In a new scientific study, a team of astronomers has confirmed the existence of an outer Earth-like planet orbiting the nearest star to the solar system in the viable region. This discovery feeds the hopes of discovering a kind of extraterrestrial life.
espresso
Researchers from the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and others in the scientific study published in the journal "Astronomie and Astrophysics" re-measured the various data of "Proxima B", and this planet was discovered four years ago, but the methods that scientists used at that time did not allow to measure its size and orbital characteristics.
The researchers used the "espresso" spectroscope installed on the large European Southern Observatory telescope "VLT" in Chile, which is an improved version of the spectroscope that researchers used to discover the planet, but it was not accurate enough to accurately calculate the size of the planet and its location around the star.
"The espresso machine has made it possible to accurately measure the mass of the planet," says Michel Mayor, Nobel Prize winner for physics in 2019 and discoverer of the first exoplanet in 1995 and who oversees the design of the "espresso" spectrometer.
"And it turns out that the planet’s mass is one tenth of the Earth's, which is absolutely unprecedented."
The Star Proxima family and the planet
This strange planet revolves around the Proxima Centauri star, which is the closest star to the solar system, only 4.24 light years from the solar system.
It is a dwarf star with a diameter of 200 thousand km (about one and a half times the diameter of Jupiter), and it is cold whose surface temperature does not exceed 3 thousand degrees Celsius compared to more than 5 thousand degrees on the surface of the sun.
Because of its characteristics, the salable area for life that receives a moderate amount of energy and in which water can be found in its liquid form is relatively close to it compared to the sun.
According to the results of the study, the planet "Proxima B" has a mass equivalent to 1.17 Earth masses, and orbits its dwarf star in an orbit of 7.5 million kilometers (half a tenth of the distance separating the Earth from the sun) in the middle of its habitable star region.
Although "Proxima B" orbits its star very close, it receives approximately the same amount of energy that the Earth gets from the sun.
Scientists believe that the year on this planet - that is, the time it takes to perform one cycle around the star - is very short, and that year does not exceed 11.2 Earth days, which is the same as the duration of one day on this planet, so it faces its star by one side that is always lit, in When the other side remains dark and cold.
What about life over there?
Although "Proxima B" is about 20 times closer to its star than Earth from the sun, it receives a similar energy, which means that the temperature in some places of its surface is appropriate for the water to be liquid, if this is present.
However, there is still a long way to go before scientists can conclude that life was able to evolve on its surface or not, especially as "Proxima Centauri" is an active red dwarf star that bombards its planet with x-rays that are about 400 times the amount received by Earth. from the sun.
The researchers say it is not clear whether Proxima B has an atmosphere or not, or whether this atmosphere contains the essential chemical elements needed for the formation of life, such as oxygen for example, but they do not exclude that the radiation coming from its central star has been stripped This shell contains liquid, which makes it impossible to have liquid water on its surface.
And while continuing to study this star system using a new and better technique, scientists will be able in the future to understand what is going on on the surface of this nearby outer planet, the researchers say.