
Planet Found in Habitable Zone Around Nearest Star - Thorondor
https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1629/
======
mjhoy
The fun stuff is buried in footnote [4]:

> The actual suitability of this kind of planet to support water and Earth-
> like life is a matter of intense but mostly theoretical debate. Major
> concerns that count against the presence of life are related to the
> closeness of the star. For example gravitational forces probably lock the
> same side of the planet in perpetual daylight, while the other side is in
> perpetual night. The planet's atmosphere might also slowly be evaporating or
> have more complex chemistry than Earth’s due to stronger ultraviolet and
> X-ray radiation, especially during the first billion years of the star’s
> life. However, none of the arguments has been proven conclusively and they
> are unlikely to be settled without direct observational evidence and
> characterisation of the planet’s atmosphere. Similar factors apply to the
> planets recently found around TRAPPIST-1.

~~~
runesoerensen
Cool so it's an "eyeball" planet? [http://nautil.us/blog/forget-
earth_likewell-first-find-alien...](http://nautil.us/blog/forget-
earth_likewell-first-find-aliens-on-eyeball-planets)

~~~
rezashirazian
This is the first time I'm reading about this concept and I find it
fascinating. If there was to be intelligent life on an eye ball like planet
the cultural, mythological and theological aspects of having a thin habitable
strip of land sandwiched between ice and fire would be captivating.

~~~
valarauca1
I'm imaging an age of discovery-esque expeditions to the center of the _Solar
Plane_.

They'd likely have radically different definitions of poles. One hot enough to
melt lead, one cold enough to freeze C02.

~~~
room271
Check out Proxima by Stephen Baxter:

[https://www.amazon.com/Proxima-Stephen-
Baxter/dp/045146771X](https://www.amazon.com/Proxima-Stephen-
Baxter/dp/045146771X)

It's a Sci-fi book about life on Proxima Centauri and includes the idea you
mentioned.

(Also a really good read!)

~~~
TeMPOraL
God damn it!

I have this annoying habit of impulsively buying books recommended on HN.
Never been disappointed by one though. So thanks! :).

------
taliesinb
Wow, amazing result. And talk about synchronicity - just last night I watched
an interesting 2015 talk about the search for planets around Alpha Centauri
using the radial velocity technique:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eieBXGpNYyE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eieBXGpNYyE)

The speaker even mentioned the previous incorrect HARPS announcement, which
was later found to be an artefact due to the windowing function they used - a
pretty embarrassing mistake. This new finding involves a completely different
period: 11.2 days instead of the previous 3.24 day signal.

Also, link to the Nature paper for the lazy:
[http://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/es...](http://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/eso1629/eso1629a.pdf)

~~~
titzer
If the period is 11.2 days, seems like there is a high chance that it is
tidally locked to the star. If that's the case, that side is probably pretty
roasting hot, the other quite cool. But maybe life near the edge is OK.
Probably some interesting weather patterns there as well.

~~~
stcredzero
_Probably some interesting weather patterns there as well._

If by "interesting" you mean constant hurricane force convective flows going
24/7 between a scorching hell and frozen wastelands.

 _Before there was soil, or sky, or any green thing, there was only the gaping
abyss of Ginnungagap. This chaos of perfect silence and darkness lay between
the homeland of elemental fire, Muspelheim, and the homeland of elemental ice,
Niflheim._

[http://norse-mythology.org/tales/norse-creation-myth/](http://norse-
mythology.org/tales/norse-creation-myth/)

Perhaps it could be "the chaos of perfect silence," because the wind noises
generated would render any unprotected human ears deaf within minutes?

~~~
craftkiller
Hmmm. We can generate heat and light using electricity, and we can generate
electricity using windmills. Could we perhaps inhabit the dark side of a
planet like this by building really sturdy windmills to harness those constant
winds and then building an insulated, heated, artificially lit structure to
grow plants and live in?

~~~
ajuc
We can build thermal powerplants on the edge and live off the temperature
gradient. Either use Seebeck effect or just steam turbines.

------
kjell
Just in time for the third book in Liu Cixin's space opera ("Remembrance of
Earth's Past") to be released in english next month:
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25451264-death-s-
end](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25451264-death-s-end)

Previously on HN:
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+cixin+...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+cixin+liu&ia=web)
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Cixin%20Liu&sort=byPopularity&...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Cixin%20Liu&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

