{"id":28039,"date":"2016-08-25T03:30:43","date_gmt":"2016-08-25T03:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/proxima-b-potential-earth-like-planet-discovered\/"},"modified":"2016-08-25T03:31:07","modified_gmt":"2016-08-25T03:31:07","slug":"proxima-b-potential-earth-like-planet-discovered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/proxima-b-potential-earth-like-planet-discovered\/","title":{"rendered":"Proxima b: Potential Earth-like planet discovered"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Located just four light-years away from the Earth, Proxima b could be within the so-called habitable zone.}<\/p>\n<p>Scientists have discovered an Earth-sized planet orbiting the star nearest to the Sun, potentially a major step in the quest to find out if life exists elsewhere in the universe.<\/p>\n<p>The planet, known as Proxima b, is located just four light-years away from the Earth, around the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, a team of European scientists led by British researchers wrote in the journal Nature on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>The scientists, who collected data over 16-years, discovered the planet with data from the European Southern Observatory telescope in Chile by monitoring shifts in the light from the star to determine presence of the planet.<\/p>\n<p>Proxima b has a mass around 1.3 times that of Earth, but orbits much closer to its star, circling it every 11 days.<\/p>\n<p>Given that the star itself is weaker than the Sun, Proxima b could be within the so-called habitable zone, where it is neither too hot nor too cold to support life and where temperatures could allow the presence of liquid water, the researchers said.   <\/p>\n<p>Lead author Guillem Anglada-Escude, an astronomer at Queen Mary University London, described the finding as the &#8220;experience of a lifetime&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It is not unlikely that this planet is quite similar to Earth. The spectacular finding about this of course is that this system is so close to our Earth and solar system,&#8221; said Angsgar Reiners, a German scientist who is among the research&#8217;s co-authors.<\/p>\n<p>However, it is not clear if the planet has an atmosphere or if it contains water, but &#8220;the existence is plausible&#8221;, he added.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-14526 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/160824130453_1_540x360-2.jpg\" alt=\"A view of the surface of the newly-discovered planet Proxima b\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Located just four light-years away from the Earth, Proxima b could be within the so-called habitable zone.} Scientists have discovered an Earth-sized planet orbiting the star nearest to the Sun, potentially a major step in the quest to find out if life exists elsewhere in the universe. The planet, known as Proxima b, is located [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-28039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-technology","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28039\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28039"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=28039"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=28039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}