The planet orbiting the nearest star to Earth may be habitable, according to NASA. The rocky Proxima b, which orbits Proxima Centauri, appears to be in the so-called Goldilocks zone, meaning the planet could have liquid water on its surface. A team of researchers from the Marseille Astrophysics Laboratory goes even further, saying the planet could be an \u201cocean planet with an ocean covering its entire surface.\u201d The dimensions and properties of the planet \u201cfavor its habitability.\u201d For example, the planet\u2019s core is likely similar to Mercury with a metal core accounting for two-thirds of its mass. Researchers think Proxima b has an overall mass similar to Earth. According to their analysis, Proxima b may have water similar what might be lurking in subsurface oceans on the icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn. While Proxima b is much closer to its star than Earth is to the sun, that doesn\u2019t necessarily translate into high temperatures on the planet\u2019s surface because Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf, with a brightness 1,000 times less than the sun. But astronomers don\u2019t know much about Proxima b for certain, including what the radius of the planet is. This is normally done during transit, when the planet passes in front of its star. Proxima b \u201cis not known to transit,\u201d researchers said. Therefore, researchers had to try to ascertain its dimensions through a different method. To do this, researchers, because they are fairly certain about Proxima b\u2019s mass, simulated \u201cthe behavior of constituent materials\u201d of the planet. \u201cWith the help of a model of internal structure, they explored compositions that could be associated with Proxima b and deduced the corresponding values for the radius of the planet,\u201d according to a news release. \u201cThey restricted their study to the case of potentially habitable planets, simulating dense and solid planets, formed with the metallic core and rocky mantle found in terrestrial planets in our solar system. They also allowed the incorporation of a large mass of water in their composition.\u201d Based on the simulations, researchers determined the radius of Proxima b to be .94 to 1.4 times the radius of Earth, so it has to be a very dense planet, \u201cconsisting of a metal core with a mass equal to 65 percent of the planet, the rest being rocky mantle (formed of silicate).\u201d \u201cWith such a composition, Proxima b is very close to the planet Mercury, which also has a very solid metal core,\u201d researcher said. \u201cThis first case does not exclude the presence of water on the surface of the planet, as on Earth where the water body does not exceed 0.05 percent of the mass of the planet. In contrast, Proxima b can also have a radius of 8,920 kilometers, provided that it is composed of 50 percent rock surrounded by 50 percent water. In this case, Proxima b would be covered by a single liquid ocean 200 kilometers deep.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The planet orbiting the nearest star to Earth may be habitable, according to NASA. The rocky Proxima b, which orbits Proxima Centauri, appears to be in the so-called Goldilocks zone, meaning the planet could have liquid water on its surface. A team of researchers from the Marseille Astrophysics Laboratory goes even further, saying the planet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12271,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12270"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}