Photo credit: Lorenzo Santinelli
Around 4-years-ago astronomers discovered a potentially habitable planet called Proxima b around the star Proxima Centauri, which is just 4.2 light-years from Earth. Now, they’ve found a second signal they believe belongs to a super-Earth orbiting the same star. Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our sun, is a low-mass red dwarf star known as an M-class dwarf and located in a triple star system known as Alpha Centauri, including binary pair Alpha Centauri AB. Read more for a video and additional information.
After scientists found the first planet around Proxima Centauri, they speculated about the existence of another planet in the system. So, they used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array of telescopes in Chile to trace light signals that appeared to be coming from that direction.
Even the closest planetary system to us may retain interesting surprises. Proxima Centauri hosts a planetary system that is much more complex than we knew, and we do not know how many unknown features are waiting to be discovered,” said Fabio Del Sordo in an email, study author and postdoctoral researcher in the department of physics at the University of Crete.