The closest star in the solar system, Proxima Centauri, is accompanied by an earth-like planet. Now researchers have even discovered suitable conditions for water in liquid form, as the University of Geneva (UNIGE) announced on Thursday.
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This is how it could look on the planet Proxima b (illustration).
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(sda)
The planet named Proxima b has a little more mass than Earth and orbits its star in a habitable zone. This was the result of a study with Geneva participation, which was published in the specialist journal “Astronomy & Astrophysics”. The observations were carried out with the “Espresso” spectrograph on the Very Large Telescope of the European Southern Observatory in Chile.
Does a protective atmosphere exist?
The study includes the analysis of the so-called radial speeds. This enables the orbits of stars and the properties of their satellites to be determined. Accordingly, the temperature on the surface of Proxima b should allow water to be in liquid form – and life on the planet would be possible. It is still unclear whether there is any water on this.
In addition, the star Proxima Centauri bombarded its planets with X-rays. The question, therefore, is whether the earth-like planet has a protective atmosphere, said Christophe Lovis, head of data processing at Espresso, in the UNIGE release. Answers will soon be provided by new instruments that are specially built to detect the light emitted by Proxima.
Notes on new exo planets
Scientists discovered the planet Proxima b four years ago, at that time using an older spectrograph called “Harps”. “We were already very satisfied with the performance of Harps, with which hundreds of exo-planets have been discovered in the past 17 years,” said astronomer Francesco Pepe, professor at UNIGE and head of espresso, quoted in the message. Thanks to espresso, the scientists have now tripled the measuring accuracy.
In the current measurement data, the Geneva team also found indications of another signal that could have come from an as yet unknown planet. “If this signal is of planetary origin, it would be the smallest planet that could ever be found using the radial velocity method,” said Francesco Pepe in the message.
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