I've been sitting this one out until today. They first saw this signal in Proxima's light curve in 2000 and had trouble verifying it. It looks like the ESO guys are also being cautious with their wording so I shall also be EXTREMELY cautious and careful with my words here. POTENTIAL. Say that with me again. OK? Cool. now let's look at what this discovery is, and how I as an amateur astronomer who does outreach will cover the topic. First, let's talk about Proxima Centauri. Proxima is a red dwarf, about 12% the mass and size of our sun. It is very dim... in the visible light spectrum. Proxima pumps out as much x-ray radiation as the sun does. It is also a flare star. Every once in a while, the whole surface of Proxima will explode as magnetic lines of force connect and disconnect rapidly. This generates a massive short lived burst of x-rays that can be 100x the normal whole output of the Sun, a star much, much bigger. Think of a coronal mass ejection, only on steroids, multivitamins, herbal supplements and Ovaltine. We are only within the last 10-15 years been able to get a handle on what a red dwarf star is, how they act and evolve, how they bun their fuel, etc. So IF this turns out to be real, that planet is in for some interesting times. Proxima is also an older star that has an age of roughly 5 billion years, or about 10% older than our solar system. The planet is also very close to the star, 10x closer than Mercury is. Yet this gives it roughly the orbital characteristics of Callisto, the outermost of Jupiter's big moons. So the planet will almost certainly be tidally locked. This means that like our moon has a side that always faces the earth, one side of this planet will always face the star. The only reason we know that this thing exists (POTENTIALLY!) is because we can measure a fluctuation in the light coming from Proxima... this fluctuation is every 11.2 earth days. So if our new neighbor is real, a year on this place will be less than two of our weeks. The 2000 data was also 10.5 days or so. They also think there is another body that has a period of 50 days but they cannot confirm it. So Ok, let's play the guessing and imagination games. This planet is slightly bigger than the earth in mass. It is too small to be a "Neptune" sized body, and too small and too hot to be a giant ball of gas. That means we are dealing with a terrestrial world made of metal and rocks. OK, so far I like this. IF this world has a molten core, which at this weight it should, then there is a potential for a magnetic field that might protect the planet from all that x-ray radiation, and may help retain an atmosphere. OK, cool. But at that close, in that environment, water will be broken down and the hydrogen will escape over time. How does that fare for water? Nobody really knows, and until we get the James Webb Telescope up and looking at this thing we don't know. All we have is a sample size of 1 (Our Solar system) to go on. Still a neat find if it can be found with other gear and in other telescopes. Expect there to be more and more calls for Stephen Hawking's interplanetary probe, though. I hope that gets traction as if they launch it in the next 10 years or so I may live long enough to see at least some of the data from it.
Unless it has a large/global magnetic field, the atmosphere may be stripped away (like Mars), but I'm not familiar with solar wind conditions for red dwarfs. I'd like to target detecting auroral kilometric radiation from Proxima b to confirm the existence of a magnetic field, but it will take quite a while before we'd be able to bring our technology up to the required sensitivity.
Yea I read up on some of the old work about the flares on Proxima. Nasty stuff. 2013 normal people language article and the 1951 article describing Proxima which is neat in that THE Harlow Shapley is the primary author.
no no no no OH hell no. we can do better. Place a ring of super conductive magnets at about 80° north and south, cool them, run some current through them and BOOM magnetic field. then start melting the ices or even better, get some 10-20 mile wide asteroids and gently land them on Mars to pump up the atmosphere and create a hydrosphere. If we are gonna go big or go home, Let's go REALLY big!
I don't think francopoli has seen "The Core", which was a good choice on his part.
Obligatory grumbling about species that's super-excited about moving to other near-habitable planets while incapable of keeping its own perfectly habitable planet in that state. But, I guess by the time our descendants figure out how to travel 4.2 light years they might have figured out how to terraform Earth back into Earth. Unless we unterraform Earth so badly they never get the chance.
Oh, fuck, dude. It's incredible. Like, I literally go home, take a shower, and then fuck around exploring planets for three hours. I finally have my ship upgraded to the point where I don't just straight up die every time I stumble across pirates which makes that aspect fun, too. It's pretty much Metroid Prime without the boss battles. Plus Minecraft. And essentially zero plot. Like Minecraft and Myst had a love child on a pile of '70s sci fi pulp novels. It's pretty dope.
Screw PCs. Runs great on PS4 and I care not a whit for anybody else. /r/nomansskythegame was this chill little zone of sci fi fans and then the PC port came out and now it's a swillhole of entitled toxicity. WAAAH! IT WON'T RUN AT 4K 60FPS UNLESS I UPDATE MY DRIVERS! HELLO GAMES IS LITERALLY WORSE THAN EA!!!ONE
I don't have a PS4 and I don't really want one. So the only thing I have that might run it is my computer. I would much prefer to play on console. Of course, I also don't do online gaming either so if I can't duck off to my own little corner and not see another soul I might not like the game that much.
Yup. For those who cannot enjoy something without destroying something, there's minimal attraction. HALF LIFE 2: "Look at this intricate story arc! Now kill everyone!" BIOSHOCK: "What a marvelous setup and characterization! If you want to know more, start a meaningless, pointless shootout over nothing!" And that's why all the PC Pissants are howling like monkeys and throwing their shit: us filthy casuals don't need to shoot stuff all the time and any game that caters to us must be bad. Because otherwise they're the shallow, simplistic assholes their girlfriend told them they were that one time six years ago that they had a girlfriend, even if they never made it to first base she was still their girlfriend YES SHE WAS JARED PROTIP: there has never been a Penny Arcade (or C&H) written that didn't confuse mean-spirited snark for humor.
Speaking as someone with 2000 hours into Kerbal space Program and 800+ hours into Cities Skylines? pffffttttt! My one Half Life 2 regret is not getting the Garden Gnome Achievement. I just cannot do it. linkAnd that's why all the PC Pissants are howling like monkeys and throwing their shit: us filthy casuals don't need to shoot stuff all the time and any game that caters to us must be bad.
Huh. Good to know. Though maybe that could be interpreted in either direction. With a few exceptions here and there, the games that the average gamer likes don't really appeal to me anymore. I'm still playing MOO2 and classic X-Com and with the exception of Fallout 4 and Mindcraft, the most modern game I play more than anything is FTL. These days, the phrases "video games" and "buyer's remorse" are within close proximity of each other when I discuss the topic.
How much stuff is there to scavenge ? A while back I was playing Fallout 4 with a friend and it didn't go well. When he played I sat there getting annoyed he wasn't checking every corner and when I played he sat there wondering if I was seriously going to pick up everything. The answer was yes.