Earth’s closest exoplanet most likely to be habitable, astronomers claim

In an effort to search for extraterrestrial life and habitable exoplanets, astronomers have claimed that Earth’s nearest planet in neighboring star system might be supporting life, considering its habitable qualities.

The closest star system from Earth, ‘Proxima Centauri’ star system, carries an Earth-sized planet dubbed as the ‘Proxima Centauri b’ and astronomers believe that it can be greatly habitable, having all the fundamentals to sustain life.

Using computer simulations, it was shown that just like Earth, the planet is capable of weather. It also has large areas of its surface covered in water and is at the perfect distance from its host stars, thus it could be harboring life.

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“The major message from our simulations is that there’s a decent chance that the planet would be habitable,” said Anthony Del Genio, lead author of a paper published in the journal Astrobiology.

Proxima Centauri b was first discovered two years ago in 2016. Its star, Proxima Centauri is a small, cool red-dwarf located some 4.2 light-years away from the sun. Regardless of the closeness, not much is known the planet apart from information that its mass is at least 1.3 times that of Earth and orbits its parent star after every 11 Earth days. Also, the exoplanet orbits in its star’s habitable zone, indicating that it just at the precise distance to receive adequate starlight to keep its surface above the freezing temperature of water, reported Live Science.

The simulations used to predict Proxima Centauri b’s traits included giving the planet an active, circulating ocean that can transfer from one side of the planet to its cold side efficiently. In the results it was noted that the movement of the atmosphere and ocean combined so that ‘even though the night side never sees any starlight, there’s a band of liquid water that’s sustained around the equatorial region.’

The team ran 18 separate simulation scenarios and all of them ended in the exoplanet having an open ocean and a possibility of supporting life. “The larger the fraction of the planet with liquid water, the better the odds that if there’s life there, we can find evidence of that life with future telescopes,” Del Genio said.