New Earth-Like Planet Close Enough To Visit One Day

For as long as we can remember, humans have looked to the stars in wonderment and for answers. While humans have attempted to find meaning in the arrangement and organization of constellations, astronomers of today are now using incredibly sophisticated technology to determine whether solar systems other than our own can support life. It looks like we just got a lot closer to finding a potentially habitable planet that orbits Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf star that happens to be the closest star to our own that we know of.

The details of the new find have left the world buzzing about what this discovery means. Did we just find a future home?

SHARE this article with your friends on Facebook. This is a major breakthrough in astronomical science.

For thousands of years, humans have been profoundly curious about what lies beyond Earth.

We've all wondered whether life can exist elsewhere, or whether there happens to be a place to live other than our own planet.

These days, we can visualize much more of the galaxy, and for the last several decades, astronomers have worked tirelessly toward identifying planets that are Earth-like.

Astronomers from Queen Mary University of London, as well as other institutions around the world, discovered a planet with properties similar to our own only 4.25 light-years away. The findings have been published in the prestigious science journal Nature.

To put things into perspective, here is a figure showing the relative proximity of Proxima Centauri to our own sun.

4.25 light-years translates to roughly 25 trillion miles away. While this seems like a really far distance, which it is, Proxima Centauri is the closest star to our own that we know of.

Even though it's possible that there are atmospheric similarities shared between the newly discovered planet and Earth, this planet's sun would look much different in the sky.

The size and shape of the sun may not appear differently, but the way that it moves in the sky would.

Only one side of the planet faces its sun (Proxima Centauri).

As a result, it would always look like the sun was in the same spot in the sky.

Not only would the sun stay in the same spot, the sky would be illuminated with an orange hue because of Proxima Centauri's natural color.

This fact needs to be confirmed by the researchers as this would only occur if the planet had a similar atmospheric profile to Earth.

The researchers admit that there is still much work to be done to clarify the atmospheric profile of the planet.

"I'm pretty sure that in the next 10 years, we will know if it has an atmosphere and probably if it has oxygen" explained Guillem Anglada-Escude, one of the head researchers on the study.

It looks like we may be closer to living on another planet than we thought!

SHARE this exciting article with your Facebook friends. You never know, we might be living there some day!