Earth-sized world around nearest start!

News just in on the BBC website.
It would seem after all this time looking for planets that may contain Alien life, they are now saying that they have discovered a planet that is going around the nearest star to us that is the same size as ours. i would have thought they would have found this planet first seeing as it is closest, or is this old news being repeated. nevertheless the thought of another earth type planet being so "close" is quite exciting....
from the article...
The nearest habitable world beyond our Solar System might be right on our doorstep - astronomically speaking.
Scientists say their investigations of the closest star, Proxima Centauri, show it to have an Earth-sized planet orbiting about it.
What is more, this rocky globe is moving in a zone that would make liquid water on its surface a possibility.
Proxima is 40 trillion km away and would take a spacecraft using current technology thousands of years to reach.
Proxima b is the closest known, potentially habitable planet
Nonetheless, the discovery of a planet potentially favourable to life in our cosmic neighbourhood is likely to fire the imagination.
"For sure, to go there right now is science fiction, but people are thinking about it and it's no longer just an academic exercise to imagine we could send a probe there one day," said Guillem Anglada-Escudé whose "Pale Red Dot" team reports the existence of the new world in the journal Nature.

cant wait to holiday there....

www.bbc.co.uk...

cheers!

a reply to: Davg80

We've been infiltrated. Ah hell!

a reply to: Davg80

Googling the thread title presents us with...

Earth-sized world around nearest star

A possibly rocky planet, just 1.3x more massive than Earth, has been detected in the "habitable zone" of the nearby red dwarf star Proxima ...

How they determine the habitable zone of a red dwarf should be interesting.

I bet most stars have her own habitable zones with rocky bodies in them. Why not? If suns crash like symbols we'd expect the dust to coalesce on the ecliptic symbol disk like it does here.

Thing is proxima centuri is a red dwalf.

That means the habital zone is so close to the star it more than likley the planet is tidely locked to the star with one start always faceing the star and the other way.

That creates problems as one side with be a baked hell earth life could not survive in and the other side a deadly cold.

originally posted by: crazyewok
Thing is proxima centuri is a red dwalf.

That means the habital zone is so close to the star it more than likley the planet is tidely locked to the star with one start always faceing the star and the other way.

That creates problems as one side with be a baked hell earth life could not survive in and the other side a deadly cold.

But remember what happens to air that is heated? It migrates to balance that energy with a cold region. So, there would likely be a habitable zone as a vertical band from south to north, where wind would be blowing from the hot side to the cool side.

a reply to: Krakatoa

Yes there could be a narrow band called the terminator line thats just right for life.

It all depends on how extreme the weather pattens are and what effect the extreme sides of the planet have on atmospheric composition.

i.imgur.com... This was posted on reddit about it's mass and orbit. Here is the ESO's official video www.youtube.com...(ESO)

a reply to: crazyewok

a reply to: Davg80

Despite the temperate orbit of Proxima b, the conditions on the surface may be strongly affected by the ultraviolet and x-ray flares from the star—far more intense than the Earth experiences from the Sun.

Phys.org, Aug 24, 2016 - Rocky planet found orbiting habitable zone of nearest star.

So they got that going for them. More sciencey info on science sites. MSM tends to go for the "Wow" factor. This planet was discovered in 2013 but the data did not back up a definitive find. So they gathered more. The article is pretty good write up.

It's probably an effect of dark matter at that distance, causing a lens effect, and creating virtual mirrors like a kaleidoscope, we're just looking at ourselves and a few mates!

Mind you, the headline confused me a bit, I thought the op was about tarts.

originally posted by: crazyewok
Thing is proxima centuri is a red dwalf.

That means the habital zone is so close to the star it more than likley the planet is tidely locked to the star with one start always faceing the star and the other way.

That creates problems as one side with be a baked hell earth life could not survive in and the other side a deadly cold.

It is believed that most such planets would have a sort of in between region. Could be a game changer someday. Anything like this is an awesome find.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

a reply to: imsoconfused

sorry mate........... thought i got some breaking news but looks like you got in before me lol S&F
you should maybe stick the official announcement in now.... good job

originally posted by: Davg80
a reply to: imsoconfused

sorry mate........... thought i got some breaking news but looks like you got in before me lol S&F
you should maybe stick the official announcement in now.... good job

Lol not my thread.. Was just pointing it out.

a reply to: imsoconfused

lol my investigative skills let me down again........

Could be a "M" class planet (Star Trek) but we still can't see it in a Telescope, Orbit around it or "Beam Down" to it....

originally posted by: crazyewok
Thing is proxima centuri is a red dwalf.

That means the habital zone is so close to the star it more than likley the planet is tidely locked to the star with one start always faceing the star and the other way.

That creates problems as one side with be a baked hell earth life could not survive in and the other side a deadly cold.

Meh, a civilization could have colonized it after diveloping somewhere else. There are numerous scientific/engineering possibilities/advantages on a planet that's tidally locked.

Extreme heating and cooling systems with no or little cost/energy, research, possible variations in life, etc, etc---plenty of reasons why a species might want to colonize it.

I never understood why they didn't work on sending a probe to Alpha Centuri....should've been done right after the moon landings TBH, or even in place of it. They worked on a multi-generational ark to travel there, which I think was 100-150 year trip?

But probably could devise something much more efficient if it was merely a probe, as well, today even better than back then. Should be priority 1 IMO.

Then again if they are hiding files from the 50s with confirmation they have no need of going...

a reply to: manuelram16

but we still can't see it in a Telescope,

Not yet but given its proximity James Webb Space Telescope may be able to image it.

JWST will also carry coronagraphs to enable direct imaging of exoplanets near bright stars. The image of an exoplanet would just be a spot, not a grand panorama, but by studying that spot, we can learn a great deal about it. That includes its color, differences between winter and summer, vegetation, rotation, weather...How is this done? The answer again is spectroscopy.
jwst.nasa.gov...

If it has life we will probably know in just a few years.

a reply to: boncho

I never understood why they didn't work on sending a probe to Alpha Centuri....should've been done right after the moon landings TBH, or even in place of it. They worked on a multi-generational ark to travel there, which I think was 100-150 year trip?

I am fairly certain that voyages of 4 light years are beyond the skills we possess right now with current tech, never mind the 70's.

a reply to: Jonjonj

from the bbc news report

"Earlier this year, the billionaire venture capitalist Yuri Milner said he was investing $100m in studies to develop tiny spacecraft that could be propelled across the galaxy by lasers.
These would travel at perhaps 20% of the speed of light, shortening the journey to a star like Proxima Centauri to mere decades."

originally posted by: Davg80
a reply to: Jonjonj

from the bbc news report

"Earlier this year, the billionaire venture capitalist Yuri Milner said he was investing $100m in studies to develop tiny spacecraft that could be propelled across the galaxy by lasers.
These would travel at perhaps 20% of the speed of light, shortening the journey to a star like Proxima Centauri to mere decades."

Like I said...