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Second planet candidate found around Proxima Centauri


Hypercosmic

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Sounds like an amazing direct imaging candidate to me, along with Barnard's star b. Really quite cool, especially as this is he closest star system to us and thus probably the first system we will explore if / when we figure out a good way to get there.

I would bet there's something to fill the gap, we just don't know about it.

also a good reminder that it's likely that practically all stars have multiple planets, even if we don't know about them. I really, really can't wait for the day that we'll know more about these solar systems than the existence and radius of one or two of their planets, with large margins of error. If there's anything our own solar system can teach us about these, it's that these planets are all going to be surprisingly unique and all of them interesting in their own right, habitable or not.

 

(No, I do NOT promise I won't repeat this rant with every other exoplanet discovery.)

 

Oh, and with that flung out orbit and high mass, this thing could have nice moons, too.

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“It is only a candidate,” Damasso said during the presentation. “This is very important to underline.” Del Sordo offered similar cautions in his remarks, comparing the candidate world to a “castle in the air,” one that “we should keep working to put even stronger foundations under.”

I assume that they don't want the embarrassment of being the next Xavier Dumusque.

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The Wiki is updated as well, but the orbital period listed is 1,894 days instead. Seeing that the resulting semi-major axis looks more natural than the one for 1936 days (which yields exactly 1.5 AU, for some reason), I guess that's the correct value. Can't really be sure until it's confirmed though.

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That’s pretty cool. If it does exist, I’m inclined to believe it’s a small gas planet due to its mass likely exceeding the 6 Me threshold for terrestrial planets (which is pretty irrelevant for planets around metal-poor stars as my research has found), and its large orbit keeping it safe from the stripping of its hydrogen envelope. If not, then it could be a frozen water-dominated ice world. I’m also pretty excited about the possibility of it being directly imaged. Because of its presumably greater radius and wider separation from a closer star, it’s a better target than Barnard b. 

14 hours ago, UmbralRaptor said:

I assume that they don't want the embarrassment of being the next Xavier Dumusque.

What did he do? I don’t remember any recent discovery controversy, if that’s what you’re referring to.

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8 hours ago, Hypercosmic said:

This puny super-Earth/mini-Neptune planet is nothing. We have already found a full fledge gas giant in a red dwarf system.

Don’t forget Gliese 876. It has two gas giants in the habitable zone (one that’s twice as massive as Jupiter), along with a Uranus-like planet and a hot Super-Earth. I’m not too sure how so many massive planets formed around such a tiny star, but since we have yet to find another similar system after twenty years, I’m going to assume Gliese 876 is a rare oddball. 

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