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Astronomy

Alpha Centauri B Has An Earth-Mass Planet

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
October 16, 2012
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Earth-Mass Planet Found Orbiting Alpha Centauri B
“European astronomers have discovered a planet with about the mass of the Earth orbiting a star in the Alpha Centauri system — the nearest to Earth. It is also the lightest exoplanet ever discovered around a star like the Sun. The planet was detected using the HARPS instrument on the 3.6-meter telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. The results will appear online in the journal Nature on 17 October 2012.”
NASA Statement On Alpha Centauri Planet Discovery
“The following is a statement about the European Southern Observatory’s latest exoplanet discovery from NASA’s Science Mission Directorate Associate Administrator, Dr. John Grunsfeld. “We congratulate the European Southern Observatory team for making this exciting new exoplanet discovery. For astronomers, the search for exoplanets helps us understand our place in the universe and determine whether Earth is unique in supporting life or if it is just one member of a large community of habitable worlds. NASA has several current and future missions that will continue in this search.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

42 responses to “Alpha Centauri B Has An Earth-Mass Planet”

  1. Anonymous says:
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    Great discovery!

  2. John Gardi says:
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    Folks:

    Howdy neighbor! Kinda warm where y’all comes from!

    But hey, it is close enough to it’s star to be tidally locked, so maybe on the dark side…

    tinker

    • sowr says:
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      Or remember Niven’s Footfall? Is that where they came from? And they didn’t just head over here to say hi…..

  3. Steve Whitfield says:
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    Well, there you go.  All those science fiction writers were right.

    • npng says:
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      Somehow it’s heartening to hear about a handy, possibly right-sized rock orbiting Alpha Centauri B, especially after gazing at it 50 years ago and wondering “if, if only…”.  I must say though, I’m still struggling with trying to embrace 26 Trillion miles as being in any way “close by”.

    • DTARS says:
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      My question Steve lololool time to plan to get on with it lol

      The Tick Pilot 🙂

  4. Marc Boucher says:
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    Where there’s one there could more. In fact a source relayed to me that a paper published a few years back showed that orbits are stable in the system.

  5. Saturn1300 says:
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    Great! I have been waiting all my life to here this news.We ought to send a probe there for the babies.

    • John Thomas says:
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      Maybe they should call the probe the Jupiter 2 and get a family together to colonize it.

      • stephen says:
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         doctors named “smith” need not apply.

      • Steve Whitfield says:
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        Warning! Warning! Danger! Danger!

      • Anonymous says:
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        I knew it, someone just had to make reference to the TV show from nearly 50 years ago. If you didn’t I would have. If the 100 year starship were to fly to this planet, physicians are essential crew members. I think it is ok if their last name is Smith, as long as they have snappy comical prose.

      • Steve Pemberton says:
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        Believe it or not the ESO press conference was held on the 15th anniversary to the day of the launch of the fictional Robinson family (along with Messrs West and Smith) on their voyage to Alpha Centauri.  In the first episode, which was broadcast on September 15th, 1965, the launch date of the Jupiter 2 was given as October 16th, 1997.

  6. Yohan Ayhan says:
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    With this discovery what should we do to get there and explore?
    Build very small, light, fast, and accelerate!

    We should build thousands of Nano Satellites with Microthruster Ion Drive powered by Black Silicon Solar Cells, and launch with great velocity and have it continuously accelerate using the Ion Drive towards the Alpha Centauri B.

    Then report back its findings by either doing slingshot around the the planets Star or transmit an interstellar message of its analysis of the planet.

    • Yohan Ayhan says:
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      First picture is black silicon solar cells.
      Second picture is microthruster ion drives.
      Third picture is nano satellites.

