Next orbits b around Proxima Centauri is the closest star to our solar system
NEW YORK Another Earth could be orbiting the closest star to us. Yesterday astronomers announced the discovery of a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the closest to our solar system’s star. Interestingly, the planet is in the “habitable zone” of the star, where it is neither too cold or too hot. This implies that there may be liquid water on its surface, which increases their chances of sustaining life.
Although the observations of recent years, especially through the mission to search for planets Kepler, NASA has discovered lot of worlds the size of Earth scattered across the galaxy, the new finding is promising, as it is 4.2 light years away, about 40 trillion kilometers, that is, extremely close in cosmic terms, which would allow one day, within several decades, achieve it.
R. Paul Butler, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institute for Science and member of the team responsible for finding, comparing it with a sign flashing neon proclaims: “I am the nearest star and have a potentially habitable planet”
. Guillem Anglada-Escudé, an astronomer at the London Queen Mary, university and leader of the team that made the informed by the journal Nature discovery, said. “We know that there are Earth-like planets orbiting many stars, and hoped that would in nearby stars what exciting is not that, it is that it is the closest star to us after the Sun “.
beyond the size of the planet and the distance that separates it from its parent star, everything else follows It remains a mystery. Scientists are working on computer models that reveal more clues about its possibilities: the conditions might be similar to those on Earth, but the planet could also be a hell like Venus, or cold and dry as Mars
Although the image of the planet is lost in the glare of its star and can not be seen with current telescopes, astronomers hope to observe it in about 10 years, when the new generation of telescopes comes.
And the proximity of the planet Earth encourages the hope that in a future not too distant they can send robotic probes to pass near him to study it. A team of eminences of science and technology that has private financing and led by Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner and the brilliant physicist Stephen Hawking has already announced the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative, to develop and launch a fleet of spacecraft the size of a cell in the within the next three decades. Target the solar system Alpha Centauri, which in addition to Proxima Centauri includes a pair of larger stars, like the Sun were proposed.
“We will aim to Proxima” says Avi Loeb, an astronomer at Harvard and chairman of the advisory committee Starshot Breakthrough project. “It’s like finding a luxury SUV and available in our own neighborhood,” added
The new planet is much closer to its star (eight million km) than the Earth is from the Sun ( 150 million km). To Mercury, the closest to the Sun in our solar system, the planet is farther away (58 million km). While Next b could be similar to Earth, its parent star, Proxima Centauri, is very different from our sun. It is small and belongs to the stars known as red dwarfs. Has only 12% percent of the mass of the Sun and about 1/600 of its luminosity, so weak that it can not be seen from Earth with the naked eye.
Next b So, despite its proximity to its star, receives less heat than Earth, but enough to allow water to flow over its surface. But at this point, as he said at a press conference Anglada-Escudé, “that the planet has atmosphere or liquid water is pure speculation.”
If the planet formed close to its star, it could be dry and airless, but also could have formed farther away and migrated into your solar system to its current orbit. It is also possible that the planet has been dry in their training and later makes the impact of comets received steroids or ice. “There are models and feasible stories that point to the feasibility of an Earth-like planet,” said Anglada-Escudé.
Although Next b livable, not all scientists who study the possibility of life on other places in the universe believe that planets orbiting red dwarfs are the best place to look. The stars of small size are more erratic, especially in his youth, and eruptions from the surface of the star can sweep the atmosphere of planets that orbit. The levels of radiation bombarding the planet could be 100 times greater than on Earth, according to these scientists.
The so close orbit of Proxima b suggests that the planet’s rotation would be tied gravitationally attracting star. Just as the moon always shows the same face toward Earth, it is likely that the same face of Next b is eternally illuminated, facing the sun, and the other always in shadow.
This discovery led more a decade. Michael Endl, an astronomer at the University of Texas and one of the authors of the article in Nature, Proxima Centauri began to scrutinize for signs of planets in 2000, a search that lasted eight years. “At that time, did not see anything really significant,” Endl said. “So we published our findings and move on to something else.”
Some time later, while analyzing the data obtained by other telescopes, Anglada-Escudé found conclusive evidence of planets, reanalyzed the previous data Endl and launched the Pale Red Dot project, Proxima Centauri to observe daily for two months earlier this year.
These new observations clearly revealed the 11.2-day orbit of the new planet. They also found evidence of another planet, or maybe more, but according to scientists, is still inconclusive data.
The discovery could give impetus to the development of telescopes. Ruslan Belikov, the Ames Research Center of NASA in California, has proposed a small space telescope that cost less than $ 175 million dedicated to the search for planets in the Alpha Centauri system.
“All this implies a true paradigm shift in the minds of people, “Belikov said. “We now know that there is a new world just around the corner.”
Translation Jaime Arrambide
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