~~~
shagie
And recently published Proxima about settlers on a planet around Proxima Cent.
[https://www.amazon.com/Proxima-Stephen-
Baxter/dp/045146771X](https://www.amazon.com/Proxima-Stephen-
Baxter/dp/045146771X)

~~~
godshatter
Finished Ultima a couple of weeks ago, didn't know it was the second in a
series. I'm looking forward to reading Proxima when I can get to it on my
list.

------
afreak
Keep in mind that at best it would take maybe 1,000 years with current
technology to get there with a probe or human-supporting ship. It would be
highly unpopular however as it involves exploding nuclear bombs behind the
craft to get it there that fast--that and it would probably cost trillions to
build the thing.

~~~
sehugg
There's a $100 million effort to develop tiny spacecraft that are accelerated
to 10%-20% the speed of light with ground-based lasers:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot)

~~~
MOARDONGZPLZ
The craziest thing to me is that if we sent a generational spaceship there
that was expected to take 1,000 years, it seems likely that better technology
would allow the next generation of spaceships to get there much faster. So by
the time the 1,000 year spaceship arrived, there would already be people
there!

~~~
nerfhammer
This is a known paradox, I forget what it's called though. The concept is that
it's arguable that any long-term space travel is pointless because there will
always be a faster ship surpassing it as the originating civilization improves
its technology, and so on for that faster ship. So, it's irrational to ever
launch anything...

~~~
kamaal
>>This is a known paradox >>So, it's irrational to ever launch anything...

That faster ship just won't appear out of the blue.

You need to launch slower ones to get to the faster ones.

Its like the original inventor of the car opting not to build it because
someday there would be a Ferrari.

~~~
cgriswald
Improving the speed of a 1000-year ship may only require improvements in
propulsion or structure (lighter ships). There are nearby incentives to create
better propulsion and structure. We do not necessarily have to launch a
1000-year ship to create a 500-year ship.

------
api
How big of a space telescope would we need to see this planet in any actual
detail?

One of my sci-fi fantasies is to take a photo of an extrasolar planet and see
someone else's city lights. :) Of course if we could see that we could also
probably detect their radio emissions, but seeing someone else's lights would
somehow be cooler.

~~~
Thorondor
The planet is about 0.05 AU from Proxima Centauri, meaning we need an angular
resolution of about 1.9e-7 radians to even distinguish it from its host star.
Is that realistic?

In theory, an orbiting space telescope has a diffraction-limited resolution of
approximately 1.22λ/D (λ = wavelength, D = aperture size). Modern image
processing techniques can improve on this somewhat, but it makes a good order-
of-magnitude estimate. Anyway, this formula tells us a 4-meter telescope has a
maximum angular resolution of about 1.8e-7 radians at a typical visible light
wavelength of 600 nm. That would be just good enough... except that we don't
actually have a 4 meter orbiting space telescope. Resolving even large
features on the planet would require a much larger telescope, probably
kilometers or more.

For ground based telescopes, the situation is even worse because of
atmospheric effects. Despite being 10 meters in aperture, the Keck telescopes
in Hawaii are limited to an angular resolution of about 2e-7 radians because
of the atmosphere. However, there is reason to hope that the even larger
European Extremely Large Telescope will have enough resolution (about 5e-8
radians? hard to tell from their official publications) to image Proxima b
directly.
[https://www.eso.org/sci/meetings/2011/VLTI2011/presentations...](https://www.eso.org/sci/meetings/2011/VLTI2011/presentations/Kissler-
Patig.pdf) Again, this is still not enough to resolve surface features.

So, long story short the answer is unfortunately no at present. Maybe space-
based manufacturing will let us build a big enough telescope someday?

~~~
throwaway_yy2Di

        The planet is about 0.05 AU from Proxima Centauri, meaning
        we need an angular resolution of about 1.9e-7 radians to
        even distinguish it from its host star. Is that realistic?
    