  7. maxb500 says:
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    Congratulations to the European researchers. That`s the astronomical equivalent of finding the God Particle! Or a human in a suite Braking the speed of Sound! Or building the worlds biggest passenger plane! Or winning the Ryder Cup the greatest golf tournament! Or winning the Biggest Jack Pot Ever!  Amazing.  I have been dreaming of this for years. Now lets hope they can find one in the habitable zone there as well so we have an earth 2.0 right at our fingertips (astronomically speaking).  

  8. Anonymous says:
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    Time to send the Robinsons.

  9. Saturn1300 says:
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    40,000 years with current technology they say.For some reason I was thinking 100 years.Oh well. 

    • Rune says:
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       At 1% of c (mass ratio 3 and 300.000sec isp), which is what plasma electric rocket can do today (VASIMIR), it would take ~400 years, so you were close. With ion engines (30.000sec isp), 10 times more. Chemical, you can imagine.

      • hikingmike says:
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         Wow no kidding? That’s not bad.

        • Rune says:
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           Actually, yeah, I got a bit carried away with VASIMIR’s isp… about a factor of 10. Silly me ^^’
          The ion part is not wrong though, and that’s just 4 millenia with tech flying right now on orbiting satellites. And there ARE many intriguing fusion designs with predicted isp’s around 10^5-10^6 for which there are no physical reasons they shouldn’t work, even if the fusion part never gets above breakeven, which it should.

    • no one of consequence says:
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      With Nuclear Salt Water rocket, >10,000 ISP and mass ratio >4, <50 years.

      edit – corrected by checking notes and email against what I meant.

      But you’ll have to do any engine testing in GEO … or further. And be very careful where its pointed …

      • Rune says:
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        Run your rocket equation again. I get 0.4% of c as delta-v from your numbers, which if you don’t brake means a flight time of ~8.800 years to get 4 light years away.

        • no one of consequence says:
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          From Zubrin’s 1991 BIS paper:

          7. THE NSWR AND INTERSTELLAR TRAVEL
          The above engine analysis assumed a very low yield of 0.1% and a modest enrichment of 20%. It is interesting to contemplate what might be the potential ultimate performance of a NSWR if more optimistic values are assumed.

          Consider for example, an NSWR utilizing a 2% uranium bromide solution with 90% enriched U233 , and obtaining a 90% fission yield. Assuming a nozzle efficiency of 0.9, the exhaust velocity of this system will be 4725 km/s, or about 1.575% of the speed of light (a specific impulse of 482,140 seconds). If the 300 tonne Titan mission spacecraft is endowed with 2700 tonnes of propellant (for a mass ratio of 10) a maximum velocity of 3.63% of speed of light could be obtained, allowing the ship to reach Alpha Centauri in about 120 years.

          In a more ambitious approach, one could envisage a group of interstellar emigrants selecting a small ice asteroid with a mass of 30,000 tonnes and using it as propellant (together with 7,500 tonnes of uranium obtained elsewhere) for a 300 tonne space-
          craft. In this case the ship could obtain a final velocity of about 7.62% light speed, and reach Alpha Centauri in about 60 years.

          • Paul451 says:
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            “(a specific impulse of 482,140 seconds)”

            That’s a somewhat different number. (And way too exact. Seriously Zubrin, 5 orders of precision for a system that doesn’t exist?)

            Also, both his calculations assume no braking, so his “emigrants” will reach Alpha Century in 60 years… and continue through at 7% of the speed of light.

  10. Rune says:
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    So Tatoonie was just around the corner, hanging there all along (ok, proxima breaks the binary star thing, but no one said that in the movies, they just showed two suns in the sky, and proxima is tiny and far away).

    A completely useless lump  of almost-molten rock too close to its star, sure. But where there’s one… why not 9? or more? And maybe one or two will be at the right distance. All I know is, the more we look, the more we find, and sci-fi is starting to look like it severely underestimated the number of planets out there. ESPRESSO is going to surprise us again, methinks.

    http://xkcd.com/786/

    • Paul451 says:
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       “But where there’s one… why not 9? or more?”

