If the way humankind treats the
environment now is anything to go by, we are going to need a new one at some point. Maybe we will have annihilated each other in a
nuclear war by then, but in the off chance we're still kicking around, it's always interesting to know whether there are any options out there. And if not, if a planet is capable of sustaining life, maybe there's a chance we can contact some
intelligent lifeforms?
A new study has found that a planet with a similar temperature and size to Earth has been found, and it's slowly making its way towards us. Soon enough, it will be the "closest known comfortable abode for possible life", although it is currently 11 lightyears away.
Named Ross 128b, this exoplanet orbits a red dwarf star not so different from Proxima Centauri, which another Earth-like planet (Proxima b) orbits. With our current technology (and not taking into account the fuel) it would take us around 141,000 years to reach the planet. The planet is expected to come a lot closer to us, though that trip will take another 79,000 years.
Astronomers working with the European Southern Observatory's High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS), at the La Silla Observatory in Chile, have been working for years searching through this data, and their work will be published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
The data from HARPS found that the exoplanet orbits 20 times closer to its star than the Earth orbits the sun. However, the planet receives only 1.38 times more irradiation than we do. This comes down to the fact that its red dwarf host star is only just over half the surface temperature of the sun, leaving Ross 128 b's temperature lying in the comfort zone between -60 and 20°C.
Dr. Nicola Astudillo-Defru, the co-author of the study, said that this discovery "is based on more than a decade of HARPS intensive monitoring together with state-of-the-art data reduction and analysis techniques". Speaking to The MailOnline, Dr. Xavier Bonfils pointed out that since it's a much "quieter" star, this planet may be the "closest known comfortable abode for possible life":
"The star (together with its planets) is moving toward us. All stars move. It's hard to perceive in a lifetime but over thousand of years the sky is changing.
"Proxima Centauri will continue to approach us for some time and after a point of closest approach, it will move away for us.
"In the meantime we are getting closer to other stars. And in around 71,000 years, Ross128 will be the closest."
Bonfils named the HARPS programme "the shortcut to happiness", believing it is easier to detect small cooler exoplanets similar to Earth around red dwarf stars, rather than planets orbiting those similar to the Sun. Hopefully this programme will lead to even more developments in the search for life beyond our planet.