Much more than that; that's the angle for HALF-maximum brightness, but since
the star's many orders of magnitude brighter than the planet, you'd need a
much larger reduction than 1/2\. Unfortunately, the diffraction-limited
pattern [0] has fat tails -- it's not Gaussian, the brightness is slow to drop
off away from the center (polynomially slow? [1]). I understand you'd need
>100 times the FWHM angle in practice, on the order of 1" for JWST for
instance [2]

This is why coronagraphs will be so useful.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airy_disk#Mathematical_details](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airy_disk#Mathematical_details)

[1] a log-log graph shows the envelope is close to inverse-cubic (x^-3)

[2]
[http://nexsci.caltech.edu/workshop/2016/NIRCam_Planets_and_B...](http://nexsci.caltech.edu/workshop/2016/NIRCam_Planets_and_BDs_Sagan2.pdf)

~~~
Thorondor
Technically, 1.22λ/D is the angle for the first dark circular ring of the Airy
disc (first zero of the relevant first-order Bessel function [0]). But you are
still right that the host star needs to be blocked out in some way to produce
a useful image. I think NASA is working on some ways to do this, see [1].

[0] [https://oeis.org/A245461](https://oeis.org/A245461)

[1]
[https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/resources/1015/](https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/resources/1015/)

~~~
throwaway_yy2Di
You're exactly right; good catch.

------
bikamonki
Since we're all rolling out our best fiction here, here's mine:

We'll get there animating matter by means of beaming laser instructions onto
it. We _just_ need to discover how we can move atoms by simply shinning a
laser onto them, a controlled pulse of different light frequencies that allows
us to arrange atoms in such way that they become tiny building blocks of nano-
machines, like making pizza dough: twisting, throwing, rolling, until we have
the right shape. Once the first Lego pieces are ready, we use the same laser
to instill the energy required to move them. These animated nano-machines will
then auto-assemble and become a bigger machine until we effectively, and
remotely, build and operate a full-featured robot. Said bot will send back
everything we need: images, audio, chemical reads, etc. Furthermore, our bot
can build more bots and eventually build the laser that can be beamed into the
next planet to repeat the process and expand colonization.

~~~
FreeFull
Unfortunately, even laser light has too much divergence (due to intrinsic
behaviour of waves) to remain one focused tight spot by the time it reaches
Proxima Centauri, or even the outskirts of our solar system.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser#The_light_emitted](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser#The_light_emitted)
does say that the rate of divergence is inversely proportional to the diameter
of the beam, so maybe if we make the beam really wide, it could reach Proxima
Centauri without spreading too much.. I don't know how wide that would have to
be.

------
thedangler
So I guess we start sending light patters to that planet and wait 8 years for
a response?

~~~
excalibur
I think we started a long time ago. The planet is a new find, Proxima Centauri
is not. If there were anyone there capable of responding, I think we would
have heard from them by now.

~~~
GarrisonPrime
Assuming they'd be capable of detecting the signal. And able to interpret it.
And willing to respond.

------
ngoldbaum
And here's the paper describing the discovery:
[http://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/es...](http://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/eso1629/eso1629a.pdf)

------
partycoder
It's not only temperature, presence of water and distance to star. It's also a
large variety of factors.

For instance... what is the atmospheric pressure? boiling point of water is
affected by atmospheric pressure. Even if temperature is low, if atmospheric
pressure is also low, water would boil at a lower temperature. In Mars for
instance, water boils all the time.

Some people might say you can probably create more atmospheric pressure by
terraforming the atmosphere. But not all planets can retain an atmosphere.
Solar activity, planet magnetic field and gravity can affect that.

Then, gamma ray exposure. Radiation can sterilize a planet. It would be good
to measure what is it like there.

------
oli5679
Its hard to draw definitive conclusions when you're speculating from a sample
of one! Imagine showing a child with no knowledge of animals a snake and
asking her to describe what she thinks the other animals on earth are like and
the habitats they occupy. I think there'd be a risk that she'd describe a
range of snakes and possibly lizards, but wouldn't be able to imagine
something radically different like a whale/eagle. That's the risk we run when
our only sample is the earth.

------
owenversteeg
Although we can't image it with current technology (JWST and Hubble both have
resolution of 100 milliarcseconds) we might be able to within a few years.

IR inferometers will be able to give us some data in just a few years, and the
E-ELT/TMT will also let us "image" it. The "image" won't be anything you can
really look at (E-ELT has resolution one milliarcsecond) but it'll give us
important data.