      The region around each star where planets could have stable orbits is too small for a full Sol-like solar system. You might see more, hopefully we will, but 9 is unlikely. (Unless Proxima has planets too.)

      • Rune says:
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         Well, I get your point, but I have the best comeback ever very easily: what statistical data tells you the solar system is a crowded one, or anywhere close to the maximum usual number of planets? We could be an unusually empty solar system. I know, improbable , and I’m Just nitpicking, but I think it illustrates my earlier point… let’s find out!

  11. Dewey Vanderhoff says:
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    Pandora.
    James Cameron is from there.
    Let’s do a better job of negotiating the mining leases with the natives for the Unobtanium, though…

  12. SomeGuy42 says:
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    So how fast can we get a probe there?  I took the peak speed of New Horizons (21 km/sec) and came up with about 14275 years.  Could we realistically a Voyager style mission to another star in the lifetime of the electronics on the probe?

    • Jafafa Hots says:
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       Don’t worry. If we just spend a couple of hundred years slingshotting the probe around Jupiter & the sun etc. for gravity assist, I bet we can get that travel time down to something like 7000 years.

    • Stuart J. Gray says:
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      The problem with an interstellar probe is this:
      We could build a probe now and launch it that will get there in say 10,000 years. Fifty years from now we could build a probe that could get there in 5,000 years and would overtake the one we launched previously. In ANOTHER fifty years we could build one that could get there in 1,000 years and overtake BOTH of the probes previously launched., etc. etc.  SO until we can get there in the lifetime of a single human, we wont even try.

  13. David says:
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    It’s cheaper,faster and more efficient to build new telescopes(like the hypertelescope) than probes.

  14. DTARS says:
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    If we want to launch a probe there to leave in the next 10 years how fast could we get one there???? and once there could it make a signal strong enough to hear from earth.. How fast is practical??? an1/8th the speed of light??/ and could we slow it down to maybe go into the same orbit. I realize out there idea ??? But Whats possible?? What are the practical limits for future generations to get a close up look????

    • hikingmike says:
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       I think we might as well not think about doing that now. Voyager is just now leaving the solar system. If we sent something now, it might be a little faster but we’ll certainly have better abilities in the future so that anything we send now would be passed up by what we can send in the future. It’s a really long way, lol.

      • DTARS says:
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        I see hikingmike in a tick suit/space that is about the size of a mini van. and under the drivers sit is a treadmill and there is a cable, lol Marlin fish line on “top” which connect to my tick, and we SPIN IT UP for a walk around the moon. TESTING the toys for a hikingmike solo trip to the station/outpost in Mars orbit.

        Don’t forget to do your plant cell doping, to give you that nice green glow to match the skin of your ship. 🙂

        oh lol yeah I read what you posted decades ago somewhere lolol

        how little has changed

        READY?

        SPIN IT UP!!!!!!!

  15. Brian Campbell says:
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    I’m just hoping for news of something around Proxima Centauri. It’s even closer to us — 4.2 ly, vs 4.36 ly of A-B (hey, every little bit helps)

    Btw, besides ths observatory, has anyone with Hubble time consider trying a peek at any of the Centaruis?  Perhaps when it’s near its “end of operational life” they could just point the puppy at A, B &/or C and hold it there until it expires (and see if they get lucky)?  Would they maybe have a try with the Webb?

  16. Michael Spencer says:
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    The excellent Centauri Dreams is a very good source for discussion of very deep space exploration subjects. The site reviews current literature o the subject, almost every day. Paul Gilster is the host.

    http://www.centauri-dreams.org

  17. Saturn1300 says:
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    I wonder if Web can image this planet?There was a symposium on the instruments recently.I did not check it out since it is such a long time to launch.I guess I could search and find out.

  18. David says:
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    People in this thread really miss the point, a interstellar probe would take too long, cost too much and require enormous technological breakthroughs.
    For much smaller cost you can build telescopes that will easily not only detect other planets in Alpha Centauri system, but also provide images.