The planet just outside our solar system can be a "highly habitable" world with a liquid ocean

A nearby exoplanet orbiting in the habitable zone of a star just 4.2 light-years away from Earth could harbor a vast ocean, thus increasing its chances of sustaining life.

Since its discovery, questions about the surface conditions of Proxima b have been whirling; the mass of the planet is about 1.3 times that of the Earth, and the red dwarf star it surrounds is like our sun.

Studies conducted over the last few years, however, have increased hopes for livability and slaughtered them.

Now, a new study has once again raised the possibility that Proxima b can support life, suggesting that in good conditions, the exoplanet could support liquid water.

"The major message of our simulations is that there is a good chance the planet is habitable," Anthony Del Genio, a global scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute, told LiveScience.

In the study published this month in the journal Astrobiology, researchers carried out the first climate simulations of Proxima b with a dynamic ocean.

It is thought that the planet is locked with its star, Proxima Centauri, which means that it would have a permanent "day" and "night".

While all the water on the left side in the dark would be frozen, this is not necessarily the case for the other side.

"Climate models with static oceans suggest that Proxima b could harbor a small ocean surface at the edge of the day despite its low instability," the researchers say in the new study.

With a dynamic (moving) ocean considered for the first time, the extent of this liquid water becomes much larger, sometimes even plunging into certain parts of the night.

The simulations showed that "with a dynamic ocean, a hypothetical Proxima Centauri b, covered with ocean and with an atmosphere similar to that of the modern Earth, can have a habitable climate with a wide expanse of open ocean up to at night at low latitudes.

The researchers also modeled the different levels of salinity and the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, each of which can affect the size of the liquid regions.

In over a dozen simulations, the team found that the exoplanet almost always had a sort of liquid ocean.

But do not get upset for a dive.

"We find that an ocean-covered Proxima b could have a much larger area of ​​liquid surface water but at much cooler temperatures than previously suggested, because of ocean heat transport and / or salinity "Wrote the researchers.