~~~
superkuh
In the medium term a 22 GHz radio interferometer using the sun as a
gravitational lens would be able to resolve 80 km diameter water clouds on
Proxima b. This talk by the inventor of the concept for SETI purposes explains
it pretty well:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObvKVe5H8pc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObvKVe5H8pc)

The real trick is getting out 600 AU to the gravitational focal line for the
light opposite proxima centuari and staying with ~10m of it via station
keeping. The only medium term solution to get out there in under 20 years are
electrostatic solar sails. See Bruce Wiegmann of NASA Marshall Space Flight
Center's talk from yesterday on the Heliopause Electrostatic Rapid Transit
System.
[http://livestream.com/viewnow/NIAC2016/videos/133764483](http://livestream.com/viewnow/NIAC2016/videos/133764483)

------
dang
Another good article: [http://www.nature.com/news/earth-sized-planet-around-
nearby-...](http://www.nature.com/news/earth-sized-planet-around-nearby-star-
is-astronomy-dream-come-true-1.20445) via
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12353448](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12353448).

~~~
throwaway_yy2Di
To piggyback on this, the _Nature_ paper (which is paywalled) has a free
preprint version here:

[http://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/es...](http://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/eso1629/eso1629a.pdf)

(PDF)

------
Diederich
Does anyone here have an idea of which kind of resolution
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope)
will provide? I'm assuming that this little rock might not even occupy a
single pixel, but I'd love to be wrong.

~~~
smeyer
The JWST has an angular resolution of 0.1 arc seconds (according to a quick
google search). This means a pixel at a distance of a parsec will correspond
to about 0.1 astronomical units, which is about 20 times the radius of the
Sun.

Of course, this doesn't mean that the telescope can't image light from a
smaller planet, just that there would be no resolution to distinguish features
on the planet itself. Similarly, even though lots of stars and other
astronomical objects are too small to resolve, we can still see the light from
them with telescopes (and our eyes).

~~~
ingenter
I'd like to add a few things:

\- 1 parsec ~~ 3.26 light years.

\- pixel coverage ~ angular resolution * distance. pixel coverage ~ 0.1 * AU /
(distance / 3.26 light-years)

------
lutusp
This discovery will greatly increase interest in gigantic telescopes, to allow
a closer look at the planet and its atmosphere.

------
bcjordan
Would it remain in a habitable state longer than Earth?

~~~
flashman
As with everything in astronomy: it depends. Just because the star is longer-
lived than the Sun doesn't mean its planets will remain habitable as long.
Small stars have planets that orbit close and become tidally locked, possibly
losing their water and atmosphere in tens or hundreds of millions of years. It
will be a long, long time until Proxima Centauri dies – four trillion years by
one estimate[1] – but its planet may be dead already.

Cheerfully, multicellular life on Earth only has somewhere between 600 and 800
million years left before the Sun gets too hot and all the carbon dioxide
disappears from the atmosphere. But single-celled organisms will persist
nearly another 3 billion years.[2]

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri)
[2][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future#Fut...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future#Future_of_the_Earth.2C_the_Solar_System_and_the_Universe)

~~~
throwaway_yy2Di

        ...tidally locked, possibly losing their water and
        atmosphere in tens or hundreds of millions of years.
    

How would this happen?

------
shmerl
Is it feasible to send deep space probes to such planet? Let's say the probe
is accelerated to high sub light speeds with ion thrusters. Can it reach it in
some sensible time then?

~~~
megalodon
Assuming the recently announced deep space travel project [1] works out and
their estimates are correct (unlikely), it would take 20 years of preparation
+ 20 years of travel + 4 years of data transfer.

Also mentioned in [1] is that if Voyager 1 was headed for Alpha Centauri it
would take 70,000 years.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/13/science/alpha-centauri-
bre...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/13/science/alpha-centauri-breakthrough-
starshot-yuri-milner-stephen-hawking.html)

~~~
fluxquanta
Related question: If some other advanced civilization sent us one of these
iPhone sized computers, do we have the technology to detect it before it zooms
past our planet or burns up in our atmosphere?

------
hoodoof
Is any article ever published on an exoplanet in without speculating that it
might harbor life?

~~~
dragonwriter
> Is any article ever published on an exoplanet in without speculating that it
> might harbor life?

Fairly common, as I recall, for articles about planets that either appear to
be gas giants or appear to be outside of the "habitable zone".

