What's It Like On Our Neighbor, Proxima b?

By Sarah Lewin, Staff Writer | August 25, 2016 07:00am ET

The newfound planet Proxima b is the closest planet outside our solar system ever discovered, and scientists think it might be amenable to life. But what would it be like to live on our nearest interstellar neighbor?

The two facts researchers are surest of are that it circles its star every 11.2 days — to match the telltale stellar wobble they used to identify the orbiting planet — and that its minimum mass is 1.3 times that of the Earth. The rest is up to probability and future measurements, but the results look promising — especially because of its 4.2 light-year distance from Earth at Proxima Centauri, the closest neighbor star to the sun.


"It's not only the closest terrestrial planet found, it's probably the closest planet outside our solar system that will ever be found because there's no star closer to our solar system than this one," Ansgar Reiners, an astrophysicist at Gottingen Institute for Astrophysics and co-author on the paper, said at a news briefing. Its closeness to Earth makes it not only a possible destination for humankind, but a perfect target to gather more information from home. [Proxima b: Complete Coverage of the Exoplanet Discovery]

Researchers think the planet is likely rocky, and it has a surface one could walk on — it's probably not a tiny gas planet. (Its location around a red dwarf star suggests it's not a giant gas planet, either, like Jupiter or Saturn.)

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Proxima b By the Numbers: Possibly Earth-Like World at the Next Star Over

By Samantha Mathewson, Staff Writer | August 24, 2016 01:01pm ET

An Earth-like alien planet orbiting a star known as Proxima Centauri — Earth's closest stellar neighbor — has been identified by astronomers from the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

The newfound exoplanet, aptly named Proxima b, lies within the habitable zone of Proxima Centauri and is believed to have a suitable surface temperature that would allow for the presence of liquid water. This means that this rocky, Earth-like world has the potential to support life.

Evidence of Proxima b was found using ESO telescopes mounted at the La Silla Observatory in Chile, as well as other telescopes around the world. Here's a look at the numbers behind the newfound alien planet:

4.85 billion: The age of Proxima Centauri. For reference, the sun is 4.6 billion years old — that's old.

7 million: The distance, in kilometers, at which Proxima b orbits its star Proxima Centauri. Even though Proxima b orbits much closer to its star than Earth orbits the sun, Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf, which means it is smaller and cooler than the sun. However, it is still likely that Proxima b is impacted by any solar flares from Proxima Centauri.

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