An artistic rendering of Proxima b with its host star Proxima Centauri. "It’s really exciting because the proximity, it can’t get any better," says Michael Endl, a research scientist at the University of Texas at Austin who worked on the study. Should we ever want to explore an exoplanet, we’ll probably want to visit this one. And given how close Proxima b is to us, the planet just became the top candidate in the search for alien life outside of our Solar System. That’s important, since liquid water is a key ingredient for life here on Earth if Proxima b has liquid water, it’s possible the planet could support life, as well. And Proxima b is squarely in this region. So its "habitable zone" - the region around a star where temperatures are just right for liquid water to exist on a planet’s surface - is much closer to the star than it is to our Sun. Proxima Centauri is a cool red dwarf star, much smaller and fainter than our Sun.
Proxima b’s unusually close orbit is actually an ideal location for the planet. As a result, Proxima b’s orbit is a mere 11.2 days - about an eighth the length of Mercury’s orbit. The planet is also super close to Proxima Centauri, located around 4.3 million miles away from the star, or just 5 percent of the distance from the Earth to the Sun.
The planet, called Proxima b, is at least 1.3 times the size of Earth and is most likely rocky, according to research published today in the journal Nature.
It's perhaps the most exciting exoplanet ever found That makes this world the closest possible residence for alien life outside our Solar System - and perhaps the most exciting exoplanet ever found. Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our Solar System, has a planet that may have just the right features to support life on its surface.
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