(ORDO NEWS) — Scientists believe they have discovered an exoplanet relatively close to ours that could potentially become an alternative home for humanity.
It is reported that this planet is located in a habitable zone around its star and is only four light years away from us. However, an exoplanet can only be reached if humans figure out how to travel at the speed of light.
Proxima is the closest star to the Sun. It is a dim red dwarf, smaller than our Sun and many thousands of times fainter. The planet, which astronomers have named “Proxima d”, was discovered orbiting Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our Sun.
The planet is more than four light-years away, which means it will take humans at least 800 years to reach it with the latest technology.
However, if in the future people can travel at the speed of light through outer space, then Proxima d will be within reach.
The European Southern Observatory (ESO) announced the discovery in early 2022, with Proxima d becoming the third planet discovered in the solar system of Proxima Centauri.
Juan Faria, a researcher at the Spanish Institute of Astrophysics and Science in Portugal, said: “This discovery shows that our nearest stellar neighbor appears to be full of interesting new worlds and is within reach for further exploration and future research.”
The exoplanet, which is about a quarter the size of the Earth and which orbits its star in just five days, is located in the habitable zone of the solar system.
Even though the planet is only 2.48 million miles from the star Proxima Centauri, or in other words, more than 10 times further than the distance between the Sun and Mercury, the conditions on it are favorable enough to allow life to exist on its surface. liquid water and even life itself.
Scientists first spotted Proxima d in 2020 when they observed the sky with the high-precision HARPS instrument at the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile.
Subsequent checks on the Rocky Exoplanet Spectrograph and Stable Spectroscopic Observations (ESPRESSO) spectrograph later confirmed the discovery of the planet.
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