------
natch
What's super confusing to me is: If the planet is so much closer to its star,
and the star is so much larger than ours, why does the artist's conception
show the star as being so "small" (perceived size, not actual size) as viewed
from the planet? Was the artist just not thinking straight that day, or am I
missing something? Yes I understand it's an "artist's conception" but the
question remains.

~~~
zman0225
not too sure about how incorrect the artist's concept is, but we have to
remember that Promixa Centauri is a red dward with about 1/10 the radius of
our Sun.

~~~
natch
Ah maybe when the article said the star is "bigger" than the Sun it meant
"more massive." Which could explain the apparent contradiction, if it was more
massive and smaller in radius. Of course then it would be denser than the sun,
which would have to be the case for all of this to make sense.

------
sakopov
Posted this story when it came out a week ago but it got no traction. [1] This
is quite exciting but as far as I understand we are not quite there in terms
of technology to reach it within my lifetime.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12302489](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12302489)

~~~
justplay
i see, next time i would say, to use simple title to get HN attention.

------
misiti3780
Nick Lane's book/hypothesis really change the way I think about life on other
planets. His hypothesis is basically that the chances of Eukaryotic cells
emerging from bacteria (via natural selection) are so rare (it only happened
once in two billion years on our planet) that we really shouldnt expect to
find intelligent life on other planets - rather the life we will most likely
find will be small cells like bacteria and archaea, that lack a nucleus (and
never get very big). He does a much better job of explaining why, but it is
interesting nonetheless.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/22/the-vital-
ques...](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/22/the-vital-question-
nick-lane-review-secret-life)

------
DrNuke
For the foreseeable future, terraforming of Mars is much more attainable than
any going remote.

------
sampo
Here is slides and video for a talk "Adaptive Optics Imaging of Extosolar
Planets" from 2015.

Especially the review of history of the study of exoplanets is amusing. When
only our solar system was known, everyone believed in the theory of "inner
rocky planet region, outer gas giant planet region". When astronomers finally
started to have instruments to actually detect planets in other solar systems
in the mid-1990s, almost none of the detected exoplanets fit the theory
(slides 5-8).

[http://www.pppl.gov/events/colloquium-adaptive-optics-
imagin...](http://www.pppl.gov/events/colloquium-adaptive-optics-imaging-
extosolar-planets)

------
jomamaxx
"Major concerns that count against the presence of life are related to the
closeness of the star."

I think the 'major concerns' are that we don't exactly know what 'life' is,
and that since we have no information about any other 'biological entities'
such as ourselves anywhere else, we can't entirely assume that it's a common
thing.

I suggest that if we find life out there, it will be very common. But it's not
entirely plausible that this is the case.

It's an interesting statistical game, made very difficult by the fact we don't
fully grasp how 'we' became in the first place. I mean, we have the gist of
it, but there's so much that remains unknown.

------
Symmetry
I wouldn't hold out much hope for it being particularly habitable. Without the
early development of life you don't have a high oxygen atmosphere for most of
a planet's history. Without oxygen no ozone. Without ozone UV light breaks up
water molecules high in the atmosphere and the planet loses hydrogen on the
solar wind. And then you end up like Mars.

In terms of planets to establish a colony on I'd actually look for ones a bit
outside the traditional habitable zones. You'd need a bit more in terms of
solar panels and heating but lacking hydrogen is a big handicap.

~~~
elliotec
There's a hell of a lot that we don't know about the universe.

What if there can be life within the restrictions you suggest?

Or even more likely, what if there is something lifelike that doesn't
constitute as life?

Lots of questions and possibilities.

------
markingram
Let's say the chance of Aliens visiting Earth is 1 in 1 vigintillion, then the
chance of the Aliens being at similar levels of technological advancement as
humans is 1 in 1 centillion...

In other words, they are so advanced that they can visit us without us
knowing, unless they wanted us to know. They can wipe us out without us
knowing, unless they wanted us to know.

I am so glad all these are still theoretical.

~~~
inDigiNeous
It's kinda funny that almost always when talking about other races and levels
of technological development, the issue of a more highly advance race killing
us is raised.

I would see it highly more probable, that if another life form has (and
probably, definitely even, has) reached a state of technological development
where they can travel to the stars and beyond, they would have already went
through a phase in their development as a race, where they realized

'Hey, maybe it's not a good idea to kill ourselves or others, c'mon, let's
work together, evolve and go further!'

I could even speculate that this is one of the requirements of making it to a
level of technological and spiritual development where we can unlock the
secrets of the universe in mutual assurance that we are not afraid of killing
ourselves every day, and save that energy for something more constructive,
like building space ships..

