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Astronomers have discovered a small extraterrestrial world orbiting the star “Proximal Centaur”, the closest star to the sun, and explained that the new discovered planet will be about a quarter the size of the Earth.
Scientists said in the study published on February 10, 2022 in the Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics that the planet is located only 4.2 light-years away from the sun, and it was called Proxima d.
Because of the planet’s small size, it becomes one of the smallest exoplanets ever discovered. If exoplanets of this size are of great interest to scientists, it is because they are potentially habitable and could contain living organisms. Unfortunately, the new planet has been declared uninhabitable due to the heat on its surface.
“The discovery shows that our nearest star neighbor appears to be teeming with interesting new worlds,” said Portuguese astrophysicist Joao Vari.
Astronomer Pedro Figueira of the Central European Observatory said, “This discovery is very important” because it “shows that radial velocity technology can reveal a range of light planets like ours. They are likely the most abundant in our galaxy, and could contain aspects of life as we know it.
It is expected that the difficulty that scientists currently face in discovering small exoplanets will decrease thanks to technological advances. So far, 32,073 exoplanets have been discovered, only 36 of which have a mass less than that of Earth.