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of astronomy today we know that almost every star in the night sky has at least one planet and that
a significant portion of those planets are most likely to be rocky planets that orbit their suns
at close enough distances to be warm and may be habitable of the million or so years of our
existence as a distinct species on earth the quest for a habitable world around proxima centauri
is a natural consequence of the boom and knowledge about exoplanets that humans have attained in
just the previous two decades whether or not they are livable if pale red dots are in orbit
around proxima we are confident we will find them proxima centauri is a small low-mass star
located about 4.25 light years away from the sun it is about 12.5 percent of the
sun's mass and its average density is about 33 times that of the sun located in the centaurus
constellation the latin name proxima centauri literally translates to near a star of centaurus
it was discovered by robert innis in 1915 and is believed to be the star closest to our sun
by virtue of its low luminosity proxima is 500 times less bright than our sun and thus cannot
be spotted by the naked eye yet it is one of the most noted stars in the sky this is because it is
a part of the alpha centauri star system which hosts three known stars and is also the closest
stellar system to our sun normally when stars are this close to earth they appear bright in the sky
but the reason it is not visible to the naked eye is not only because of its low luminosity
but also its small size it is called a red dwarf star and known to have massive solar flares
astronomers have discovered two planets for proxima so far
the first named proxima b was discovered in 2016 by the european southern observatory eso
it is roughly at a distance of 4.7 million miles from earth with an orbital period of
approximately 11.2 earth days its estimated mass is at least 1.3 times that of the earth
interestingly although proxima b is declared to be within the habitable zone of its star a study
conducted in 2017 declared that this exoplanet does not share the same atmosphere as earth
in 2020 a second planet was discovered and named proxima c
it is much bigger than earth and orbits its star every 1907 days
it orbits at about 1.5 times the distance from its star as compared to earth as we showed earlier
proxima has massive solar flares and the planets around the red dwarf must contend with them
in april 2021 an extremely powerful flare or burst of radiation emanating from proxima was detected
by astronomers this flare was not only 100 times stronger than any flare seen from our sun
but was also ranked high on being one of the most violent on a solitary star anywhere in the
galaxy whether the flares are deadly and can lead to total annihilation remains to be seen
moreover it can doom chances for life on its planets however according to some astronomers
the verdict for life could swing either way on one side flares can destroy a planet's
atmosphere and on the other it could just as well spark life in an interesting development
scientists in 2020 detected a signal that seemed to be coming directly from the proxima centauri
thus far scientists engaged in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence scti had considered
the famous wow signal first detected in 1977 to be the most likely evidence of an alien radio signal
the detection of the new signal was unique although astronomers with the help of breakthrough
listen the largest scientific research program aimed at finding evidence of civilizations beyond
earth first detected the signal in april 2019 using the super powerful parks radio
telescope at the parks observatory in australia it was only found in the data in october 2020.
the direction of the narrow beam and the apparent shift in its frequency was seen to be consistent
with the movement of a planet and excited scientists of the possible evidence of life
in space later findings however claimed that the explanation for the signal was rather commonplace
the characteristics of the signal were artificial instigating the doubt
of it likely being a terrestrial source satellites in space or an error in general
moreover it was determined that only human technology produced signals like that
our wi-fi cell towers gps satellite radio all of these are very similar to the signals received
making it challenging to differentiate signals from space with that of human generated technology
further for it to be certified as an alien signal it has to go through a series of screening filters
this particular signal has excited scientists more so because they have not had a signal jump
through so many of their filters for a very long time this signal is now being referred
to as breakthrough listen candidate 1 or blc1 given past history it is most likely that blc1
is a terrestrial signal but scientists are continuing to study it with much interest
however so far they haven't been able to identify the exact source terrestrial or otherwise another
point of import is that the signal has come from the apparent direction of proxima centauri
but that does not necessarily mean that the star is the source it could also have come
from somewhere within the 16 arc minute beam width of the telescope that happened to be near proxima
centauri in the sky from our point of view it also appears to be a simple signal just a single tone
a single note it has absolutely no additional features that we can discern at this point the
signal is drifting as is expected only it is doing so in the opposite direction it should be going
down in frequency but instead the frequency is going up thus far the signal hasn't been
detected again much like with a wow signal in 1977 another detection would help scientists determine
just where it actually came from it is very likely that the signal did not come from proxima at all
but another source close to the star at that time in the sky within the beam width of the telescope
the fact that it was detected five times during the 30 minutes observation window
over a period of three hours makes it interesting and a good indication that it
did come from outer space however more work and analysis need to be done to confirm its source
blc1 is indeed an intriguing discovery and has given scientists and astronomers much fodder
for thought and since this unique signal has come from the direction of the star nearest us proxima
centauri it is a matter that needs to be taken seriously will the blc1 signal named wow 2020
bring us some extraterrestrial news what do you guys think drop in your comments below and don't
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