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Further observations of Proxima Centauri suggest the planets may not be habitable at all, owing to massive outbursts of radiation from the star.There's rumours flying that a planet has been found in the habitable zone of our neighbour star system. Just imagine.
http://www.universetoday.com/130276/earth-like-planet-around-proxima-centauri-discovered/
FULL STORY:The First Weather Report From Our Closest Star Is In, And It's Bad News For Life
We already had a bit of an inkling that our nearest stellar neighbour might be an inhospitable place. In 2017, red dwarf Proxima Centauri was caught belching out a colossal flare 10 times more powerful than the largest eruptions from the Sun, dampening hopes for habitable conditions on the rocky world orbiting it, Proxima Centauri b.
The outlook for life as we know it just got even more grim. A new discovery has given us evidence that Proxima Centauri may be releasing Sun-like coronal mass ejections, in which vast quantities of ionised plasma and electromagnetic radiation are launched into space, and which are much larger than flares.
"Astronomers have recently found there are two 'Earth-like' rocky planets around Proxima Centauri, one within the 'habitable zone' where any water could be in liquid form," said astronomer Andrew Zic of the University of Sydney in Australia.
"But given Proxima Centauri is a cool, small red dwarf star, it means this habitable zone is very close to the star; much closer in than Mercury is to our Sun. What our research shows is that this makes the planets very vulnerable to dangerous ionising radiation that could effectively sterilise the planets." ...
"This is probably bad news on the space weather front. It seems likely that the galaxy's most common stars - red dwarfs - won't be great places to find life as we know it," Zic said.
https://www.sciencealert.com/the-fi...m-proxima-centauri-are-not-promising-for-life
PUBLISHED RESEARCH REPORT (Citation & Abstract Only):
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/abca90