I think this is really exciting and am looking forward to the presser tomorrow, but here’s where I can’t get too excited, just not yet.
This planet is believed to be in the “Goldilocks Zone” and believed to be a rocky planet rather than (gaseous?).
But in order to sustain life, would it not also need a liquid metal core in order to have and maintain a magnetic field?
I’m not sure whether that, or any signs of an atmosphere can be detected from this far away. How can they know for sure it is rocky? Perhaps that is an educated guess based on its size and orbiting distance from its star. Can we detect any chemical signatures that would indicate an atmosphere from this far away?
Also it orbits Proxima Centauri which is a red dwarf. So does that mean the “Goldilocks Zone” would have to be closer in to its host star in order to be warm enough for liquid water? But what would that mean as to solar radiation/solar wind and the strength of the planet’s magnetic field? What about the force of or the solar radiation/solar wind from the other two stars in the system? Are the too far away to have any influence?
Just wondering out loud.
But in any case, it is exciting. I’m not very hopeful I will live to see it, but unless we FUBAR things here on Earth, I think one day we will find a habitable planet and one with life and develop a propulsion system that can get us there.
Reading about this made me think of my late dad who passed in 1997. He was a big sci-fi fan (we used to watch the original Star Trek together) and very interested in astronomy and space travel as well as oceanography. When I was a kid, while I was too young to remember the Mercury missions, I do remember most of the Gemini and all of the Apollo missions, watching just about every minute of coverage on TV with my dad that we could, even if that meant him letting me stay up past my bedtime or getting me out of bed at 4AM over my mother’s objections.
I remember when we landed on the Moon, watching the live coverage and tears streaming down my father’s face. My father liked his beer but wasn’t much of a hard liquor drinker but that night, he opened a bottle of pretty expensive scotch he had stashed away and poured a glass and raised a toast to our astronauts and to his dear old friend George.
My dad told me that when he was a kid, in the mid 1930’s, there was an old man (George) who lived on his street who most people thought was a bit or more than a bit crazy. He had never married, had no family, had been some sort of engineer and at one time a professor or a teacher, was an amateur inventor and tinkerer. He had a pretty big telescope that he’d set up in his back yard and was perhaps a bit eccentric, sort of a real life "Doc" Brown. My dad did some yard work and other chores for him and they got to be friends. He introduced my dad to HG Wells and I am in possession of the copy of War Of The Worlds that he gave my father, which I treasure.
My dad told me that George told him one day, “I won’t live to see it, but you may very well and certainly your children will, the day mankind, Americans, will travel to the Moon, land and return safely back to Earth. And maybe one day to Mars.”
When my father told his parents, they told him that it would be “impossible” and that George was just a crazy old man and that my dad shouldn’t work for him anymore, to stay away from him. But my dad didn’t despite their objections, but George died not long after.
My dad believed that there are other planets in our galaxy with life, perhaps life not unlike ours here on Earth.
My dad was also a religious man and theological interpretations and opinions aside, he thought that perhaps when Jesus said, “In my Father’s house, are many mansions” that He may have been alluding to more than just us here on Earth. He believed that if God made us in His image but also made the whole of the Universe, why might He not have made other Adams and Eves, other children, our brothers and sisters made in God’s image on other planets.
Should I live to see another planet proved to have life on it, I’ll raise a toast to my dad and to his friend George.
