Discovery to be announced on Wednesday.
Astronomers have found a new planet orbiting the star Proxima Centauri, the nearest stellar neighbor to our Sun, which is believed to have habitable conditions, like Earth.
Media reports said that the European Southern Observatory (ESO) that has spotted the planet is expected to hold a press meet on Wednesday to announce the discovery.
According to reports, the planet in our galactic neighborhood could be reached within our lifetime. According to a report in Daily Mail, the planet is located just 0.237 light years from the binary pair and 0.12 light years closer to Earth
Earlier this month, reports came out claiming that the ESO had discovered a new planet orbiting the star Proxima Centauri which might have habitable conditions. Sources close to the developments told German weekly Der Spiegel that the planet orbits its star at a distance that is favorable to life.
It is assumed that the planet is in the habitable zone of the star leading to the possibility of having liquid water on its surface.
“The still nameless planet is believed to be Earth-like and orbits at a distance to Proxima Centauri that could allow it to have liquid water on its surface — an important requirement for the emergence of life,” the source said.
“Never before have scientists discovered a second Earth that is so close by,” the source added.
As the discovery was not officially announced earlier, it is speculated that it had been kept as a secret for a long period.
According to the source, the scientists discovered the planet after intensive hard work.
“The discovery of possible planet around Proxima Centauri is very exciting,” Professor Phillip Lubin, from the University of California, Santa Barbara, told Universe Today.
“It makes the case of visiting nearby stellar systems even more compelling, though we know there are many exoplanets around other nearby stars and it is very likely that the Alpha Centauri system will also have planets,” he added.
Though NASA has discovered many planets in the past, most of them did not have habitable conditions. NASA’s planet-finding Kepler Spacecraft itself has discovered thousands of exoplanets.
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Scientists, engineers, business people and politicians need to get to work. The future of the human race is in space exploration and extra-terrestrial colonisation. Naturally, probes will go first, but the first people there get to claim it. This last point is just a fact.