Episode 666: Two Confirmed Planets at Proxima Centauri. One in the Habitable Zone!

Astronomers have discovered thousands of exoplanets, and still need to confirm thousands more. And over the coming decades, we’ll probably learn of millions of planets, orbiting stars we’ve never heard of.

That’s why it’s reassuring to know astronomers are learning a tremendous amount about the closest star system to our own, Proxima Centauri. In fact, we now know of two planets orbiting the red dwarf star, one of which is in the habitable zone.

Thumbnail credit: NASA/Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics/D. Aguilar

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Team: Fraser Cain - @fcain / [email protected]

Karla Thompson - @karlaii / https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEItkORQYd4Wf0TpgYI_1fw

Chad Weber - [email protected]

References:

https://www.universetoday.com/146262/powerful-telescope-confirms-theres-an-earth-sized-world-orbiting-proxima-centauri/

https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.03449

https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.12114v2

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/3/eaax7467

https://mcdonaldobservatory.org/news/releases/20200602

https://www.universetoday.com/145697/astronomers-might-have-imaged-a-second-planet-around-nearby-proxima-centauri-and-it-might-have-a-huge-set-of-rings/

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2004.06685.pdf

https://breakthroughinitiatives.org/initiative/3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2YkvWdUUNQ

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