{"id":7895,"date":"2016-11-04T02:03:28","date_gmt":"2016-11-04T09:03:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=7895"},"modified":"2016-10-29T17:44:56","modified_gmt":"2016-10-30T00:44:56","slug":"proxima-centauri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2016\/11\/04\/proxima-centauri\/","title":{"rendered":"Proxima Centauri"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.seti.org\/seti-institute\/the-world-in-our-backyard\" target=\"_blank\"><em>from SETI Institute<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<h1>The World Next Door<\/h1>\n<p>By\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.seti.org\/users\/seth-shostak\" target=\"_blank\">Seth Shostak<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.seti.org\/sites\/default\/files\/parke_telescope_560px.jpg\" alt=\"Parkes Radio Telescope\" width=\"480\" \/><em>Parkes Observatory, New South Wales, Australia\u00a0credit: Ian Sutton<\/em><\/p>\n<p>If it\u2019s for real, it\u2019s the closest planet beyond our solar system.\u00a0 The closest planet in outer space.<\/p>\n<p>Astronomers using a telescope at the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.eso.org\/public\/\" target=\"_blank\">European Southern Observatory\u00a0<\/a>in Chile have announced the discovery of a world around the star\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Proxima_Centauri\" target=\"_blank\">Proxima Centauri<\/a>, the nearest star to us other than the Sun.\u00a0 They base this on very slight stellar wobbles \u2013 a convincing claim resting on more than a dozen years of accumulated data.<\/p>\n<p>Proxima Centauri\u2019s paltry distance (4.2 light-years) is matched by its paltry size: It\u2019s a dim bulb, a red dwarf that\u2019s only one-seventh the Sun\u2019s diameter.\u00a0 The newly discovered planet orbits this star in only 11 Earth days.\u00a0 This cheek-by-jowl relationship ensures that, despite Proxima Centauri\u2019s meager energy output, there\u2019s enough sunlight hitting the planet to sustain large bodies of liquid water.\u00a0 There could be oceans covering at least some of this world, and where there\u2019s water, there might be life.<\/p>\n<p>But is there?\u00a0 It\u2019s a question as obvious as the Matterhorn.\u00a0 Unfortunately, it\u2019s hard to get an answer.<\/p>\n<p>[ <a href=\"http:\/\/www.seti.org\/seti-institute\/the-world-in-our-backyard\" target=\"_blank\">click to continue reading at SETI<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>from SETI Institute The World Next Door By\u00a0Seth Shostak Parkes Observatory, New South Wales, Australia\u00a0credit: Ian Sutton If it\u2019s for real, it\u2019s the closest planet beyond our solar system.\u00a0 The closest planet in outer space. Astronomers using a telescope at the\u00a0European Southern Observatory\u00a0in Chile have announced the discovery of a world around the star\u00a0Proxima Centauri, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weirdness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7895\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}