The star that is nearest our solar system, Proxima Centauri, may be the home of a habitable, earth-sized planet say scientists.
The newly discovered planet orbits Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf star that's just 4.25 light-years from Earth — about 25 trillion miles away. The star is too faint to be seen with the naked eye and is close to a much brighter and more famous pair of stars called Alpha Centauri A and B.
Researchers detected the planet by observing how its star wobbled as the planet traveled around it. All that's known about the planet is that it's a bit more massive than Earth and circles its star once every 11 days. Because the star is so dim, temperatures on the planet would be mild enough that any water — if it's there — would be liquid.
It’s settled: Peter Thiel and his other superiors have a place to rule the galaxy from! The paper can be found at Nature.
At a distance of 1.295 parsecs, the red dwarf Proxima Centauri (α Centauri C, GL 551, HIP 70890 or simply Proxima) is the Sun’s closest stellar neighbour and one of the best-studied low-mass stars. It has an effective temperature of only around 3,050kelvin, a luminosity of 0.15 per cent of that of the Sun, a measured radius of 14 per cent of the radius of the Sun and a mass of about 12 per cent of the mass of the Sun. Although Proxima is considered a moderately active star, its rotation period is about 83days (ref.3) and its quiescent activity levels and X-ray luminosity are comparable to those of the Sun. Here we report observations that reveal the presence of a small planet with a minimum mass of about 1.3 Earth masses orbiting Proxima with a period of approximately 11.2days at a semi-major-axis distance of around 0.05 astronomical units. Its equilibrium temperature is within the range where water could be liquid on its surface.
It’s only 1.295 parsecs? It only took Han Solo and the Millenium Falcon about 10 of those to do the Kessel Run.*
*Yes. George Lucas made a mistake.