Living near Proxima Centauri might be impossible

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mike Wehner
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Mike Wehner

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  • The nearby star Proxima Centauri has long been considered a potential place to search for extraterrestrial life.
  • The more we learn about the star, the more it looks like living on a planet near the star might be impossible.
  • Space weather, including blasts of charged particles from the star, would make life in the system very difficult.

We're pretty sure that there's no intelligent life in our solar system besides Earth — and you could argue that there isn't any intelligent life on Earth as well, but that's a whole other topic — and unless there's a race of hyper-advanced fish people swimming around deep within the ice moons of Enceladus or Europa, we're going to need to look outside the solar system in our search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Proxima Centauri, a tiny red star just 4.2 light-years from Earth, would seem like a fine place to look, especially since astronomers believe they've spotted a rocky "super-Earth" orbiting inside of the star's habitable zone. Unfortunately, life around the cool star isn't likely to be pleasant, and based on what astronomers believe they know about the star, searching for life there may be a fool's errand.

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Living near Proxima Centauri might be impossible originally appeared on BGR.com on Mon, 4 Jan 2021 at 23:16:38 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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