(Daily Star) – Scientists may have discovered a new Neptune-sized planet within a habitable orbit of one of Earth’s closest stars. The body, which has yet to even be named and is being referred to currently as “planet candidate”, is in Alpha Centauri, a binary star system 4.37 light-years away from Earth.

In a paper published in Nature Communications on Wednesday, an international team of astronomers using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile found a bright thermal imaging signal coming from the habitable zone of Alpha Centauri A. A habitable zone covers the range of distances from a star at which liquid water could exist on a world’s surface, an indicator that it could harbor alien life.

The signal was derived through Near Earths in the Alpha Center Region (NEAR), a $3 million project which hunts for potentially Earth-like worlds around nearby stars. The NEAR team upgraded the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) with several new technologies, including a thermal coronagraph, an instrument designed to block a star’s light and allow the heat signatures of orbiting planets to be spotted.


Advertisement


After analyzing 100 hours of data gathered by NEAR in May and June of 2019, the scientists detected a thermal fingerprint in the habitable zone of Alpha Centauri A which corresponds to a roughly Neptune-size world. READ MORE

Author

  • End Time Headlines

    End Time Headlines is a Ministry that provides News and Headlines from a "Prophetic Perspective" as well as weekly podcasts to inform and equip believers of the Signs and Seasons that we are living in today.

    View all posts