Astronomy is in luck. After many years of searching, an international team of astronomers led by Spanish scientists has discovered an exoplanet with a mass very similar to that of Earth (it is at least 1.3 times larger ) and which is located in the habitability zone, so it could harbor liquid water and, therefore, life.
This planet is the closest to Earth and has been named Proxima b , since it is orbiting the star that is also closest to our planet and the closest to the Sun, Proxima Centauri. The fact that it is in the region where its temperature conditions allow the existence of liquid water, make this newly discovered planet a perfect candidate to search for life.
The data for Próxima b have been obtained within the observation campaign “Pale Red Dot” (Pale Red Dot) named in honor of Carl Sagan: “We spent two years designing this campaign, which Proxima Centauri has observed from January to March this year with telescopes from four observatories. Although the signal was promising from the beginning, we checked its consistency every night : it is truly exciting to know that there is an Earth-like planet around the star closest to us ”, highlights Guillem Anglada, leader of the work.
Scientists have observed – thanks to the exoplanet search technique known as Doppler spectroscopy – that their movements are of very little amplitude: the orbit of Proxima b would be only 11.2 days and it does so at about 7 million kilometers from the star Proxima Centauri. Although it represents only 5% of the distance between the Sun and the Earth, Proxima Centauri is also much colder than the Sun, which places it within the habitable zone, so its estimated surface temperature would allow the presence of liquid water.
“In any case, Proxima b is the ideal candidate to study the characteristics of the planets around red dwarfs and, by extension, to search for traces that may indicate the existence of life”, comments Pedro J. Amado, researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC) and co-author of the work.
The study has been published in the journal Nature.
