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to Mike Wall, Space.com
The star closest to the sun runs on an apparently large, icy planet.
Astronomers have found strong evidence of aliens about 3.2 times larger than Barnard 's Star on Earth, a faint red dwarf just six light – years from the sun. Barnard's stars are the closest neighbors of our sun, and the three-star Alpha Centauri system is about 4.3 light-years apart.
A newly discovered world known as Barnard's Star b is now a planet candidate. But researchers who have discovered it are convinced that the alien planet will eventually be confirmed. [Barnard’s Star b: What We Know About the “Super-Earth’ Candidate]
Ignasi Ribas of the Catalan Institute for Space Science and a researcher at the Institute of Space Sciences in Spain stated in a statement that "very careful analysis confirms that 99% is on Earth.
"But we will continue to observe this fast-moving star in order to rule out possible, but unlikely, natural changes in the brightness of the stars that can pretend to be planets," said a senior author of a new study that published Barnard's findings Ribas added. Star b. The study was published online in Nature today (Nov. 14).
If Barnard's star b is confirmed, it is not the closest alien planet to Earth. The designation is held by Proxima b, which is roughly the size of the Earth. This is one of the Proxima Centauri and Alpha Centauri trio.
NASA's Kepler Space Telescope has shown that tiny stars are common in galaxy galaxies. Proxima b and Barnard's Star b strongly suggest that such a world is "common in our neighborhood" in an interview with Space.com, coauthor of Johanna Teske's municipality of Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, DC. . "And it is very exciting."
Nearest Solar Neighbor
Barnard's star is an American astronomer E.E. who discovered the speed mentioned by Ribas in 1916. It was named after Barnard. Every 180 years, other stars than Barnard 's Star, moving as wide as the full moon, do not move the earth' s sky fast. [Gallery: The Strangest Alien Planets]
This incomparable clear movement is the result of the proximity of the Barnard 's Star and the high (not record setting) speed of 310,000 mph (500,000 km / h) relative to the sun.
And Barnard's stars are getting closer to us every day. In about 10,000 years, red dwarfs will cross the star mantle closest to the Alpha Centauri system. At that time, only 3.8 light years separates Barnard's stars from the sun.
Barnard's stars are about twice as big as the Earth's sun, one-sixth of the massive, and only 3% of the luminous. Because Bernard 's stars are too dark, the range of distance available to obtain liquid water from the surface of the world is very close. In fact, researchers think that the star is thinned between 0.06 AU and 0.10 AU. (An AU or astronomical unit is the Earth-Sun street – about 93 million miles or about 150 million kilometers.)
The concept of residential areas is obviously challenging. To measure true habits of the world, you need a strong working knowledge of atmospheric composition and thickness. And this information is difficult to find about an alien planet.
Long search
Barnard's stars have long been targets of extraterrestrial hunters, but so far search has always been empty.
The new discovery was not easy: Ribas and his team finally analyzed the archives and the huge amount of new data collected before destroying Barnard 's Star b.
They used the "radial velocity" method to find the change in starlight caused by the gravitational pull of a planet orbiting it. Such a tug will cause the star to shake a little and move the light towards the blue end of the spectrum somewhere else on Earth, and occasionally toward the red wavelength. [7 Ways to Discovery Alien Planets]
"We used the observations of seven different tools, including measurements over 20 years, to create the largest and most extensive set of data used in precision radial velocity studies," Ribas said in the same statement. "A combination of all the data showed a total of 771 measurements, a huge amount of information!"
No radial velocity method has been used to find such a small planet in such a remote orbit. (The bigger and closer planets attract the hero more and cause a mild shift that can be found more dramatically easier.)
These seven instruments are the ultraviolet and visible spectroscopy of the ultra-high-speed telescope of the ESO Paranal Observatory in Chile, the high-precision radial velocity planet searcher (HARPS) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) La Silla Observatory Harris – Galileo National Telescope in the North, Canary Islands; High resolution of the Keck 10 meter telescope in Hawaii Echelle Spectrometer; Planet Finder Spectrograph at the Carnegie Institute in Magellan 6.5m telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile; Automated Planet Finder at the Rick Observatory of the University of California at 2.4 m; And at the Calar Alto Observatory in CARMENES, Spain.
The researchers also found a hint about another possible planet that orbits farther than Barnard 's Star and has an Earth orbit of 6,600 days. But this second signal is too weak to be considered a candidate for the district, Teske said.
"We do not have enough data," he told Space.com.
A cold super district
Barnard's star b is at least 3.2 times larger than our planet, so it is much larger than Earth, but it becomes a "super-Earth", a class of the world smaller than "giant ice" like Neptune and Uranus.
According to a new study, the newly discovered planet candidate is 0.4 AU from the host star and completes one trajectory each day on Earth 233.
The distance of this orbit is similar to the distance of mercury copied from our solar system. But since Barnard's stars are too dim, the potential planet is around the "snowline", a system where volatile materials such as water can condense.
Rodrigo Diaz of the Institute for Astronomy and Space Science of the National Institute of Science and Technology and the University of Buenos Aires of Argentina have been co- A "News and Views" article.
"The author, who discovered a low-mass planet near snow-covered sites, is strongly constraining the formation model for this type of planet," Diaz added, not participating in the new study.
If Barnard's star b actually exists, it is not a very promising residence for the life we know, at least not superficially. Potential planets are expected to be very cold, and the expected surface temperature will drop from about 275 degrees Fahrenheit (170 degrees Fahrenheit), the researchers said.
Diaz noted that Barnard's star b does not seem to come from additional radial velocity measurements. But ultra-precision measurements of constellation locations, such as the European Space Agency's Gaia spacecraft, will be available in the next few years, he added.
"More interestingly, the next generation of ground-based metrology to be launched in 2020 should be able to directly image the reported planets and measure the optical spectrum," Diaz said.
"Using this spectrum, we can infer the properties of Earth's atmosphere, such as wind and rotation speed," he added. "This amazing planet will therefore be one of the first low-mass extraterrestrial planets with a detailed exploration of the atmosphere, providing us with an important part in the mystery of planetary formation and evolution."
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