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Earth-Like Planet, With Ambitious Life Possibility, Found Orbiting the Star Next Door (nature.com)
There's another Earth out there. For real, this time. Astronomers announced on Wednesday that they had detected a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the closest neighbor to our solar system. Intriguingly, the planet is in the star's "Goldilocks zone," they said, a place that hints that it may not be too hot nor too cold. Which in turn means that liquid water could exist at the surface, and by extension, it raises the possibility of life. Nature reports:"The search for life starts now," says Guillem Anglada-Escude, an astronomer at Queen Mary University of London and leader of the team that made the discovery. Humanity's first chance to explore this nearby world may come from the recently announced Breakthrough Starshot initiative, which plans to build fleets of tiny laser-propelled interstellar probes in the coming decades. Travelling at 20% of the speed of light, they would take about 20 years to cover the 1.3 parsecs from Earth to Proxima Centauri. Proxima's planet is at least 1.3 times the mass of Earth. The planet orbits its red-dwarf star -- much smaller and dimmer than the Sun -- every 11.2 days. "If you tried to pick the type of planet you'd most want around the type of star you'd most want, it would be this," says David Kipping, an astronomer at Columbia University in New York City. "It's thrilling."Much about the planet is still unknown. Astronomers have some ideas about its size and distance from its parent star. Scientists say they are working off computer models that offer mere hints of what's possible. Also, there's no picture available for this planet as of yet.
Ooh. I've seen this one. They send a probe, and it turns out that it's just a giant, curved mirror with a red filter.
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Why use parsecs if you can call it 4.2 light years, making the calculation of the travel time a lot simpler?
Population: All children
*** WARNING: Grups (Adults) are not advised to visit this planet
Life Expectancy: Depends on how old you are upon arrival.
Travelling at 20% of the speed of light, they would take about 20 years to cover the 1.3 parsecs from Earth to Proxima Centauri. Proxima's planet is at least 1.3 times the mass of Earth.
1.3 and 1.3 There are '3's - a Trinity! It's obvious that God wants us to go there!
Now, we just need a spaceship that can fly to Proxima Centauri in less than 1.3 parsecs! It's be our Kessel Run!
And we can have a whole generation that confuses distance with velocity just like mine did!
Like the velocity of Gravity here on Earth is 9.8 meters per second per second because we stutter when we type that.
Astronomers announced on Wednesday
Wednesday is today. ???
I don't think this is acceptable as slashdot news, please pull it and post again in a couple of days. Twice.
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I'm glad there's a possibility that the life on Proxima B is ambitious. It's so sad when interstellar aliens have no drive or purpose.
A planet this close to the star will be tidally locked, resulting in blast furnace heat on one side and near absolute zero cold on the other. There also will be gargantuan amounts of UV and radiation from flares, rendering this planet a barren wasteland and unfit to support any type of life.
Those relativistic postage stamp sized probes are a dream at present. Long before we could develop the technology for this, or get funding, we will study this planet with the advanced space-based instruments with capabilities far beyond anything now existing. No probe will be sent until we reach the limit of what we can do within our own solar system - nothing is faster than analyzing the light that already gets here, and even the most extravagant telescopic system will be cheaper than the probe project and all its supporting infrastructure.
That leads us to consider the HABEX Mission a pretty cool project under development using the huge and really cool looking Starshade vehicle to provide a coronagraph for a telescope in a separate vehicle thousands of kilometers away. Having a nearby target like this gives leverage with Congress to appropriate the funds.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
I hear it gets a 3-star rating!
When we first started exo planet hunting the possibilities of red dwarf stars and their potential to harbor life was a topic due to so many of their qualities that I don't think I need to cover in this community. Over time astrophysicists, including Dr. Tyson, shed considerable doubt on this possibility saying that a planet orbiting a red dwarf star close enough to have liquid water would by default also be so close that the levels of radiation would prohibit the formation of complex organic molecules.
Did I miss a revision to that over the last decade or something?
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It MIGHT be habitable. It MIGHT have an atmosphere. It MIGHT have water.
Chances are, it's actually tidally locked. One side gets daylight all the time and the other... well... it doesn't. It probably has had it's atmosphere stripped away. If it has water then it will all be frozen on the dark side (water evaporates on the hot side and gets locked as ice in the dark side).
Theoretically it could be a hot, but livable (except for being arid) 30C average on the light side and cold (but livable) -30C average on the dark side. Theoretically there is a comfortable zone half way in the transitional area. Don't get me wrong, this is by far our best chance at extra-solar life so far- but odds are you couldn't board a spaceship with a tent and some potatoes and start living there tomorrow as a farmer.
Definitely a great place to send a probe if we ever get the technology.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
I love the whole "it's only 20 years if you travel at 20% of the speed of light!" part. It makes it sound so close. But you're not going to snap your fingers and jump right to 20% of the speed of light from one second to the next. That's 6,114,064.6 standard Earth g-forces! You'd be much better off having a slow, steady acceleration all the way there and a slow, steady acceleration all the way back. Unless I did the math wrong, you'd need to maintain about 0.38 m/s^2 (yeah, I rounded - I'm not the one sending the craft) the entire trip. ...
The interstellar space probe concept mission they are referencing is this one by Philip Lubin. The scheme has the 70 gigawatt launching lasers accelerating a tiny wafer thin probe to 20% c in 10 minutes, which is about 10,000 gees. A tiny wafer thin structure can handle that. And no, there is no slowing down. These things fly through the target system at 0.20 c, and keep on going.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
Your joke is very transparent.
I see what you did there.
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We're presently approaching the Proxima Centauri system at 22.4 km/s, which is significantly faster than any spacecraft we've launched (New Horizons was about 15 km/s). Unfortunately we won't be headed that way forever, closest approach will be 3.11 light years in 26,700 years. Perhaps we can take maximal advantage by launching an interstellar mission in the year 28,716. Assuming no new administration comes along to alter NASA's priorities, we should be ready in time if we start preparing now.
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