Where’s the nearest planet where we could all live?

For years now, scientists and astronomers have been working to discover a new habitat for humans! They just discovered the closest possible Earth-like planet, pretty close and outside our solar system. This may be considered as a very significant historic moment!

Finding celestial bodies is a lot of hard work and the team of astronomers is moving at the technically feasible speed of research and limit of measurement. This newly discovered planet has been temporarily, unofficially named Proxima B by its discoverers, an international team at Queen Mary University in London, as it orbits our closest neighbouring star, Proxima Centauri. It is roughly 30 percent larger than Earth and closely orbits a star which is way cooler and smaller than our own. NASA is yet to make an official announcement regarding its discovery.

Proxima B is a planet warm enough for liquid water and has a rocky terrain. Assumptions are made that it could even have an atmosphere. Most importantly, it is just 4.2 light years away from Earth and scientists are wondering if this is the closest home for life found outside our solar system. Plans of sending probes to Proxima B have already been made for the next few decades.

Proxima B is part of the exoplanets around the nearby stars. Exoplanets are 2.5 years older than Earth and if there’s life on one of these planets, which is a very low possibility – almost negligible, its been around for a very long time. If all facts about this planet is true, then Yuri Milner and Stephen Hawking could target this much habitable planet as a part of their substantial and eye-opening Breakthrough Starshot project.

Covered in oceans of liquid water as recent evidence prove, the case of Proxima B is further strengthened because of all the calculations being done to figure out the various size and surface properties in more detail than ever before! This ‘ocean planet’ might also have some icy moons around similar to that of Jupiter or Saturn’s.

One of the biggest doubts regarding this planet is its closeness to the star, Proxima Centauri. Mercury fluctuations can be around highs of 427 Celsius to lows of -173 Celsius. Good news is that this star is different enough from our Sun to not create very hard conditions on Proxima B. This red dwarf star is just 0.1 percent as bright as the Sun and harbors just 12 percent the Sun’s mass. The star thus makes the habitable zone of the planet 25 times closer and better than the one surrounding our Sun.

Thus, Proxima B’s surface will not be too hot for water to exist in liquid form. Suggestions show that the planet would have a thin, glassy atmosphere, something which is very crucial for life to be sustained. However, all these are mere educated guesses and nothing about the planet can be made sure until some equipment is sent out there to measure the conditions there.The hope is to get some concrete information in the next decade or two and that Proxima B ends up looking just as promising as it does in the present!