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Re: Earth like planet orbiting Proxima Centauri?
A team of astrophysicists will soon announce the discovery of an Earth-like planet around the nearest star beyond the sun, Proxima Centauri, Germany's Der Spiegel reported Friday, citing an anonymous source.
If true, this would be a big deal, as it's about as close as another planet like our own could possibly be at just four light-years away.
Proxima Centauri is different from our sun, though, and that means any potential Earth-like planets would still have some major differences from our home, too.
The key thing to understand about Proxima Centauri is that it's a red dwarf star closer in size to Jupiter than to our own sun. This means, to our eyes, visiting a planet orbiting the star would be like stepping into a world that appears in something like sepia tones or the "1977" filter on Instagram.
Proxima Centauri is older than the sun by a few hundred million years, which means there's been plenty of time for chemistry to support life and life itself to develop, in theory.
However, on the website for the Pale Red Dot project, author Paul Gilster wrote in January: "Like many younger M-dwarfs, Proxima is prone to sudden, violent flares, producing sudden changes in brightness to Earth observers and cascades of deadly particles for any life forms on a planet." (Perhaps not coincidentally, the Pale Red Dot team should have a peer-reviewed paper on the findings of their search for a planet around Proxima Centauri dropping any day now.)
Now, this doesn't mean life couldn't adapt and essentially evolve to have a killer level of natural sunscreen to survive Proxima's harsh flares, but it does mean we might wind up a little toasted if we visited in just our board shorts and flip-flops.
Because Proxima is so relatively small and dim, any Earth-like planet circling it would likely be orbiting very closely, even closer than Mercury's orbit of our sun. This makes it likely that such a planet would also become tidally locked with the same side always facing Proxima, similar to the way the same side of the moon is always facing Earth.
This fact alone would make a Proxima Earth very different from ours. One side of the planet would be permanently bathed in daylight, while the opposite side would be always dark and presumably pretty cold. Some areas would experience perpetual dusk and perhaps a gorgeous red ocher sunset that never ends.
The potential for life on such a planet depends on what sort of atmosphere, if any, exists. One study found (PDF) that a relatively thin atmosphere could be enough to create an environment where photosynthesis could take place. It's also possible to imagine a planet as dead and dry as Mars appears on one side, and as frozen as Pluto on the other.
Fortunately, one of Earth's biggest brains recently teamed up with some of our richest dudes to announce a plan to send a tiny spacecraft to the Centauri system (which also includes two brighter, larger Alpha Centauri stars in a binary system). In April, Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner (with help from Mark Zuckerberg) announced their "Breakthrough Starshot" initiative to launch a "nanocraft" to travel at one-fifth the speed of light toward the Centauris. That's a 20-year trip one way.
We should soon have a better picture of whether there really is an Earth-like planet nearby. In addition to the Pale Red Dot initiative, the Hubble Space Telescope and the Canadian MOST (Micro-variability & Oscillations of STars) observatory have been investigating Proxima's environs of late.
If there is something there, then the next step will be to try to determine the likelihood that it's populated by aliens with wicked natural resistance to solar flares who never witnessed a daily sunrise or sunset.
Re: Earth like planet orbiting Proxima Centauri?
As astronomy buffs know, the Centauri system in space terms is literally a hop, skip, and a jump from here. Within 100-200 years we will be going there. Is something already waiting for our arrival?
In my youth I believed in UFOs visiting earth like many people do. As I got older, I flip flopped. The vast distances of space are just so immense that I doubted UFOs would travel here and just observe us. Plus.....just finding the earth would be a near invisible needle in a haystack. I have thought for years if alien life forms capable of flight are visiting here, they are coming from an unknown planet in our own system or one of our system's moons, or in the extreme, some sort of "death star" that orbits our system.
THis would be a game changer if Proxima Centauri or any of those stars literally in our backyard have planets that resemble earth in any way or even a gas giant in an orbit where one of its moons could sustain life. That would mean if at least SOME UFOs are real, they are only a few steps ahead of us in technology and could reach our system.
Even if there are no advanced aliens in this system, this is no less intriguing. There is potential for other life forms, maybe even something like dinosaurs just waiting to be discovered there.
