Found Potentially Earth Like Planet Orbits Suns Nearest Neighbor. The star closest to the sun hosts a planet that may be very much like Earth, a new study reports. Astronomers have discovered a roughly Earth size alien world around Proxima Centauri, which lies just 4. Alpha Centauri Centauri, abbreviated Alpha Cen, Cen is the closest star system to the Solar System, being 4. Sun. Alpha Centauri A. Rigil Kentaurus Foot of the Centaur in Arabic is the fourth brightest star in the night sky as well as the brightest star in Constellation. Альфа Центавра, Центавра, Центавра ab тройная звздная система в созвездии Центавра. Whats even more exciting, study team members said, is that the planet, known as Proxima b, circles in the stars habitable zone the range of distances at which liquid water could be stable on a worlds surface. We hope these findings inspire future generations to keep looking beyond the stars, lead author Guillem Anglada Escude, a physics and astronomy lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, said in a statement. The search for life on Proxima b comes next. In Pictures The Discovery of Planet Proxima b. The discovery of Proxima b was a long time in the making. Astronomers have been hunting intensively for planets around Proxima Centauri for more 1. Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph UVES and the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher HARPS, both of which are installed on telescopes run by the European Southern Observatory in Chile. This artists impression shows the exoplanet Proxima b, which orbits the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri. The double star Alpha Centauri AB appears in the image between the exoplanet and its star. Credit ESOM. Kornmesser. UVES, HARPS and other instruments like them allow researchers to detect the slight wobbles in a stars movement caused by the gravitational tugs of orbiting planets. AlphaCent-672x371.jpg]];var lpix_1=pix_1.length;var p1_0= [[700' alt='Alpha Centauri 2014' title='Alpha Centauri 2014' />Astronomers found hints of such a wobble back in 2. Anglada Escude said. So he and a number of other researchers launched a campaign to ferret out the planet. They called this effort the Pale Red Dot a nod to Carl Sagans famous description of Earth as a pale blue dot, and the fact that Proxima Centauri is a small, dim star known as a red dwarf. Alpha Centauri is the nearest star system to the Sun, located at a distance of only 4. Earth. Alpha Centauri is the. Weve all asked this question at some point in our lives How long would it take to travel to the stars Could it be within a persons own lifetime, and could. Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri is a video game in the 4X genre which is considered a spiritual sequel to the Civilization series. Set in a science fiction depiction of. The Pale Red Dot team focused HARPS on Proxima Centauri every night from Jan. March 3. 1 of this year. After they combined this new data with UVES observations from 2. HARPS observations from 2. Then, after analyzing observations of the stars brightness made by several other telescopes, Anglada Escude and his colleagues ruled out the possibility that this signal could be caused by the variable activity of Proxima Centauri. The conclusion We have found a planet around Proxima Centauri, Anglada Escude said Tuesday Aug. Download Driver Sony Walkman Mp3 Player more. The Search for Another Earth Video. How did Proxima b remain undetected for so long, in an era when astronomers are finding exoplanets thousands of light years from Earth The uneven and sparse sampling, combined with the longer term variability of the star, seem to be the reasons why the signal could not be unambiguously confirmed with pre 2. Aug. 2. 4 in the journal Nature. The news confirms rumors first reported earlier this month by German magazine Der Spiegel. Incidentally, the team also spotted possible signs of an additional Proxima Centauri planet, which would have an orbital period of between 6. But that second signal is much weaker and might be caused by stellar activity, the researchers said. Artists illustration of the surface of Proxima b, a potentially Earth like world that circles the nearest star to the sun. Credit ESOM. Kornmesser. An Earth like world The HARPS and UVES data indicate that Proxima b is about 1. Earth, which suggests that the exoplanet is a rocky world, the researchers said. Strange Facts About Planet Proxima b. Proxima b lies just 4. Earth days. As a result, its likely that the exoplanet is tidally locked, meaning it always shows the same face to its host star, just as the moon shows only one face the near side to Earth. For comparison, Earth orbits about 9. But Proxima bs relatively tight orbit puts it right in the middle of the habitable zone, because red dwarfs are so much cooler and dimmer than sun like stars, team members said. Not much else is known about Proxima b, so its unclear just how hospitable the planet may be to life. In fact, there are reasons to be pessimistic on this front, noted Artie Hatzes, an astronomer at the Thuringian State Observatory in Germany. Proxima Centauri fires off powerful flares, and the planet therefore experiences a much higher dose of high energy X ray radiation than Earth does, Hatzes, who is not part of the discovery team, wrote in an accompanying News and Views article in the same issue of Nature. Energetic particles associated with the flares may erode the atmosphere or hinder the development of primitive forms of life, Hatzes wrote. We also dont know whether the exoplanet has a magnetic field, like Earth, which could shield it from the dangerous stellar radiation. But the higher X ray flux is not a showstopper for life, Anglada Escude and his colleagues said. None of this does exclude the existence of an atmosphere, or of surface water, co author Ansgar Reiners, a professor at the University of Gttingens Institute of Astrophysics in Germany, said during Tuesdays news conference. How Proxima Centauri behaved in the distant past is more relevant to the newfound planets potential habitability than current radiation levels are, Reiners added. What is more interesting is the history of the planet  whether in the early ages, the young ages, of this planet the star was so active, and the star emitted so much high energy radiation, that it blew away the atmosphere and may have blown away the water also, he said. Other aspects of the planets history also have a bearing on just how wet Proxima b may be. For example, if the alien world formed far from the star but then migrated inward, it is likely water rich if it formed near its present position, it likely started out much drier, study team members said. But even this latter scenario doesnt preclude the existence of large amounts of water on Proxima b, Anglada Escude stressed comet andor asteroid strikes could deliver the substance, as apparently happened here on Earth, he said. Tidally locked planets were once regarded as inhospitable to life  baked too hot on the star facing side, and freezing cold on the dark side. But recent research suggests that such worlds may indeed be habitable winds in their atmospheres could distribute heat, smoothing out temperature extremes. And if Proxima b is potentially habitable, life forms have a long time to gain a foothold there Red dwarfs keep burning for trillions of years, in contrast to stars like the sun, which die after 1. Proxima Centauri will exist for several hundreds or thousands of times longer than the sun, Hatzes wrote in his News and Views piece. Any life on the planet could still be evolving long after our sun has died. The sun is 4. 6 billion years old. Proxima Centauri is thought to be slightly older perhaps 4. Searching for life. Proxima b likely does not transit, or cross the face of, its host star from Earths perspective, Anglada Escude and his colleagues said. That characteristic will make it tougher to study Proxima b further astronomers can learn a lot about the atmospheres of transiting exoplanets by studying the starlight that passes through them. NASAs 8. 8 billion James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled to launch in late 2. But Proxima b is close enough to Earth that scientists may soon be able to image it directly. Indeed, it should be possible to resolve the planet separately from its host star using a telescope with an aperture of 1.