Amid much excitement in 2016, astronomers revealed the discovery of an Earth-sized planet around the star closest to our Sun, Proxima Centauri. This exoplanet, just 4.2 light years from Earth, was close enough to its red dwarf star that water might well exist on its surface.
Alas, now we know that life probably does not live on the planet, at least not on the surface. In March 2016, astronomers using an array of telescopes known as Evryscope observed a "superflare" 10 times larger than any previous one detected from the red dwarf star.
The arXiv. Abstract number: 1804.02001 (About the arXiv). Submitted to AAS Journals.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 11 2018, @07:57PM (1 child)
IIRC, the planet is believed to be tidally locked.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by insanumingenium on Wednesday April 11 2018, @08:21PM
Which means that the planet might make an excellent place for us depending on atmosphere, but that there probably isn't a region that would handle evolving life as we know it. -30c perpetual night lacks any liquid water, but isn't even difficult for us to survive in, UV kills everything bright side, and probably would also be easy for us to protect ourselves from. And if there are any extremophiles that evolved in there, that would be interesting too.