Just like with the potential Dyson Sphere surrounding KIC 8462852, Proxima needs to be closely studied for years to see if we can figure out what is really going on there. While KIC sounds much more exciting, reaching Proxima is feasible and will eventually happen.
Re: Earth like planet orbiting Proxima Centauri?
cool and promising, but we won't know much for quite a while.
They need to speed up the 'Project Starshot' that was being proposed for a trip to Alpha Centauri. This planet definitely wont be anything like Earth but that doesn't mean there wont be some surprises in store when we get there with the capability to take pictures.
While this news is amazing, I am more interested in our entire solar system being mapped properly and key areas investigated thoroughly. We still don't know exactly how many planets are in this system and there are theories that we might even share certain objects with these nearby stars. While we have landed on Titan already, that moon needs a MUCH closer look in the coming years. I wish the major powers would all work together on these space missions. With how quickly our tech progresses, mankind can be in for some amazing discoveries in the coming decades.
These objects should be top priority....
Jupiter's moon Europa
That ice needs to be cracked open. ASAP. I wouldn't be surprised if fish are underneath it.
Jupiter's moon Ganymede
Largest moon in the entire solar system. It also has a massive ocean underneath its surface.
Saturn's moon Iapetus
Yeah....the conspiracy sites love this moon. Some think its an alien "Death Star" or some sort of fake moon watching us. I highly doubt that to be the case but this moon needs a very close look. Not just a fly by on the way to other areas but either a rover to land or keep a drone of some sort on its orbit. This moon has many anomalies that need to be explained.
As far as planets go, I am in the minority that think too much focus is placed on Mars and not nearly enough attention has been paid to Venus. Yes.... Venus is hell...the exact opposite of Earth....but it is very intriguing....it also has a story to tell us. We need to know what happened there.
the cherry on top would be getting a close up extremely HQ pic/footage of the so called "monolith" on Phobos(Mars moon).
Re: Earth like planet orbiting Proxima Centauri?
I'm still waiting for them to go and take some proper pictures of our moon. 
The more time goes on since 1969 without going back it becomes more and more obvious they pulled our leg. It's the 60s for Christ sake, all you need is fuel. Yeah, oil is up but give me a break! There should be like a dozen countries interested in the PR alone. There should be billionaires who could easily afford it. Not buying it.
Safe to say I have little hope of us ever reaching any of those far away places. Alpha Centauri would be like an ant taking a trip over the Atlantic Ocean.
Re: Earth like planet orbiting Proxima Centauri?
I'd like to nominate polluxlm for a place on the first flight..
Although he may not be the best ambassador for humanity should we bump into any intelligent life forms when we get there.. They'd put him in a zoo and study him like some Billy Pilgrim..
Re: Earth like planet orbiting Proxima Centauri?
I'm still waiting for them to go and take some proper pictures of our moon.
The more time goes on since 1969 without going back it becomes more and more obvious they pulled our leg. It's the 60s for Christ sake, all you need is fuel. Yeah, oil is up but give me a break! There should be like a dozen countries interested in the PR alone. There should be billionaires who could easily afford it. Not buying it.
Safe to say I have little hope of us ever reaching any of those far away places. Alpha Centauri would be like an ant taking a trip over the Atlantic Ocean.
For the record...these aren't going to be manned missions. I know you have serious doubts about the moon landing but are you also questioning the authenticity of all our trips to other planets, moons, etc.?
Re: Earth like planet orbiting Proxima Centauri?
I don't know man, if they did fool the whole world with the moon landings it kinda puts everything into question. For sure I wouldn't trust any information coming from an agency guilty of that.
Would be nice, but hard to get excited when you don't know if it's real or not. There are so many things they should be doing up there, yet they're not. Only military operations with NASA, Russia and the Chinese. For me the whole space thing has become a bit like reading war reports from the government, you know they're not exactly giving you the whole truth.
Re: Earth like planet orbiting Proxima Centauri?
Which doesn't make sense. It was the 60s. An Iphone could run that mission. Tech is already there. That leaves you with materials, training and fuel. Costly sure, but any first world nation should be able to do it.
The cost to put 1 pound of material in Earth orbit is supposedly a little over $600, yet we don't have private companies offering trips for people? Should be thousands of people, if not millions, willing to pay 100-200k for something like that.
