Proxima Centauri b, better known as Proxima b, is an Earth-like planet that circles Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun. It could have life, maybe even intelligent life. It was discovered by a telescope in the deserts of Chile just last month, August 2016. It is a huge find.
Exoplanets: since 1991 astronomers have discovered some 3,500 exoplanets, worlds that circle other stars. But nearly all of them are uninhabitable: they are too hot or too cold or too big or too small to support life as we know it.
Only a dozen or so habitable planets have been found so far. Last year NASA was making a big deal about Kepler-452b, and that was 1400 light years away. Proxima b is only 4.22 light years away!
No one on Earth has seen Proxima b yet. But we know it is there because its sun wobbles. From the wobble we can tell that, compared to Earth, Proxima b is at least 1.2 larger, 20 times closer to its sun and, because its sun is a red dwarf star, 30% colder.
The bad news:
- Deadly radiation: red dwarfs are known for outbursts of deadly radiation. Its sun has been quiet for as long as we have been looking at it, but there is no telling what it has done in the past.
- Tidal lock: there is a good chance that Proxima b, like Mercury, always has the same side facing its sun. That would make one side too hot and the other side too cold.
New life: The next step is to see if it has an atmosphere to see what is in its air. If it has oxygen, that will be a strong sign (but not proof) that it has life. If it has both oxygen and methane, that will be an even stronger sign. Unless we catch it crossing in front of its sun, we will not know about its atmosphere till the middle 2020s when telescopes will be powerful enough to observe Proxima b directly.
New civilizations: Proxima b is not sending any powerful radio messages to Earth, we know that much. But it could be using radio or television or something like it for its own purposes. If so, we might be able to pick that up. That would be mind-blowing.
To boldly go: It took New Horizons ten years to reach Pluto, and Proxima b is some 7,000 times farther away! But Stephen Hawking, one of the world’s greatest minds, and Yuri Milner, a Russian billionaire, are working on inventing a spacecraft that could go up to 20% the speed of light. It would be too small to carry people, but it could carry instruments. It would take at least 21 years to reach Proxima b and another four years for any pictures and findings to get back to Earth, but there are people alive today who might live to see it.
– Abagond, 2016.
See also:
- Pluto
- Eris
- New Horizons
- Einstein
- Star Trek – just turned 50!
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I love astronomy. If i didn’t go into IT, i would have loved to be a Planetary scientist. I have several DVD’s on The planets, watched many documentaries on space.
I regularly gaze at the moon at night and day dream while looking at it. I download star apps so i can put a name to all the stars. 🙂
Thanks for making this post.
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Interesting post reminds me of the movie Mission to Mars and The Martian. I have read a couple of articles about affluent people booking flights to Mars I think it’s kind of crazy but who knows that may be the new thing to do in the not so distant future.
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Wow, Abagond is calling this man “a thing“!
And more:
Seriously, I think that some paradigmatic changes in our technologies must happen before a long and deep journey into space be possible. Not exactly in rocket’s and closely related technologies but elsewhere…
Energy, advanced methods to harness energy in a far vaster scale than today!
Yes, I’m thinking in nuclear fusion, method for harnessing energy which has eluded the efforts of scientists until now but, I believe, not forever, and once discovered – Nature was able to invent its own version of nuclear fusion; yes, it’s what maintain all stars irradiating light in the vastness of the Universe! – will solve many problems on Earth and allow, at the same time, our journeys into the deep space viable!
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@ munubantu
I changed that line to “Stephen Hawking, one of the world’s greatest minds”. Thanks.
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@ munubantu
I fully agree. To accelerate an object even with a tiny mass would cost so much energy that we are nowhere near it. Even if our current attempts to build fusion reactors are successfull and it is an economically viable energy source in 50 years, it will hardly be so cheap as we could afford this. Without fusion all thoughts about interstellar space travel are absurd.
But even if we are generous and say in 100 years we could spend the energy to accelerate something to 20% light speed, we would still have the problem that that object once it reached its destination would have to be slowed down. That is completly unachievable within our thechnological scope.
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And when we are at this topic of space travel, folks, have you read “Chariots of Gods“, by Erich von Däniken, where is posited that aliens have already visited our planet multiple times in the past and, even left their mark, like, for example the Moai of Easter Island, and much, much more in close encounters with humans?
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It’s a near certainty that life exists on other planets (not just maybe Proxima B) but many other planets.
The only way that this isn’t true is if there’s a god who has only decided to create one planet with life.
To put this into context – See this blue dot ? It’s 200 light years in diameter. It happens to represent how far all of our radio communications have travelled through space… ever.
This is how far they’ve gotten after two hundred years travelling at the speed of light.
This is our galaxy.
Our solar system (Milky way) is the tiny, insignificant part of the blue dot, which is a tiny insignificant part of our galaxy.
Our solar system makes up just 0.01% of the area of that blue dot. And the blue dot is 0.0004% of the area of the Milky Way and there are 100+ billion galaxies. So our galaxy isn’t even significant in the scheme of things.
Just to put that into perspective – If you have just $1, you are much closer to Bill Gates’ net worth ($79.1 billion) than this galaxy (Milky Way) is to the number of total galaxies. Our solar system is pretty insignificant
So if creating life were easy enough to happen once by random chance then it’s probable enough to happen many times. Because the universe is that big.
More importantly what would life on Proxmia B or any other planet look and be like ?
I would not expect humanoid development to be a universal rule of any sort. Life on earth takes on many forms. We have life that’s totally underwater, that flies, that is intelligent, that isn’t, that lives on top of mountains, that lives with virtually no water.
So lifeforms on other planets may look quite a bit different.
What if the dinosaurs were never wiped out? Would one of them have developed humanlike intelligence?
Who knows Proxima B might be full of dinosaurs?
Or If Proxima B planet has low gravity and an atmosphere three times denser than Earth’s, then animals as large as whales might find flying cool, according to scientists.
When you think that the universe has been around for 13.8 billion years and the earth for 4.6 billion years, and life on earth for 3.6 billion years. Then humans have only been around for 200,000 years, but it was only 10,000 years ago that agriculture (arguably the start of “modern civilization”) began.
10,000 years is nothing in comparison to the history of the world. As badass as humans think we are – It doesn’t take much of a “head start” to be way ahead of human civilisation.
If you ask me, we’re probably best off not encountering other intelligent life. The benefits are intellectual, maybe some science advancement.
But the risks if the life we find is more advanced than us?
Massive.
Just ask any civilisation on earth that encountered more advanced cultures.
Would any say that they’re the better for it?
Of course, we have little choice in the matter. It’s the more advanced cultures that tend to discover the less advanced cultures, since it’s advancement that offers the ability for exploration. If we encounter other lifeforms that are more advanced, they’ll likely found us.
Let’s just hope it goes well.
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@The HipHopRecords
I agree that the unvierse is so vast that I consider it likely that there are multiple civilizations in existence at once. But also because of these gigantic distances I think it is very unlikely that we will ever have contact, and if probably only indirect. I very much doubt we have to fear the arrival of an conquest fleet.
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(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC7yFDb1zOA)
I thought this was a great piece. Very informative
Also I know this is a long shot but if anyone knows what the music was from 1.09 to 2.20 in this clip I’d be very, very grateful to know
It’s just a piece of classical music that I’ve heard for years but never found out who done it. But as I say it’s a long shot.
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@TheHipHopRecords
That music does seem familiar. It sounds like it might be something by Philip Glass.
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