Tag: Proxima Centauri b

Inside The Search For Another Habitable Planet Within 100 Light Years Of Earth

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Article by Jamie Carter                             November 25, 2019                               (forbes.com)

• The Habitable Exoplanet Hunting Project is a global attempt to discover potentially habitable exoplanets within 100 light years, involving a network of over 25 amateur astronomy observatories around the globe. It will focus on ten stars within 100 light years of Earth, all of which have confirmed transiting exoplanets within the so-called “habitable zone”.

• The exoplanet known as Kepler 442b, which orbits a K-type star and could be even more habitable than Earth. M-type stars, or ‘red dwarfs’, are small, cool stars that are impossible to see with the naked eye, but they are by far the most common type of star in our region of the Milky Way. G, K and M-type stars are “the stars that are most likely to host exoplanets with water on their surface because they don’t flare,” says Alberto Caballero, an amateur astronomer at The Exoplanets Channel and the coordinator of the ‘Habitable Exoplanet Hunting Project’. “If a star flares, it can damage the atmosphere of the exoplanets.”

• The ideal exoplanet is a dense and rocky “super Earth” planet, almost seven times bigger than Earth, called LHS 1140 b, orbiting within the habitable zone of the red dwarf star LHS 1140 about 40 light years distant in the constellation of Cetus. Three other prime candidates would be:
Proxima Centauri b – an exoplanet orbiting an M-type red dwarf star 4.24 light years away in the constellation of Centauri;
Tau Ceti e – an exoplanet orbiting an M-type red dwarf star 11.9 light years away in the constellation of Cetus;
Teegarden b -an exoplanet orbiting an M-type red dwarf star 12 light years away in the constellation of Aries.

• Tau Ceti e is a “super Earth” exoplanet almost four times the mass of Earth. It is so massive that you can see Ceti in the constellation Cetus with the naked eye, level with Orion’s Belt in the northern hemisphere.

• The Project has been careful to ignore stars that have Jupiter-sized gas giant exoplanets in their habitable zones unless the star is so big that it may not adversely affect other exoplanets in the star’s orbit. “We’re trying to monitor the stars 24/7 for about two months,” says Caballero, “so it’s easier for us if we focus on M-type stars because any exoplanets would have really short orbital periods. But the most ideal ones are K-type stars.”

• NASA’s orbiting space telescope, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite or ‘TESS’ has already found 29 confirmed exoplanets. Caballero says, “So far (TESS has) not detected any potentially inhabited planets, but it’s only just starting on the northern hemisphere.” In the long term, Caballero thinks that studying an exoplanet’s ‘biosignature’ from its light spectrum with better instruments will yield the most potentially habitable exoplanets. Says Caballero, “[I]t’s all about having better technology.”

• [Editor’s Note]  The Habitable Hunting Project might need to strike Proxima b off of their list. In March 2018, the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in the Chilean Andes, reported that the red dwarf star, Proxima Centauri, fired off a powerful “superflare” which could be seen from the Earth. (see Space.com article here) It briefly boosted the star’s brightness by a factor of 68. The astronomy team noted that “life would struggle to survive in the areas of Proxima b exposed to these flares.”

 

The search for extraterrestrial life is easily the most profound question in modern astronomy, but it’s hampered by a lack of both technology and time.

Is life possible beyond the solar system? If we’re ever to find out, we must study and categorise the stars to answer this one, simple question: if we had a spaceship we could send to the nearest Earth-like planet, which one would we send it to?

            Alberto Caballero

When astronomers find exoplanets, they put them on a list marked “potentially habitable” or else use them as clues that habitable exoplanets may lurk in their star system. Most of them are exceptionally far away. So far we’ve found three close exoplanets that orbit within a star’s so-called “habitable zone” where liquid water could exist on its surface.

If astronomers had to choose a planet in another star system to send a spaceship, these three would be prime candidates:

• Proxima Centauri b: an exoplanet orbiting an M-type red dwarf star 4.24 light years away in the constellation of Centauri.

• Tau Ceti e: an exoplanet orbiting an M-type red dwarf star 11.9 light years away in the constellation of Cetus.

• Teegarden b: an exoplanet orbiting an M-type red dwarf star 12 light years away in the constellation of Aries.

Where will we most likely find others? Though the vast majority of star systems remain unexplored, we know of plenty that contain planets not in the star’s habitable zone. These star systems are surely the best places to look.

Cue the Habitable Exoplanet Hunting Project, a global attempt attempt to discover potentially habitable exoplanets within 100 light years, and involving over 25 observatories.

