star Proxima Centauri tagged posts

Artist’s impression of the planet orbiting the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri. Credit: ESO

Dimitra Atri, an astrobiologist with the Blue Marble Institute of Space Science, has run simulations of planet Proxima b, an exoplanet circling the star Proxima Centauri, which could possibly support life. Last August, a team of scientists identified a planet circling Proxima Centauri—at 4.2 light-years away, the red dwarf is the closet star to our own sun and the discovery of a planet in its Goldilocks zone excited the astronomy community because it represented the possibility extraterrestrial life. Since that time, Atri has created and run simulations meant to measure the impact of stellar flares on the planet and whether they might be enough to prevent or allow life to exist on the planet.

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