The fun stuff is buried in footnote [4]:<p>> 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.
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: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eieBXGpNYyE" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eieBXGpNYyE</a><p>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.<p>Also, link to the Nature paper for the lazy: <a href="http://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/eso1629/eso1629a.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/es...</a>
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: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25451264-death-s-end" rel="nofollow">https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25451264-death-s-end</a><p>Previously on HN: <a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+cixin+liu&ia=web" rel="nofollow">https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+cixin+...</a> <a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Cixin%20Liu&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Cixin%20Liu&sort=byPopularity&...</a>
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.
How big of a space telescope would we need to see this planet in any actual detail?<p>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.
Since we're all rolling out our best fiction here, here's mine:<p>We'll get there animating matter by means of beaming laser instructions onto it. We <i>just</i> 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.
And here's the paper describing the discovery: <a href="http://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/eso1629/eso1629a.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/es...</a>
It's not only temperature, presence of water and distance to star. It's also a large variety of factors.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Then, gamma ray exposure. Radiation can sterilize a planet. It would be good to measure what is it like there.
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.
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.<p>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.
Another good article: <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/earth-sized-planet-around-nearby-star-is-astronomy-dream-come-true-1.20445" rel="nofollow">http://www.nature.com/news/earth-sized-planet-around-nearby-...</a> via <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12353448" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12353448</a>.
Does anyone here have an idea of which kind of resolution <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope</a> will provide? I'm assuming that this little rock might not even occupy a single pixel, but I'd love to be wrong.
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?
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.
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.<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12302489" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12302489</a>
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.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/22/the-vital-question-nick-lane-review-secret-life" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/22/the-vital-ques...</a>
Here is slides and video for a talk "Adaptive Optics Imaging of Extosolar Planets" from 2015.<p>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).<p><a href="http://www.pppl.gov/events/colloquium-adaptive-optics-imaging-extosolar-planets" rel="nofollow">http://www.pppl.gov/events/colloquium-adaptive-optics-imagin...</a>
"Major concerns that count against the presence of life are related to the closeness of the star."<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.
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...<p>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.<p>I am so glad all these are still theoretical.
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.
Sorry for the , but if you took a Space Shuttle to Proxima Centauri it'd take 160,865 years.<p><a href="http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=distance+to+Proxima+Centauri+in+km+%2F+28300+kph" rel="nofollow">http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=distance+to+Proxima+Cen...</a>
Two submitted articles on the habitability of Proxima Centauri b:
<a href="http://www.ice.cat/personal/iribas/Proxima_b/publications.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ice.cat/personal/iribas/Proxima_b/publications.ht...</a>
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.
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.