Astronomers have found an Earth-like planet orbiting Proxima Centauri. Warm enough for liquid water, is almost certainly rocky and terrestrial, and could even have an atmosphere.

[Legend]

Earth-Like Planet Found Orbiting the Nearest Star

BOOM!

[darkknightkryta]

I read this here, clicked the link to the article, read the article, moved on, and came back here.  When I came back here I was like "Wait this is where I found the article?"

[Xevross]

This is extremely exciting!!

We're definitely going to be able to get there in our lifetimes, I think, and there's no way it won't have some form of alien life if all this is true.

We're gonna find them!

[Kerotan]

I've noticed you post some cool space related things on here.  I'm really interested in space so thank you!

Now which will mankind achieve first.  Landing on this planet or vizioneck gone gold.  The race is on!

[nnodley]

How long will it be until we can build a telescope either on earth or orbiting earth to be able to see up close and personal on other planets without having to be somewhat near it?  like being able to see it has water or clouds or whatever?

[the-pi-guy]

How long will it be until we can build a telescope either on earth or orbiting earth to be able to see up close and personal on other planets without having to be somewhat near it?  like being able to see it has water or clouds or whatever?

Telescopes work much better orbiting Earth because there's no atmosphere.  Atmosphere makes a big difference. 
James Webb Space Telescope - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This launches in October 2018.

[Legend]

How long will it be until we can build a telescope either on earth or orbiting earth to be able to see up close and personal on other planets without having to be somewhat near it?  like being able to see it has water or clouds or whatever?

Well 2018 with the James Webb space telescope. It won't be anywhere good enough to see surface detail, but for some exoplanets it will be able to see them as a few pixels large.

This is enough to determine their atmospheres, day length, seasonal changes, tilt, etc.

[BananaKing]

yeah after looking this up it doesnt seem likely that any life could be on the planet.

[Legend]

yeah after looking this up it doesnt seem likely that any life could be on the planet.

Why not?

As far as exoplanets go, this seems like one of the better ones.

[Mmm_fish_tacos]

Wouldn't you experience all the seasons in just 11 days?

[the-pi-guy]

Why not?
As far as exoplanets go, this seems like one of the better ones.

For example, red dwarfs such as Proxima Centauri are quite active stars, and Proxima b's distance from its star is just 5 percent of the distance between the Earth and the sun. So the alien planet is bombarded with anX-ray flux about 100 times greater than the flux that Earth receives from the sun, study scientists said. And it's not clear if Proxima b has a magnetic field like Earth's that would protect the exoplanet from such levels of radiation, which could be harmful to life.

Aliens Next Door: Does Proxima b Host Life?

Mostly it's pessimism though.  

[BananaKing]

Why not?

As far as exoplanets go, this seems like one of the better ones.

Lots of reasons. But the main one would be the massive sun flares the red dwarf has, that would wipe out anything alive. Plus, I'm sure I read there is a lot of radiation due to the sun. Ad to that other reasons like how it seems the planet always faces from one side (no day/night cycles), meaning that one side of the planet is burning hot, the other is freezing cold. And just many other things.

Heck, they aren't even sure it's a solid planet, it could be a hassle giant.

[Legend]

Wouldn't you experience all the seasons in just 11 days?

Yes, so essentially you wouldn't have seasons. They'd be too short to greatly affect the climate.

Lots of reasons. But the main one would be the massive sun flares the red dwarf has, that would wipe out anything alive. Plus, I'm sure I read there is a lot of radiation due to the sun. Ad to that other reasons like how it seems the planet always faces from one side (no day/night cycles), meaning that one side of the planet is burning hot, the other is freezing cold. And just many other things.

Heck, they aren't even sure it's a solid planet, it could be a hassle giant.

Sun flares don't automatically wipe everything out. Radiation isn't necessarily too bad either.

We don't know if the planet is tidally locked or not. Even still, life could theoretically live on a tidally locked planet around the terminator where the two extremes cancel out.

[Mmm_fish_tacos]

Yeah, I was about to say that if it was tidally locked there would be a band of livable space where hot and cold meet.

[the-pi-guy]

Lots of reasons. But the main one would be the massive sun flares the red dwarf has, that would wipe out anything alive. Plus, I'm sure I read there is a lot of radiation due to the sun. Ad to that other reasons like how it seems the planet always faces from one side (no day/night cycles), meaning that one side of the planet is burning hot, the other is freezing cold. And just many other things.

Heck, they aren't even sure it's a solid planet, it could be a hassle giant.

There is still a lot we don't know, about the galaxy, or the universe as a whole.  
We don't really know how common planets are, how common rocky planets are (although counting asteroids seemingly very common), how common life supporting atmospheres are, and a lot of other factors.

I wouldn't say it's unlikely, or likely either that life could exist here.  There are a ton of variables, and we don't really know what the values of any of those are.

It could be way more common than we could imagine, we might find out that the odds of a likely planet that could support life is like 80% due to factors in how star systems form, or we might find that the odds of a planet fulfilling all the requirements for life is actually 0.00000000001%.  

Either way though, this finding is very exciting for 2 reasons.
1.) It is one of the best candidates that we've ever found.
2.) And in the grand scheme of things, it's also ridiculously close.