"Earth-sized world 'around nearest star'" Topic

"The nearest habitable world beyond our Solar System might be right on our doorstep – astronomically speaking.

Scientists say their investigations of the closest star, Proxima Centauri, show it to have an Earth-sized planet orbiting about it.

What is more, this rocky globe is moving in a zone that would make liquid water on its surface a possibility.

Proxima is 40 trillion km away and would take a spacecraft using current technology thousands of years to reach…"
See here
link

Amicalement
Armand

I find a facet of this story to be incredulous.

How long now have we been told that NASA and other space agencies have discovered thousands of planets around stars ungodly distances away, going so far as to give the circumference of many of them, yet only JUST NOW they discover something THIS CLOSE?

I want to believe. I want to believe that scientists are not "jumping the gun" and putting out as fact things they are theorizing and estimating a conclusion on because it gets them press, published and more funding.

I WANT to believe. But this makes me doubt all the previous planetary, "discoveries."

Yes, I have to use quotes for that now. And it hurts.

Well, for those interested:

exoplanet.eu
exoplanets.org

Hope it helps.
Enric.

"I WANT to believe. But this makes me doubt all the previous planetary, "discoveries." "

We're still not completely sure we've accounted for all the planets in our own solor system yet- its not impossble for whole planets to be effectively invisible from earth, or at least really difficult to spot.

You just seem to be going straight from "I cant see how this could happen" to "therefore it can't happen".

I'd guess that this was quite tricky to secure the evidence- we've had hints of it previously but I suspect the fact that Proxima itself is relatively small and dim doesnt help, nor the fact that its in close proximity to two much larger brighter stars- looking for planets in such a system is probably a bit like trying to find a needle in a haystack, when the needle is made of hay and a couple of people keep shining torches in your face…

Very poor comparison – This is not some hay-colored needle in a haystack, they are not trying to distinguish this planet from a concentrated mass of other planets bunched close together. And are you saying NASA is incapable of zeroing in on just the dwarf star? You know it orbits them at 1.2 trillion miles away? There are pictures of it alone, by itself, not lost in the view of being crowded like a, "couple of people shining torches," into the telescope.

I am still in the I can't see how this could happen train. I did not say therefore it cannot. I said it made me call previous "discoveries" into question. One is decisive, the other is open to further evidence.

As far as the other planets we are discovering in our own solar system, completely unrelated – those are at such distance and searching for them is such a narrow "bandwidth-in-the-black" (for a lack of a better term) it is understandable. With a very known star THAT close, dim or not, with other stars close or not, proximity to the star of a planet in the "sweet spot" should have been detected MUCH earlier than one made from some random star ungodly millions of light years away that are in and out of the "sweet spot."

Want to believe too…

Still remember the first speach of Carl Sagan…

Amicalement
Armand

Meanwhile, people on Earth still can't find the local post office.

Hi billthecat,

Here you are some aid:

link

If you scroll down the page, you'll see the link 'Locate a Post Office'.

Hope it helps.
Enric.

P.S.: …and hope you appreciate this joke.

Mardaddy, the majority of the previous planetary finds are big, really, really big and orbiting their stars at almost insanely tight orbits which makes them relatively easy to find by the methods used. We're getting way better at this hence some more difficult to find ones coming up. We stand a fighting chance of getting an optical image of this one in the next 5-10 years because it is so close.

The Proxima Centauri planet isn't likely going to be very friendly. It is so close to this dim star that it is likely tidally locked like our moon. That means one side gets all the light, the other side is permanently dark. In addition, these little stars are prone to really powerful solar flares that can strip an atmosphere from a planet.

Also, things can go un-noticed as no telescope can see planets outside our solar system. We can only see the wobble of the star from the planet's gravity and/or a slight dimming of the star if the planet happens to pass between us and the star.