Scientists find Earth-like planet at star next door
WASHINGTON — After scanning the vast reaches of the cosmos for Earth-like planets where life might exist, astronomers have found one right next door.
A planet that is rocky like Earth and only slightly bigger has been discovered orbiting Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to our solar system, scientists reported Wednesday.
The international team of astronomers that announced the discovery did not actually see the planet but deduced its existence indirectly, by using telescopes to spot and precisely calculate the gravitational pull on the star by a possible orbiting body — a tried-and-true method of planet-hunting.
“We hit the jackpot here,” said Guillem Anglada-Escude, an astrophysicist at the Queen Mary University of London and lead author of a study on the discovery in the journal Nature.