~~~
FreeFull
I simply speculate that no life in our galaxy has gotten much further than we
have yet. If humanity manages to survive long enough to develop technology
necessary for exploring our stellar neighbourhood, I'm still not sure we'll
have completely figured out how to avoid all conflict yet.

~~~
whamlastxmas
I speculate that inter-solar-system travel is just not physically feasible on
a human-like time scale. In the absolute gigantic nature of the universe, a
scale beyond all human concept, we have not come across any evidence of other
life forms traveling to us. I have to believe that if they are capable, they
would be willing to do so, and they wouldn't do so and leave without
interaction. An alien race that explores seems to suggest to me that they have
curiosity and motivations. They have some element of humanity to them. And I
can't believe they'd come this far just to watch billions of people die (from
any cause) over the next tens of thousands of years.

I think our best hope is that one day, humanity evolves away from biological
bodies. We become hardware. We can now travel as an entire society throughout
space for millions or billions of years without a problem. At some point,
before the heat death of the universe when we're no longer able to get the
energy needed to travel (or even exist), we might come across another race
that has also progressed and advanced just like us and our paths happen to
intersect.

------
withinrafael
Melnorme are known to hang out around that system.

------
daveheq
I read this days ago, in fact I heard about it from some YouTube conspiracy
theorist just before that, saying NASA was covering it up when instead the
scientific evidence just wasn't conclusive that it was actually a habitable
planet if even a planet because it could have just been two stars' orbits or
other rocky bodies.

------
transfire
This planet is "Nemesis". If you are an Asimov fan, you know why. Damn he was
eerily prescient about this one.

~~~
Alexey_Nigin
The planet in Nemesis had one major difference which may turn out to be
crucial: it was not actually a planet. It was a moon. Since Proxima b is a
planet, it is probably locked with one side always facing the sun. In Nemesis,
Erythro was locked around the gas giant it was orbiting, but not locked around
the star, allowing normal day-night cycle.

------
mrfusion
Has anyone considered this planet could actually be a smaller planet with a
large moon tidally locked to each other?

------
thatha7777
Sorry for the , but if you took a Space Shuttle to Proxima Centauri it'd take
160,865 years.

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=distance+to+Proxima+Cen...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=distance+to+Proxima+Centauri+in+km+%2F+28300+kph)

------
cvarjas
Two submitted articles on the habitability of Proxima Centauri b:
[http://www.ice.cat/personal/iribas/Proxima_b/publications.ht...](http://www.ice.cat/personal/iribas/Proxima_b/publications.html)

------
Cortez
There's too many factors to say the zone may be habitable for life.

~~~
ralusek
"may" being the word that makes it true.

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dghughes
If the planet is tidally locked I say that may be good can you imagine an 11
day "year" but also rotating? It would be like living on the Scrambler
carnival ride.

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sangd
That will take the New Horizons 73,796 years to fly by.

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stormbrew
Was there an error in an early version of this article? There are two comments
in here saying 500ly away. Proxima is only ~4ly away.

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mirekrusin
Would moon also align its orbit? In the icy eyeball it could make some
interesting tides like on the football stadium.

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nxzero
Makes me wonder for AI and robotic "life" what would be the best "habitat" for
growth.

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ralusek
Funny that there have been exoplanets found on so many stars, but our closest
neighbor can still surprise us.

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bordercases
Pod Recovered

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KamiCrit
Well, sounds like it's time to spin up another Space Odyssey book. 4001
anyone?

~~~
Jaruzel
After the _awful_ 3001? Please... No. :(

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Pica_soO
well obviously we need the world smallest factory gunned there, directly
towards the star, slowing down on solar sails, drifting out into the local
orb-equivalent, manufacturing drones and tight-beam equipment.

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ianai
For some reason this really reminds me of Asimov's Nemesis book.

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meganvito
Ye, I am at an age too many untangile zeroes that I have no nexus.

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rubyfan
We should send Matthew Mcconaughey there asap.

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justinzollars
I hope we can get off of Earth.

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derflatulator
But is everything on a cob?

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Dowwie
and maybe the life on that planet just discovered us in the process

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ommunist
If there is oil on it, centaurian bloody dictatorship cannot be tolerated by
progressive democratical forces.

