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ALIEN DAWN: The impression of an artist on the surface of Proxima b
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Proxima b has been dubbed the "neighbor" of Earth and is often considered a plausible home for extraterrestrial life and potentially ours.
It is about the same size as the Earth and a sufficiently comfortable distance from its red dwarf star to have a temperature ranging between -90 30 and 30 ℃.
He is called our "neighbor" because his star – Proxima Centauri – is only 4.24 light-years away, the closest to the Earth after the Sun.
In more than a dozen simulations, researchers have discovered that the exoplanet almost always has a kind of liquid ocean, whether it is salt or fresh water.
"The larger the fraction of the planet with liquid water, the more likely life is there"
Anthony Del Genio, global scientist
The climate simulations have shown that "in a dynamic ocean, the hypothetical Proxima Centauri b with an atmosphere similar to that of the modern Earth can have a habitable climate with a large open sea area".
"The main message of our simulations is that there is a good chance that the planet is habitable," said lead author Anthony Del Genio at LiveScience.
Del Genio, a global scientist from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at NASA, hopes that someday, science will be advanced enough to explore the exoplanet life forms.
"The larger the fraction of the planet with liquid water, the more likely that, if there is life there, we can find evidence of this life with future telescopes, "he said.
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MISSION: Launch of the Voyager 1 global explorer from the Kennedy Space Center in 1977
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But what is a light-year and how close are we to our closest neighbor?
The light travels at a speed of about 670 616 629 km / h or 1 billion km / h.
In context, Voyager 1 is the fastest spacecraft to date and travels at 1/18000 of the speed of light.
In 30 years, he has traveled 1/600 a year light.
At this speed, it would take 72,000 years to reach our "neighbor".
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DISCOVERY: The sun sets on the very large telescope (VLT) in Chile, 1999
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NASA said the planet could not possibly withstand an airless atmosphere without protection from lethal solar radiation.
Proxima b orbits a red dwarf star, Proxima Centauri, which frequently emerges with extreme ultraviolet radiation and strips the planet of its atmosphere.
In March 2017, a rocket of exceptional magnitude was 10 times more powerful than the largest rockets of the Sun.
If there was still life on Proxima B, this huge burst of energy could have erased it and made future habitation impossible.
Living climate scenarios for Proxima Centauri b with a dynamic ocean were published in Astrobilogy on 5 September.
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