The Closest Exoplanet to Earth Could Be 'Highly Habitable'

Space.com ^ | Sept 13, 2018 | Adam Mann, Live Science Contributor

[ETL]

An artist's impression of the view from Proxima Centarui b, a newly discovered Earth-sized planet just four light-years away. It is unclear if there is intelligent life in the universe,
but searches continue to find Earth-sized planets in the habitable zones of their respective stars.
Credit: NASA

[ETL]

"Proxima Centauri is a small, cool red-dwarf star located just 4.2 light-years from the sun."

FYI: one light year, the distance light travels in a year, at its speed of 186,000 miles/sec, works out to about 5.9 trillion miles.

And so, Proxima Centauri and this supposed planet is roughly 25 trillion miles away.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

And of course, we have no technology capable of accelerating anything with mass to even an appreciable fraction of the speed of light. Any surveillance craft we send to Proxima Centauri will not transmit any results for generations. But it would be interesting to start now, so our descendants could see what’s going on over there instead of looking at simulations.

[oldasrocks]

Well don’t send a boatload of dems over there as it would soon be uninhabitable.

[Leep]

“The Closest Exoplanet to Earth Could Be ‘Highly Habitable’”

Canada?

[FreeperCell]

Good point!

[Olog-hai]

[WHBates]

"Now, using computer models similar to those used to study climate change on Earth"

Now that right there is funny when you think about it.

[PIF]

Any surveillance craft we send to Proxima Centauri will not transmit any results for generations. But it would be interesting to start now, so our descendants could see what’s going on over there instead of looking at simulations.

—

By the time the ‘surveillance craft’ arrives, your descendants will be there to welcome it ...

[IronJack]

computer models similar to those used to study climate change

Or, what is known in the vernacular as "lies ..."

[Vaduz]

Flash Gordon refuels ship for light years cosmic hop, skip and jump away.

[Zathras]

Zathras likes that one!

[Brooklyn Attitude]

Iirc it would take 20000 years to go 1 light year with our fastest spacecraft.

[ETL]

“Now, using computer models similar to those used to study climate change on Earth”

Now that right there is funny when you think about it.

Lol! Didn’t catch that.

The “climate change” models don’t even take cloud cover into consideration. And it obviously has a major effect on temps.

[StAnDeliver]

Um, if you're made of gamma rays, sure you could live there.

[Henchster]

Del Genio and his colleagues had to make some reasonable guesses about the exoplanet Proxima Centauri b — namely, that it had an atmosphere and an ocean on its surface — for their work to proceed.

Yeah, just two very minor assumptions.

[ETL]

1 light year with our fastest spacecraft?

[ETL]

Re: Proxima Centauri’s no good, very bad day: Flare illuminates lack of a dust ring; puts habitability of Proxima b in question
https://carnegiescience.edu/news/proxima-centauri%E2%80%99s-no-good-very-bad-day-flare-illuminates-lack-dust-ring-puts-habitability

Thanks. Interesting article.

[Olog-hai]

Just don’t plug Tsoukalos into the Great Machine.

[rktman]

🤔. Well. Since the US "sux" so much, I say we sign up the whole bunch of libs and send 'em on their way. 🚀🛰👋🏼