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Was listening to John Batchelor last night as I was dropping off to sleep. He was interviewing a science reporter and they were discussing this topic. Fascinating! Even though Proxima Centauri is a red star and the planet is much closer to it than our earth is to the sun, the red star is so cool that the “Goldilocks zone” is just right regardless. Also, that planet does not rotate (as I recall), so one side is perpetually facing the red star, while the other is facing away. The reporter speculated, obviously, that any plant life would be on the side facing its red sun.
Don’t remember how they knew that the planet doesn’t rotate (was falling asleep - sorry).
A planet with a tidally locked synchronous rotation 5 million miles from a small (0.12 solar mass) star with strong x-ray emission from active stellar flaring.
Yeah, that’s so very “similar to Earth.” But the real evidence that the planet actually has some advanced form of intelligent life on that planet is whether they have the ability to prevent something like Hillary from running for a political office.
