluto Saturn no problem. Then there's the radiation that we can't make it through but we were on the moon..... wtf what's fact what's fiction -
Black_Samson wrote: »
Techno organic beast wars ? ?Black_Thunder wrote: »Better watch for them transformers
Orrr
The og version
Yes this matters.
? beast wars was the goat -
Black_Samson wrote: »
Techno organic beast wars ? ?Black_Thunder wrote: »Better watch for them transformers
Orrr
The og version
Yes this matters.
Beast Wars Megatron was hilarious " We'll destroy them all yeeeessssss"
That was my ? ,
On topic tho i don't believe these muha fukkas. One min ? is 80 light years away next min we got a satellite taking pictures of it, how many earth like joints have they found?? ? in a while different galaxy but yeah it has earth like features. I'm on the fence with all this space ? . 1 min I'm reading all the planets and the sun can fit between the earth and the moon, next there's an asteroid field surrounding earth but yet we sent a ship through that to Mars, Pluto Saturn no problem. Then there's the radiation that we can't make it through but we were on the moon..... wtf what's fact what's fiction
http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/physics/56-our-solar-system/planets-and-dwarf-planets/general-questions/199-how-do-we-know-what-other-planets-and-stars-galaxies-etc-are-made-of-intermediateIn almost every case, whether it is an instrument actually on the planet, or a telescope looking up from the earth, scientists use some variation of an instrument called a spectrometer. Spectrometers take a signal from whatever they are looking at (whether it is a rock, or a cloud or a whole planet or a star or a galaxy or a nebula, etc.) and spread the signal out into its components. Most spectrometers work with light and are a lot like extremely good prisms; they take the light coming from some object and separate it out into its colors. This is useful because it turns out that every element on the periodic table only gives off light of a few certain colors. So if we spread out the light coming from some object and see only certain colors, then we can match thoses colors to the elements that produce them. It's as if everything in the universe has a hidden fingerprint that we just need to learn how to read.
Some spectrometers work on things other than light. For example, a mass spectrometer takes a mixture of chemicals and separates them according to their weight. Other spectrometers measure invisible forms lof light like infrared or x-rays. The idea is always the same, though.
The rest is math and crossing your fingers.
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Earth 2 is dope. Earth 2 me is probably an alright person hope they see this some day.
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"4.2 light years away"
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Black_Samson wrote: »
Techno organic beast wars ? ?Black_Thunder wrote: »Better watch for them transformers
Orrr
The og version
Yes this matters.
Beast Wars Megatron was hilarious " We'll destroy them all yeeeessssss"
That was my ? ,
On topic tho i don't believe these muha fukkas. One min ? is 80 light years away next min we got a satellite taking pictures of it, how many earth like joints have they found?? ? in a while different galaxy but yeah it has earth like features. I'm on the fence with all this space ? . 1 min I'm reading all the planets and the sun can fit between the earth and the moon, next there's an asteroid field surrounding earth but yet we sent a ship through that to Mars, Pluto Saturn no problem. Then there's the radiation that we can't make it through but we were on the moon..... wtf what's fact what's fiction
http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/physics/56-our-solar-system/planets-and-dwarf-planets/general-questions/199-how-do-we-know-what-other-planets-and-stars-galaxies-etc-are-made-of-intermediateIn almost every case, whether it is an instrument actually on the planet, or a telescope looking up from the earth, scientists use some variation of an instrument called a spectrometer. Spectrometers take a signal from whatever they are looking at (whether it is a rock, or a cloud or a whole planet or a star or a galaxy or a nebula, etc.) and spread the signal out into its components. Most spectrometers work with light and are a lot like extremely good prisms; they take the light coming from some object and separate it out into its colors. This is useful because it turns out that every element on the periodic table only gives off light of a few certain colors. So if we spread out the light coming from some object and see only certain colors, then we can match thoses colors to the elements that produce them. It's as if everything in the universe has a hidden fingerprint that we just need to learn how to read.
Some spectrometers work on things other than light. For example, a mass spectrometer takes a mixture of chemicals and separates them according to their weight. Other spectrometers measure invisible forms lof light like infrared or x-rays. The idea is always the same, though.
The rest is math and crossing your fingers.
I'll check it out
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