![]() ![]() They are both about 10 percent older than our solar system, leaving plenty of time to for any alien evolution to do its thing. Star A is the sun’s near twin in temperature, size, luminosity and composition star B is just a tad smaller and cooler. It contains not just one star resembling our sun but two of them, called Alpha Centauri A and B. The lure of Alpha Centauri is easy to understand: For the scientists yearning to find living worlds beyond our own, this system seems almost too good to be true. In my view, the risk is balanced by the reward of getting an image of Earth 2.0,” Belikov says. “There’s a risk, because we don’t know if we will see anything. And if NASA fails to fund those projects, there is another backup plan: two private efforts-the billionaire-backed Breakthrough Initiatives and the crowdfunded Project Blue-are gearing up to make the missions happen anyway. If those efforts come up empty, several groups are developing low-cost satellites to extend the planet hunt into space. Using new high-precision starlight-sifting instruments, researchers are gearing up for even more subtle searches. Over the past few weeks, Belikov’s team and another group led by Markus Kasper of the European Southern Observatory have been trying to glimpse Alpha Centauri’s putative worlds with the help of two different giant telescopes in Chile. “The level of interest in finding them is definitely increasing,” says astrophysicist Ruslan Belikov of NASA’s Ames Research Center. Technology is improving, and the stars are aligning, literally, to reveal potentially habitable worlds that may be hiding around Alpha Centauri. Because of a confounding set of circumstances, this intriguing target has remained a cipher-at least, until now. One location is conspicuously missing, however: Alpha Centauri, the star system next door to our own. The master list includes alien worlds around both tiny neutron stars and swollen, dying suns, planets in the crowded center of our galaxy the Milky Way, and planets floating alone in the depths of interstellar space. On June 13 NASA’s official tally of exoplanets-planets beyond our solar system-shot past 4,000. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |