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A nearby exoplanet orbiting within the habitable zone of a star just 4.2 light-years from Earth may be home to a vast ocean, boosting its chances of supporting life. Since its discovery, questions about the conditions at the surface of Proxima b have been swirling; the planet’s mass is just about 1.3 times that of Earth’s, and the red dwarf star it circles is similar in age to our sun. Studies over the last few years, however, have both bolstered hopes of its habitability and shot them down. Now, a new study has once again raised the possibility that Proxima...

The discovery could challenge our theories of how gas giants like Jupiter form. A dark planet passes in front of a bright red star. Artist's conception of a large gas giant planet orbiting a small red dwarf star called TOI-5205. (Image credit: Katherine Cain, courtesy of the Carnegie Institution for Science) Astronomers have discovered an unusual planetary system consisting of a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting a tiny star that is only four times the size of the solar system gas giant. This "forbidden" configuration of a massive planet orbiting a relatively tiny star could challenge theories of how gas giant planets...

Schematic diagram of the newly discovered Ross 508 planetary system. The green region represents the habitable zone where liquid water can exist on the planetary surface. The planetary orbit is shown as a blue line. A Planet has Been Found That Shifts In and Out of the Habitable Zone A super-Earth planet has been found orbiting a red dwarf star, only 37 light-years from the Earth. Named Ross 508 b, the newly found world has an unusual elliptical orbit that causes it to shift in and out of the habitable zone. Therefore, part of the time conditions would be...

A new exoplanet only 4.2 light years away would prove that there's plenty left to discover in our own cosmic backyard. Scientists have found evidence of a new exoplanet candidate orbiting our closest stellar neighbor, Proxima Centauri. This exoplanet candidate, Proxima c, likely has a mass six times that of Earth. But it's unlikely that life would survive on the planet, given its frigid temperatures. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- The red dwarf star Proxima Centauri is our closest stellar neighbor; the star system is a measly 4.2 light years from Earth and can be seen with the naked eye. Because of this proximity,...

A civilization in the habitable zone of a dwarf star like Proxima Centauri might find it hard to get into interstellar space with conventional rocketsAlmost all space missions launched so far by our civilization have been based on chemical propulsion. The fundamental limitation here is easy to understand: a rocket is pushed forward by ejecting burnt fuel gases backwards through its exhaust. The characteristic composition and temperature of the burnt fuel set the exhaust speed to a typical value of a few kilometers per second. Momentum conservation implies that the terminal speed of the rocket is given by this exhaust...

Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the sun, recently burst forth with one of the most powerful flares ever seen for a star its size. The small red dwarf is generally invisible to the human eye, but this flare may have lit it up bright enough for some naked eye observers to see the event—at least under the right conditions, according to Alison Youngblood, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. According to the team's findings, the star brightened by a factor of 68 during the "superflare," unleashing 316,227,766,000 petajoules (316,227 petawatts) of energy. Proxima Centauri is just...

Astronomers have detected a massive stellar flare -- an energetic explosion of radiation -- from the closest star to our own Sun, Proxima Centauri, which occurred last March. This finding raises questions about the habitability of our Solar System's nearest exoplanetary neighbor, Proxima b [an Earth-like planet], which orbits Proxima Centauri.

Despite being only 4.3 light-years away from Earth, the trio of stars comprising Alpha Centauri still holds a lot of mysteries. It being the closest star system to us, you'd think we'd have teased out most of its secrets by now, but in fact we're still learning basic stuff about it. We know some of the basics, of course. The system has two stars that orbit each other in a binary, one of which (called Alpha Centauri A) is much like the Sun and the other (Alpha Cen B) is a tad smaller and cooler. Nearby is a third star,...

There may be small, rocky planets in the nearby Alpha Centauri triple-star system that have been overlooked, according to a new study published in the Astronomical Journal Alpha Centauri, also known as Rigil Kentaurus, Rigil Kent and Gliese 559, is the closest stellar system to Earth. This triple system is made up of the bright binary star formed by Alpha Centauri A and B, plus the faint red dwarf star Alpha Centauri C. The two brighter components are roughly 4.35 light-years away from us. Alpha Centauri C, better known as Proxima Centauri, is slightly closer, at 4.23 light-years. Compared to...

Astronomers are preparing to announce the discovery of a potentially habitable second Earth orbiting a nearby star, it has been claimed. Last month, sources leaked news that the European Southern Observatory (ESO) had spotted an alien world orbiting Proxima Centauri, our closest stellar neighbour. An anonymous source from the ESO told German publication Der Spiegel the discovery is the closest habitable planet to Earth, which means we could reach it within our lifetime. But the astonishing finding was not officially announced, sparking furious speculation that the second Earth has deliberately been kept a secret. Now the ESO is set to...

