Scientists started to study the data they got from the Alpha Centauri star system, and they also announced that they found a second planet that’s similar to Earth, which is orbiting the star that’s closest to the sun.
They announced this fact in the journal Science Advances, and they got all the details based on 17 years of researching light signals, which appear to come from this planet. This planet has the potential to offer to scientists many opportunities to study another star system, which might also be habitable. The planet is called Proxima c, and even if we could, we would not move to it, because the planet might be frozen. Also, the fact that the flares which are coming from it show that its orbit already has a broken atmosphere does not help our case.
We know for sure that Proxima c is about six times bigger than Earth, and it is called the super-Earth. There’s also another important reason why we cannot live there – it completes a lap around its star in more than five years. But we should also mention that the planet does its orbit in the so-called “habitable zone” of Proxima Centauri, which means that it is actually not that farther away from its star – so there is water on its surface.
By discovering this planet, we can better understand how the planetary systems formed and how they evolve around stars.
Fabio Del Sordo, who is an astronomer at the University of Crete in Greece, stated that this is “the discovery of remote, unknown but maybe accessible worlds.” This planet is the closest one to us, which is habitable, so can we ignore it?
