Amid the ballyhoo over last night’s binders and the catchphrases it may have generated, better news was announced…a probable planet orbiting the solar system closest to us. With all these past exoplanet discoveries, I kept wondering, “When are they going to figure out our neighbors!? All these other candidates not just suck, they’re dozens, hundreds of light years away.” The most detailed story I read was in The Economist, I was shocked the author couldn’t find a way to give the political left a backhanded compliment in the process because NASA proposed mostly through Democratic administrations until Reagan found a way to weaponize space.
I wouldn’t save up to buy extraterrestrial real estate yet. The candidate orbits the Alpha Centauri B which is a K1 V star, not quite our sun, and is tidally locked to show one side and orbits over three and a half days. At that distance, one hemisphere is pretty baked. There is a silver lining. The planet is almost as massive as Earth, thus making this exoplanet the smallest ever found.
On to finding even smaller exoplanets, additional ones in the system and most importantly, a good earth-like candidate in the goldilocks zone. Here’s the biggest qualifier…orbiting Alpha Centauri A, a G2 V like our Sun yet 110 percent the mass. I wouldn’t fear B interfering too much, the gap between the binary stars averages around 25 AU (25 times the distance the Earth is from the Sun). However over the 80-year cycle, B and A get as close at 10 AU so it could play havoc on both stars’ worlds.
Another discovery, according to a piece from io9.com, I didn’t know Avatar‘s Pandora was in Alpha Centauri. I never gave it much thought where exactly the planet/moon was, Cameron didn’t many details about the trip from Earth.
Onward toward finding another Class M planet! We’ve found over 800 in 20 years, I’m confident we’ll discover something before my lifetime has completed. I only wished to live long enough to go there since scientists are seriously working on FTL travel.