Potentially habitable planet found orbiting the nearest star to the sun

(Image credit: NASA/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

published 25 August 2016

Astrophysicists are thrilled with the discovery of a planet outside our solar system that is within the "habitable zone" of the star Proxima Centauri, meaning water could exist there.

"Finding out that the nearest star to the sun hosts not just a planet, not just an Earth-sized planet, but one which is in the right location that it could support life — and there are a lot of caveats there — really underscores that not only are planets very common in our galaxy, but potentially habitable planets are common," Eamonn Kerins, an astrophysicist at Jodrell Bank Center for Astrophysics, told The Guardian. Named Proxima b, the planet is believed to be at least 1.3 times the mass of Earth, and is 4.2 light years away, meaning if a spacecraft left today, it would take close to 70,000 years for the probe to make it to the planet.

In the journal Nature, researchers wrote they found the planet after analyzing data based on light emitted by Proxima Centauri. It takes 11.2 days for the planet to travel around Proxima Centauri, and it orbits at 4.7 million miles, or 5 percent of the 93 million miles separating the Earth and the sun. Researchers say it's still in the habitable zone because Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf that is smaller, cooler, and dimmer than our yellow dwarf sun. It's unclear if the planet has an atmosphere, oceans, or any forms of life, but one of the authors of the study said it's possible the planet "could be detected with direct imaging within the next 10 years." For Guillem Anglada-Escudé at Queen Mary University of London, "just the discovery, the sense of exploration, of finding something so close, I think it is what makes [it] very exciting."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.