Planets, Planets Everywhere

The European Southern Observatory made major headlines with their discovery of an Earth-like exoplanet orbiting our nearest neighboring star. On Dynamics of Cats, Steinn Sigurðsson writes: "ESO researchers, using the radial velocity variability technique, have detected a quite robust signature of a planet with a mass of 1.3 Earth masses, or more, in a 11 day orbit around Proxima Centauri." The planet is within the red dwarf's habitability zone, but we don't yet know if it harbors an atmosphere or liquid water. Greg Laden writes "now that we have an Earth-like planet in our sights, perhaps there will be impetus for both funding and effort to squint really really hard at it and see if any life is there." Ethan Siegel says "we can use giant ground-based telescopes for high-resolution spectroscopic images of these worlds. We can use space-based telescopes with coronagraphs or starshades to image these worlds directly over time. Or we could undertake a journey across space." Reflecting on the number and quality of exoplanets discovered in the last few years, Steinn Sigurðsson concludes "What a nice Universe." Amen.

Read more on Starts With a Bang:

• How Science Can Learn More About ‘Proxima b’ And All Earth-Like Worlds
• Exoplanets: from fluke to fact
• Ten ways ‘Proxima b’ is different from Earth