Explanation: Does the closest star to our Sun have planets? No one is sure -- but you can now follow frequent updates of a new search that is taking place during the first few months of this year. The closest star, Proxima Centauri, is the nearest member of the Alpha Centauri star system. Light takes only 4.24 years to reach us from Proxima Centauri. This small red star, captured in the center of the featured image by the Hubble Space Telescope, is so faint that it was only discovered in 1915 and is only visible through a telescope. Telescope-created X-shaped...

One hundred days into the bait-and-switch presidency, the “America Last” doctrine of The Hologram and his ChiCom-compromised administration is red-pilling Americans with each passing day – at least those who are not themselves compromised and/or Communists like those associated with the Black Lives Matter movement. Here is a short list of the America Last policies implemented to date (not all-inclusive by any means): Locking down the Capitol like the average Third World/Communist dictatorship Holding 6 January activists in solitary confinement without charges Opening the Mexican border to a flood of illegal aliens (and all the drug and human trafficking, spreading...

Scientists have spotted one of the largest stellar flares ever recorded in our galaxy. The jets of plasma shot outward from the sun's nearest neighbor, the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri. The flare, which was around 100 times more powerful than any experienced in our solar system, could change the way scientists think about solar radiation and alien life.Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf — the smallest, dimmest and most common type of main sequence stars in the galaxy — located approximately 4.25 light-years from Earth. Its mass is only one-eighth of the sun's, and it is orbited by two...

The most common type of star in the galaxy is the red dwarf star. None of these small, dim stars can be seen from Earth with the naked eye, but they can emit flares far more powerful than anything our Sun emits. Two astronomers using the Hubble space telescope saw a red dwarf star give off a powerful type of flare called a superflare. That’s bad news for any planets in these stars’ so-called habitable zones. Red dwarfs make up about 75% of the stars in the Milky Way, so they probably host many exoplanets. In fact, scientists think most...

Before man can cross the vast distances of space, the designs of spacecraft’s sails will be key – striking a delicate balance between mass, strength in addition to reflectivity. Working with NASA, California Institute of Technology (Caltech) scientists have created the fresh material out of silicon in addition to its oxide, silica. The team has figured out that will super-thin structures made of This specific composite can transform infrared light waves into a momentum that will would likely accelerate a probe to 134,000,000 mph. Speeds like This specific can carry a little probe to our closest stellar neighbours, a huddle...

A group of astronomers from the US, Europe, Chile and South Africa have determined that 70,000 years ago a recently discovered dim star is likely to have passed through the solar system's distant cloud of comets, the Oort Cloud. No other star is known to have ever approached our solar system this close - five times closer than the current closest star, Proxima Centauri. In a paper published in Astrophysical Journal Letters, lead author Eric Mamajek from the University of Rochester and his collaborators analyzed the velocity and trajectory of a low-mass star system nicknamed "Scholz's star." The star's trajectory...

Scholz's star -- named after the German astronomer who discovered it -- approached less than a light-year from the Sun. Nowadays it is almost 20 light-years away, but 70,000 years ago it entered the Oort cloud, a reservoir of trans-Neptunian objects located at the confines of the solar system. ... Now two astronomers from the Complutense University of Madrid, the brothers Carlos and Raúl de la Fuente Marcos, together with the researcher Sverre J. Aarseth of the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom), have analyzed for the first time the nearly 340 objects of the solar system with hyperbolic orbits (very...

Highlighted by astronomers at the University of Rochester and the European Southern Observatory, the star — nicknamed “Scholz’s star” — has a very low tangential velocity in the sky, but it has been clocked traveling at a breakneck speed away from us. In other words, from our perspective, Scholz’s star is fleeing the scene of a collision with us. “Most stars this nearby show much larger tangential motion,” said Eric Mamajek, of the University of Rochester. “The small tangential motion and proximity initially indicated that the star was most likely either moving towards a future close encounter with the solar...

ROBERT REICH: The Republican Economic Plan Is An Austerity Death-Trap Robert Reich Oct. 19, 2011, 6:25 PM Ron Paul’s newly-unveiled economic plan – promising to cut $1 trillion from the federal budget in year one (presumably that means 2013) – is only slightly more ambitious than what we’re hearing from other Republican candidates. They’re all calling for major spending cuts starting fifteen months from now. What are they smoking? Can we just put ideology aside for a moment and be clear about the facts? Consumer spending (70 percent of the economy) is flat or dropping because consumers are losing their...