USA TODAY International Edition
Oh my stars! There’s an Earth- like planet right next door
It’s in the zone that could sustain life
An Earth- size planet that could boast water, even an ocean, has been found circling the star nearest our sun, hinting that the conditions for life could exist next door.
Researchers have identified a plethora of planets outside our solar system that both resemble Earth in size and dwell in the “habitable zone,” where liquid water is possible.
No other Earth- like planet outside our solar system is as close to humans and their observatories as this new world, making it the best possible hunting ground for living organisms.
The find, reported in a study published Wednesday in Nature, has scientists reaching for superlatives.
“An absolutely amazing discovery,” says Victoria Meadows of the University of Washington. “This will be the most accessible, closest planet in the habitable zone to our solar system.”
“The excitement is that it’s around the closest star to our sun,” says Rory Barnes, also of the University of Washington.
Announced after a search by astronomers from around the world, the planet circles a small star called Proxima Centauri. That star, though invisible to the naked eye, is 4.2 light- years — about 25 trillion miles — from Earth, making it our nearest stellar neighbor.
The specs of the planet, called Proxima b, sound much like Earth’s.
It is 1.3 times the mass of the Earth or bigger. It is probably rocky, like Earth, and not a Jupiter- like ball of gas. And it’s just the right distance from its star that it would be warm enough for liquid water to pool on the surface, assuming the planet has an atmosphere.
Of course, it may not have an atmosphere, a prerequisite for life.
Tipping the odds against life a bit, Proxima b’s star blasts it with far more high- energy radiation than our planet receives from the sun.
A space mission to reach exoplanets won’t be ready until the “coming centuries,” says David Armstrong of Britain’s University of Warwick. “But the first one we’ll send it to will be this.”