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Would we ever know the secrets of Proxima Centauri b?

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Minhaz Merchant
Minhaz MerchantSep 09, 2016 | 20:06

Would we ever know the secrets of Proxima Centauri b?

Last week scientists got an early Christmas present. After decades of peering at the universe through increasingly sophisticated giant telescopes, astronomers discovered a planet that could possibly harbour life.

The excitement is palpable. The newly discovered planet is in the Proxima Centauri solar system, the sun’s closest star neighbour.

The good news: the planet is roughly the same size as earth. The bad news: it’s four light years away from us.

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Light travels at 3,00,000 km per second. A spacecraft travelling at 30,000 km per hour or 8.33 km per second (30 times faster than a passenger jet) could cover the distance from Mumbai to Delhi in three minutes flat. The same spacecraft would take nearly 1,00,000 years to reach Proxima Centauri b (as the planet has been dubbed).

Of course, new technology could slingshot advanced hyper-spacecraft to travel at accelerated speeds in outer space where gravitational drag is virtually zero.

A future spacecraft travelling at one per cent of the speed of light (3,000 km per second) would cover the distance from Delhi to London in three seconds and yet take 400 years to reach Proxima Centauri b.

The planet though presents a delicious challenge. It is the nearest earth-size planet out of the dozen-plus habitable planets discovered so far. It could have water and an atmosphere. Life could exist on it.

Proxima Centauri b orbits its mother star Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf, every 11 days. Its year is short because it is so close to its sun. The reason it doesn’t get fried is because its sun is a cooled-off red dwarf.

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While sending a space probe to Proxima Centauri b’s surface is not possible with today’s technology, observing it through giant telescopes can reveal fascinating secrets of the universe and how it was created.

The existence of oxygen and methane on the surface of Proxima Centauri b would dramatically increase the chances of life in some form having existed - or currently existing - on the planet.

A common mistake we make is to assume “life” should be “as we know it ”. Non-oxygen-hydrogen life, plasmoid life, and life in forms we can neither imagine nor even conjecture today may exist in wholly different conditions from the earth.

How will we ever know? According to The Economist: “Another way to look for life on Proxima Centauri b would be to search for radio signals. Life in general does not generate radiation at radio frequencies. But intelligent life does - at least it does on earth. And that earth-bound life also puts a tiny bit of effort into looking for such emissions from elsewhere, an endeavour known as the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI.

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Proxima Centauri b orbits its mother star Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf, every 11 days. (Photo credit: Reuters) 

“There have been SETI studies of Proxima Centauri (the star, not its newly discovered planet) in past decades, but they have not been particularly sensitive. If the inhabitants of Proxima Centauri b were beaming powerful transmissions at the earth all day and night, they would have been heard; if they were merely using radio for their own ends, in the way that broadcasters and radar systems do on earth, they would not.”

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The European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile is building a 39-metre European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). The chances of receiving signals from Proxima Centauri b that would prove the existence of life on the planet are slim. But they are not entirely unrealistic.

Infinite universe

There are an estimated 200-400 billion stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way. And there are over 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe. The nearest galaxy is Andromeda, 2.5 million light years from earth.

The chance of “life” - defining the word in the broadest non-Earth-centric terms - evolving on other planets is a mathematical certainty.

The only reason we haven’t yet made contact with other forms of life in outer space - many unimaginably more advanced than us and therefore probably unrecognisable to us - is the enormous, almost unfathomable, vastness of space and time.

Leroy Chiao, a NASA astronaut, has been on four missions into space. Here’s what he wrote on space.com on September 2, 2016: “I have had the privilege of flying to space, and I have gazed down at our home planet, marvelled at the moon and peered out at the universe beyond.

“I believe there is life all over our universe, since it would be the height of arrogance to think that we are alone. Moreover, I believe that at some point, life on earth will die out, either from natural causes, or from our own doing.

“Life is always starting in some parts of the universe at the same time that it is dying out in others. We don't know about each other, simply because the distances are so vast.”

According to Einstein’s theory of special relativity, as an object approaches the speed of light, its mass increases and time, relative to a stationary observer, slows. The theory has largely stood the test of time over a century since Einstein proposed it in 1905.

And yet it is certain that the laws of physics that we take for granted today - including Einstein’s special and general theories of relativity - will eventually break down in extra-solar conditions.

A new physics will build on today’s physics just as Galileo, Newton, Kepler, Einstein and Hawking did in their time. The more we know, as a wise scientist once said, the less we know.

Meanwhile, Proxima Centauri b, with its bevy of secrets, beckons.

Last updated: September 09, 2016 | 20:06
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