What is the Habitable Exoplanet Hunting Project?

It’s a network of amateur astronomy observatories around the globe—from the U.S. and Uzbekistan to South Africa and Australia—that is studying 10 stars within 100 light years for signs of new, as yet unfound exoplanets. All of the stars that will be studied already have confirmed transiting exoplanets outside the so-called “habitable zone”. “We’ve chosen observatories in deserts or high regions or mountains because weather is always the main problem with projects like this,” says Alberto Caballero, an amateur astronomer at The Exoplanets Channel and the coordinator of the Habitable Exoplanet Hunting Project. “But we will need to find more observatories in the southern hemisphere.”

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Exoplanets May Have ‘Greater Variety of Life’ Than Exists on Earth, Study Claims

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Article by Mark Waghorn and Shivali Best               August 22, 2019                (mirror.uk.co)

• Dr. Stephanie Olson is leading a study at the University of Chicago, using a NASA computer program that simulates the climates and seas of exoplanets outside of our own star system. She told the Goldschmidt Geochemistry Congress in Barcelona: “NASA’s search for life in the universe is focused on so-called Habitable Zone planets, which are worlds that have the potential for liquid water oceans. …[N]ot all oceans are equally hospitable – and some oceans will be better places to live than others due to their global circulation patterns.” Dr. Olson says, “It shows us conditions on some exoplanets with favorable ocean circulation patterns could be better suited to support life that is more abundant or more active than life on Earth.”

• Planets with strong ocean circulation, higher air density, slower orbits and more continents are the planets where extraterrestrials would most likely be found. Ocean circulation fuels the processes for the evolution of life. The nutrients from the ocean bottom upwell to feed the surface algae. Zooplankton eat the algae. More complex organisms consume the zooplankton. Soon the area becomes rich with marine life. Says Dr. Olsen, “More upwelling means more nutrient resupply, which means more biological activity. These are the conditions we need to look for on exoplanets.”

• There are up to 200 billion galaxies in the universe. Our galaxy holds 400 billion stars. The first exoplanet was discovered in 1992, and currently more than 4000 exoplanets have been confirmed. The nearest known exoplanet is Proxima Centauri b, which is 4.25 light years away. Two years ago seven Earth-sized planets were detected 40 light years away circling a star, named Trappist-1, all of which could have water. The discovery of exoplanets has accelerated the search for life outside our solar system, although the huge distances make them impossible to reach with space probes.

• Dr. Olsen’s study could help two of the largest ever proposed space telescopes – NASA’s HabEx (‘Habitable Exoplanet Imaging Mission’) and LUVOIR (‘Large UV Optical Infrared Surveyor’) – detect alien life. Telescopes and other remote sensors help scientists understand the conditions that prevail on exoplanets through sophisticated models for planetary climate and evolution. And they can identify which planets might host life. Says Dr. Olsen, “Now we know what to look for, so we need to start looking.”

• [Editor’s Note]   Mainstream science is a sad paradox. On one hand, scientists believe that they are on the cutting edge of technology, and that all other galactic civilizations are constrained by the same technological limitations that we cope with. On the other hand, the Deep State possesses a wealth of unimaginable technology that would revolutionize our existence, but it has intentionally kept it secret from the general population, available only to the elites and their secret space programs.

Since the Deep State has also kept the abounding extraterrestrial presence a secret, these scientists, with their limited knowledge, falsely believe that since there are no aliens, then humankind must be an anomaly. As they were educated by the Carnegie/Rockefeller educational system to believe that Earth humans evolved from microbes in a primordial soup, these scientists are obsessed with finding exoplanetary conditions that might support microbial life, just to prove there is life elsewhere in the galaxy which they strongly suspect.

Soon these scientists will wake up to the fact that they have been lied to their entire lives, and in fact, every single star system in the universe holds life. Much of it is intelligent life with technologies and densities of consciousness that far-surpass our own. We are at the bottom of the food chain. We have been controlled by advanced negative self-serving extraterrestrials throughout our history, but no more so than today. These puppet masters have been ramping up their control mechanisms lately because they know that humanity is on the verge of waking up to realize that we have been laboring under a spiritual and technological embargo since World War II, and they are afraid of the day when humanity will see the truth, rise up and claim our sovereignty.

 

Planets orbiting distant stars outside our solar system may have an even greater variety of life than Earth, harbouring weird and wonderful aliens beyond our wildest imagination, scientists say.

Some will have better ocean circulation which fuels the processes necessary for the evolution of life, making them potentially more habitable than Earth.

