Astronomers To Announce Discovery of a Nearby 'Earth-Like' Planet (seeker.com)

astroengine quotes a report from Seeker: Scientists are preparing to unveil a new planet in our galactic neighborhood which is "believed to be Earth-like" and orbits its star at a distance that could favor life, German weekly Der Spiegel reported Friday. The exoplanet orbits a well-investigated star called Proxima Centauri, part of the Alpha Centauri star system, the magazine said, quoting anonymous sources.

"The still nameless planet is believed to be Earth-like and orbits at a distance to Proxima Centauri that could allow it to have liquid water on its surface -- an important requirement for the emergence of life," said the magazine.
It's orbiting our sun's nearest neighboring star -- just 4.25 light years away -- meaning it could someday be considered for the world's first interstellar mission.

Comments

Holy shitballs, all the sci-fi books were right.

[EmperorOfCanada]

Minimally we need to start seriously looking at a robotic probe.What is the time line for something that does a flyby? Can we get a probe up to 10%c or are we looking at even 1%c as too hard? 50 years is pretty cool. 500 or more years would be taking the risk that two things happen, one civilization falls enough that we forget we sent it. Or that in the next 500 years we easily build way faster probes.

Also with 50 years and we find something worth visiting, and now can think about sending people. 500 and we are back to science fiction.

Minimally, this justifies building one huge honking telescope to get a good look at this planet.

Re:interstellar mission

[bosef1]

Making an antimatter rocket is "do-able" for some value of do-able, but making the antimatter is whole 'nother issue. According to Wikipedia, estimates put the cost of a gram of antimatter somewhere between $25 billion (2006) and $62 trillion (1999). Given the 2014 gross world product was about $78 trillion, the puts the price somewhere between "a lot" and "all of the money".

If we started now, I guess we could build a two-copy redundant probe set in 20-50 years that would take 400-4000 years to get to Proxima using either ion propulsion or nuclear pulse propulsion (Orion type) (assume max roughly 1% light speed). The probe set would cost $10-1,000 billion depending on how you amortize costs, R&D and NRE, launch facilities, and fuel. The US, EU, and China have GDPs of roughly $17, $17, and $11 trillion, respectively, so that's the scale you'd be working against.

Re:Good luck with that.

[Gavagai80]

Take a tidally locked planet around a flare star. Let the sunny side be too hot for life, so that the dark side is just the right temperature for life. The dark side is also well-protected from radiation by the mass of the planet, isn't it? As long as the atmosphere isn't blown off, which it wouldn't be according to theory, what would be the difficulty for life? Obviously photosynthesis wouldn't develop, but we have plenty of life on Earth that doesn't require that, and the abundance of photosynthesis on Earth may simply be an adaptation to the abundance of sunlight we have rather than a necessary path for life.

"to announce"?

[Xtifr]

I like the "to announce" part. Like, if they haven't announced it, why are you reporting on it? Maybe there's a reason they haven't actually announced it yet! Perhaps the data is tentative and admits of another explanation, which, on further review, will prove to be true. Perhaps it's simply one guy's wild-ass guess based on incomplete data.

Contacted by AFP, ESO spokesman Richard Hook said he is aware of the report, but refused to confirm or deny it. "We are not making any comment," he said.

Maybe, just maybe, there's a reason he's not making any comment? Like, they want to avoid making false statements in public and embarrassing themselves? Quite unlike certain (most?) Internet "news" sites which are perfectly happy both to make false statements and to embarrass themselves? "Who cares? Just give us those clicks!"

Anyway, this is pretty cool if confirmed, but at this point, I'm treating it with all the seriousness it deserves, which is approximately zero.

Re:Misquoted

[Rei]

In cosmic terms, I think "nearby" is fair. However, I always snicker a bit when planets get described as "earthlike" just because of their mass and distance from their star. We have counterexamples right in our own system. A distant astronomer using the same logic, upon discovering Venus would have declared its surface "Earthlike" and start going on about how it probably has oceans perfect for discovering life.

A body being "earthlike" requires a lot more than a similar mass and proper solar distance. Heck, do we even know that it's rocky? Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf - would it actually have blown away most of the volatiles during its formation like our sun did? Or by contrast maybe it's volatile-devoid. Earth was whalloped with volatile-containing rock during the Late Heavy Bombardment thanks to Jupiter. Does Proxima Centauri contain a Jupiter? Probably not. Also: my understanding of the habitable zone of red dwarfs is that they leave their surfaces too irradiated for LAWKI. Now, one could say, "well, it'd be in subsurface water". But you can make that argument for half a dozen bodies in our own solar system without requiring a 4+ light year journey.