Scientists are preparing to unveil a latest planet in our galactic neighborhood which is "believed to be Earth-like" & orbits its star at a distance that could favor life, German weekly Der Spiegel report Friday. The exoplanet orbits a well-investigated star called Proxima Centauri, part of the Alpha Centauri star system, the periodical said, quoting anonymous sources.
"The motionless nameless planet is believed to be Earth-like & orbits at a distance to Proxima Centauri that could allow it to have liquid water on its outside an important requirement for the surfacing of life," said the magazine. “not at all before have scientists exposed a second Earth that is so close by," it said,
addition that the European Southern Observatory (ESO) will announce the discovery at the end of August.
The story gave no further details.
Contacted by AFP, ESO spokesman Richard Hook said he is aware of the story, but refused to confirm or deny it. "We are not creation any comment," he said. NASA has announced the discovery of latest planets in the past, but the majority of those worlds were either too hot or too cold to host water in liquid form, or were complete of gas, like our Jupiter and Neptune, rather than of rock, like Earth or Mars.
Previous year, the U.S. space agency unveiled an exoplanet that it describe as Earth's "closest-twin."
Named Kepler 452b, the planet is about 60 percent bigger than Earth and could have active volcanoes, oceans, sunlight like ours, twice as much gravity and a year that lasts 385 days. But at a space of 1,400 light-years away, humankind has little hope of attainment this Earth-twin any time soon.
In contrast, the exoplanet orbiting Proxima Centauri, if confirmed, is just 4.24 light-years away. This is a mere stepping stone in relative to the scale of the universe but still too far left for humans to reach in present-generation chemical rockets. According to NASA's Godard Space Center's website, it lies 2,479,271,0570,269 miles away, or 271,000 times the distance of Earth to the Sun. Proxima Centauri, discovered in 1915, is one of 3- stars in the Alpha Centauri system, a group mainly visible from the southern hemisphere.
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