And extraterrestrials are most likely to be hanging out on those with higher air density, slower orbits and more continents, say scientists.

The findings are based on a NASA computer program that simulated the climates and seas of these mysterious worlds, known as exoplanets.

Two years ago seven Earth-sized planets were detected 40 light years away circling a single star, named Trappist-1. All could have water.

The Milky Way has up to 400 billion stars – and there are up to 200 billion galaxies in the universe.

        Dr. Stephanie Olson

Study leader Dr Stephanie Olson, of the University of Chicago, said the model suggested some planets have better conditions for life to thrive than Earth itself.

She said: “This is a surprising conclusion. It shows us conditions on some exoplanets with favourable ocean circulation patterns could be better suited to support life that is more abundant or more active than life on Earth.”

Primitive microbes evolve in the sea due to a phenomenon called ‘upwelling’ where cold water rich in nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus move to the surface.

This fuels algae, tiny photosynthesising plants that float in the ocean and often develop quickly into a ‘bloom’.

Explained Dr Olson: “Our work has been aimed at identifying the exoplanet oceans which have the greatest capacity to host globally abundant and active life.

“Life in Earth’s oceans depends on upwelling, or upward flow, which returns nutrients from the dark depths of the ocean to the sunlit portions of the ocean where photosynthetic life lives.

“More upwelling means more nutrient resupply, which means more biological activity. These are the conditions we need to look for on exoplanets.”

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The Exoplanet Next Door

by John Wenz                    (astronomy.com)

• Since first detecting a weak signal from our Sun’s closest neighbor, Proxima Centauri (only 4.24 light-years away) in 2013, a group of astronomers from Germany, France and Chile who call themselves the “Pale Red Dot Team’ have been looking for – and have found – an Earth-mass planet in the habitable zone of that star. Proxima was monitored closely for subtle variations on the European Southern Observatory’s HARPS instrument over a series of nights from January 19 to March 31, 2016. By a process called radial velocity that looks for Doppler shifts in a star’s light due to the tug of a planet, the researchers could estimate the mass and orbital frequency to zero in on a planet, which they named Proxima Centauri b (PCb). Their findings were published in the science journal Nature last summer.

• Turns out that PCb is quite Earth-like. It slightly bigger and is roughly the mass of our planet and is located in just the right “Goldilocks zone” in relation to its star where, if it has an atmosphere, liquid water could exist on the surface. The exoplanet’s distance from its star is only one-fifth the distance from Mercury to the Sun. But Proxima Centauri is only a little larger than Jupiter, considered the runt of the litter in the Alpha Centauri system.

• The reason that the five billion year-old PCb planet revolves so quickly around its star is because it is tidally locked to it. The same side of the planet faces Proxima Centauri at all times, much like the same side of the Moon faces Earth at all times. But if PCb still has an atmosphere, it could reach temperatures up to 86° F (30° C) on its sunlit side, and -22° F (-30° C) on its darker side, bringing it into quite Earth-like temperature ranges. But if, for some reason, PCb has lost its atmosphere, the lack of atmosphere could have evaporated any water on the planet long ago, leaving a cold, barren planet of -40° F (-40° C).

• The key to preserving an atmosphere would be the existence of a magnetic field. Researchers have gone back and forth whether a tidally locked planet could have a core that stirs with its rotation, thus generating a magnetic field. The magnetic field shields the planet from the worst excesses of its star, which then settles into a state of relative dormancy. The Pale Red Dot astronomers believe that as a planet migrates closer to its sun while creating a magnetic field, this magnetic field could remain active even after a planet gets so close to become tidally locked to its sun.

• Astronomers need to observe the planet in greater detail in order to further characterize it. Planets are so small, the signals are so weak, it almost needs its own dedicated telescope. Currently, no instrument in space or on the ground is sensitive enough to pick up reflected light from older and smaller planets. But the James Webb Space Telescope currently under construction might be a mega-telescope that can actually detect biosignatures, or even molecules, in the atmospheres of other planets. Other proposed methods of getting deeper into a planet’s biosignature include ‘stellar suppression’ which blocks the surrounding light of the star, and infrared.

• “To find (a habitable planet) around the nearest, best-studied star … maybe we’re just really lucky, or maybe there really are just billions of M-dwarf planets out there waiting for us to find them,” says Elisabeth Newton, a Kavli post-doctoral fellow at MIT who studies red dwarf, or M-dwarf, systems. Nearly every star is suspected to have a planet. Some of those could be habitable. If it ends up that PCb is barren, then perhaps we’ll have better luck looking at the next star over, Barnard’s Star.

