if and when we find life elsewhere
unless it's the hostile kind it needs to
be nearby
interactions could be difficult
depending on our technology at the time
so the shorter the distance the even
more thrilling it will be
in february astronomers found a new
planet in the family of proxima centauri
the nearest star to our sun
this is great news for the astronomical
world and makes the study of exoplanets
even more interesting
welcome to fact nominal in today's video
we check out our new little neighbor
named proxima d which at only 4.2 light
years away is practically right down the
street
and while they prepare to point the web
space telescope in that direction let's
take a look at what we've learned so far
the exoplanet search is sweeping far and
wide but sometimes when you are looking
so far in the distance you can miss
something right under your nose
alpha centauri is our neighboring system
of three stars perched just over four
light years from us and proxima centauri
is the nearest of the three
and leading up to this new and exciting
discovery proxima centauri was already
the home star for a pair of stunning new
worlds
in 2016 astronomers located the
creatively named proxima b using the old
planet hunting spectrograph harps
the newly discovered exoplanet excited
researchers by being almost the same
size as earth having a mass of 1.17 of
our homeworld and a lightning-fast orbit
of 11.2 earth days astronomers think it
is a rocky iron-rich planet possibly
surrounded by a thin atmosphere
the great news is that proxima b
inhabits that exciting realm astronomers
call the goldilocks zone meaning not too
hot and not too cold for liquid water
then there's you guessed it proxima c a
debutant world in 2019 that may have a
brilliant ring system and shares some
similarities with our home world
whether it has an atmosphere is unknown
however but it's another super earth we
added to the roster of worlds
astronomers are swiftly compiling
these are bigger and more massive than
earth but smaller and less massive than
neptune proxima c is roughly six times
our size
and now drum roll please
a study published february 10th in
astronomy and astrophysics confirms a
balancing new baby planet and that's not
nearly the best news
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proximity is really close to its star
really close as in less than one-tenth
the distance from mercury to the sun
close
that translates to only 2.4 million
miles and this mini earth whizzes around
proxima centauri every five days while
you'd think that would make it a
sizzling hot and barren wasteland that's
not the case at all
proxima centauri is a red dwarf much
cooler than the sun with only about 12
percent of its mass and 14 of its
diameter
that means proximity appears to be
perfectly in the middle of its very own
goldilocks zone meaning liquid water and
thus life are real possibilities
the studies lead author researcher
gialfaria of the instituto de
astrophysica esiencias do espaco
portugal is excited for this nearby
world and all its possibilities
the discovery shows that our closest
stellar neighbor seems to be packed with
interesting new worlds within reach of
further study and further exploration
so how exactly did we find this little
jewel
easy espresso in the process of
confirming proxima b's existence
astronomers made observations in 2020
that suggested another planet is in the
area which of course led them to search
further until they found that planet
it started with collaboration between
astrophysicists in spain portugal
switzerland italy canada and chile
the search featured a new instrument
called the e-shell spectrograph for
rocky exoplanets and stable
spectroscopic observations or espresso
located on the european southern
observatory's very large telescope in
chile
with espresso astronomers use the radial
velocity method which watches for subtle
changes in a star's position caused by
the gravity of an orbiting planet subtle
because planets do not register anything
near the gravitational influence on
their stars as their stars do on them
and only create very tiny star wobbles
scientists have estimated that proxima
centauri rocks back and forth
15.75 inches per second faria recalls
finding the haystacks needle and then
intensely searching for more
we saw a tiny tiny signal that showed up
so over the next year or so we gathered
more observations to confirm this planet
was indeed there proximity's mass is
only 26 percent of earth's but that's
not to say it's the lightest exoplanet
we found far from it
one of the first exoplanets ever
discovered has a miniscule mass of only
two percent of earth's
an exciting aspect of proximity's
discovery is that it is the lightest
exoplanet ever detected using this
method and since espresso demonstrated
its value in the search more small
exoplanets are just waiting to be found
and soon it will be assisted by the
european space agency's extremely large
telescope being built right now in the
akatama desert plateau of chile
and with the james webb space telescope
joining the team the field of exoplanet
hunting grows more exciting every day
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humanity's knowledge of exoplanets is
growing exponentially just six months
before this super light proximity was
discovered the previous lightweight
record holder was located by using the
same observatory in chile and the same
radial velocity method
that star
l98-59 has four detected planets and
astronomers suspect a fifth
the now dethroned lightweight champ is
the innermost planet in the system and
has only half of the massive venus
the first three exoplanets found at
l98-59 were detected with the transit
method which measures the dip in light
when the suspected planet passes between
the star and earthbound observer
from what we know about planets our
solar system seems rather stable eight
worlds orbiting the sun within a few
degrees of a flat plane with dozens of
moons circling them paints a rather
orderly picture
late in 2021 a new study published in
astronomy and astrophysics detailed a
system 150 light years away in the
constellation pisces
the star hd 3167 has three orbiting
planets detected thus far but that's not
the unusual part
the orbits of all three could easily fit
into mercury's orbit and transit hd 3167
and new techniques employed by
researchers in 2019 uncovered something
astronomers had not yet seen
the outermost of the worlds is in
perpendicular orbit circling its host
star's pole and not its equatorial plane
and now they believe the middle
exoplanet is also virtually
perpendicular
what does this mean
the research continues but for now the
team believes that a much more massive
world may be in the outer part of the
system this giant could have misaligned
the orbits of the two perpendicular
planets while the innermost may be close
enough to hd-3167
that the influence of this theoretical
behemoth world is nullified
and before you think we've surveyed our
neighborhood completely for these homes
away from home we have barely scratched
the milky way surface
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the james webb space telescope has
reached its destination is chilling down
to proper temperature and has
demonstrated that its eyes are open by
taking its first fuzzy pictures
when fully functional hopefully by the
summer webb will tell us more about the
atmospheres of exoplanets and perhaps
even find the building blocks of life
elsewhere in the universe
nasa's exoplanet hunter the transiting
exoplanet survey satellite has been
wildly successful and it's just getting
started in under four years nearly 5 000
potential alien worlds have been
discovered by using data that is being
studied for confirmation at this very
minute
to be clear these are not at all or even
mostly confirmed
there is a time lag between being a
suspect and being official but the
process has begun for thousands of
hopeful exoplanets
and since the joint project between nasa
and mit has been extended to 2025 there
are many more alien worlds likely to be
found
beyond the enthralling world of
exoplanets are discoveries of what
astronomers call rogue planets
these free-floating nomads of the
universe have become so either by
detaching from their original host star
or being formed far away from stars
like a band of renegades wandering the
wild west a horde of 70 rogue planets at
least the size of jupiter has been
discovered hurtling through space many
are so young they still carry residual
heat from their birth meaning they are
detectable in ways that exoplanets are
not
rogues with nowhere to go and all
eternity to get there
so what do you think about the newest
addition to our cosmic neighborhood
this tiny and lightweight world makes at
least three orbiting the nearest star to
the sun and the possibilities of liquid
water and thus life are very exciting
do you agree tell us in the comments and
as always thank you for watching fact
nominal
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