 

The hunt for exoplanets has, in some ways, been about the hunt for an Earth-like planet – something warm where water could exist. Headlines tout each discovery as “the most Earth-like planet yet.” Many of those planets are far away.

But a new discovery published August 24 in Nature hits closer to home, with an Earth-mass planet in the habitable zone of its star. What’s more, that star is Proxima Centauri, only 4.24 light-years away. That means that there is no solar system that will be closer to Earth in our lifetimes.

And so far, the exoplanet, named Proxima Centauri b, is shaping up to be quite Earth-like, roughly the mass of our planet and in just the right place where, if it has an atmosphere, liquid water could exist on the surface.
This is as in our backyard as it gets.

“I think it actually marks a transition,” Jeffrey Coughlin, a SETI Institute scientist not involved in the study who assembles the Kepler catalog, says. “Twenty years ago, we were finding the first exoplanets and it was totally exciting,” he says. Then there was the Kepler telescope, which found thousands of planets, including some in the habitable zone, and some within a few dozen light-years of us.

And now there’s a planet of 1.3 Earth masses right next door, zipping around its star in 11.2 days. Its distance of 4,349,598 miles (7 million kilometers) from its star may seem tiny, at just one-fifth the distance between Mercury and the Sun, but Proxima Centauri is the runt of the litter in the Alpha Centauri system. At a diameter of 124,274 miles (200,000km), it’s only 1.43 times the diameter of Jupiter.

So how was there a planet hiding around the closest star to us, just waiting to be discovered? The simple answer: Finding a planet is really hard. Kepler found thousands of planets by staring at 145,000 stars in a minute region of the sky at the tail end of Cygnus, waiting for the 1 percent chance a planet would directly pass in front of a star and cause a dip in its light, in a method known as transiting.

But the problem with the Proxima Centauri planet is that it doesn’t transit — at least not from our vantage point. In order to witness a transit, the orbital plane of the planets must be at or near our line of vision, but not all solar systems have the same orientation. A star might have all of its planets aligned at a 90-degree angle from us, with the planets orbiting in such a way that they never pass in front of their star for our telescopes to see. While some planets have been found by direct imaging (that is, appearing in a photo along with its star) it’s not possible of yet with Proxima, a 5 billion year old planet. Unless the planets are very young and very large, no instruments are currently capable of directly imaging these planets.

How to find a planet (that doesn’t want to be found)

That’s why the Pale Red Dot project, tasked with finding a planet around our nearest neighbor, had to turn to indirect — but reliable — methods of detection. The researchers chose radial velocity, a process that looks for shifts in a star’s light due to the tug of a planet, sometimes called the Doppler shift method. Subtle movements of gravity cause the light of a star to move toward the blue end of the light spectrum, which means it’s moving toward us, or the red end of the spectrum, which means it’s moving away. Based on those changes, researchers can give a mass estimate, and the frequency gives an idea of the orbit.

The planet itself was found over a series of nights from January 19 to March 31, 2016, during which Proxima was monitored closely for subtle variations on the European Southern Observatory’s HARPS instrument.

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Scientists Suggest Closest Exoplanet to Earth May Sustain Life

September 13, 2018                        (sputniknews.com)

• After studying eighteen computer simulations, scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City have determined that the exoplanet Proxima Centauri b, which orbits the closest star to the sun, has enormous seas of liquid water on its surface that may harbor living organisms according to research published by the journal Astrobiology.

• Anthony Del Genio, a planetary scientist at the Goddard institute, said, “The major message from our [computer] simulations is that there’s a decent chance that the planet [Proxima Centauri b] would be habitable.”

• Proxima Centauri b was discovered in 2016 and has a mass that is at least 1.3 times that of Earth.

 

US scientists have found that the exoplanet Proxima Centauri b, which orbits the closest star to the sun, may harbor living organisms thanks to enormous seas of liquid water on its surface, according to research published by the journal Astrobiology.

“The major message from our [computer] simulations is that there’s a decent chance that the planet [Proxima Centauri b] would be habitable,” Anthony Del Genio, a planetary scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, pointed out.

He explained that the team of scientists conducted a total of 18 separate computer simulation scenarios, and that in almost all of them, Proxima Centauri b was seen having an open ocean which persisted over at least some part of the exoplanet’s surface.

“The larger the proportion of the planet with liquid water, the better the odds are that if there’s life there; we can find evidence of that life with future telescopes,” Del Genio noted.

His remarks came amid astronomers’ efforts to find out more about Proxima Centauri b, which was discovered in 2016 and has a mass that is at least 1.3 times that of Earth.

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