Headline September 11, 2016/ ''' EARTHLIKE : *JUST 25 TRILLION MILES AWAY* '''

''' EARTHLIKE : 

*JUST 25 TRILLION MILES AWAY* '''

THERE ARE HINTS ALL AROUND,  of perhaps another  *Earthlike planet*, perhaps more, but those hints are still ambiguous, the master scientists said.

Astronomers announced just a week ago that they had detected a planet orbiting  Proxima Centauri, the closest neighbour in our solar system.

Interestingly, the planet is in the star's  ''Goldilocks zone,'' where it may not be too hot or too cold. That means liquid water could exist at the surface, raising the possibility for life.

Although observations in recent years, particularly by  NASA's Kepler planet-finding mission, have uncovered a bounty of world's throughout the galaxy close to the size of Earth,this one holds particular promise because-

Someday, decades from now, it may be possible to reach. It's 4.2 light years, or  25 trillion miles from Earth, which is extremely close in cosmic terms.

One astronomer likened it to a  flashing neon sign: ''I'm the nearest star, and I have a potentially habitable planet,'' said  R. Paul Butler, the astronomer at the  Carnegie Institute of Science and member of the team that made the discovery.

Guillem Anglada-Escude, an astronomer at Queen Mary University of London and the leader of the team that made the discovery, reported in journal Nature, said: 

''We know there are terrestrial planets around many stars, and we kind of expected the nearby stars would contain terrestrial planets. This is not exciting because of this. The excitement is because it is the nearest one.''   

Beyond the planet's size and distance from its parent star, much about it is still mysterious. 

Scientists are working off computer models that offer more hints of what's possible. Conditions could be  Earthlike, but they could also be hellish like Venus or cold and dry like Mars.

There is no picture of the planet, which has been designated as Proxima.b. Instead, Dr. Anglada-Escudae, and his colleagues detected it indirectly, studying via telescope the light of the parent star.

They zeroed in on clocklike wobbles in the starlight, as the colors shifted to the reddish end of the spectrum, then slightly bluish.

The oscillations, caused by the  bobbing,  back-and-forth motion of the star as it was pulled around by the gravity of the planet, are similar to how the pitch of a police siren rises or falls depending on whether the patrol car is travelling toward or away from the listener. 

From the size of the wobbles, the astronomers determined that Proxima b is at least 1.3 times the mass of the Earth, although it could be several times larger. A year on Proxima b  -the time to complete one orbit around the star   -lasts just 11.2 days.

Although the planet lost in the glare of the star,  cannot be viewed by current telescopes,  astronomers hope to see it when the next generation is built decades from now. And the planet's propensity to Earth gives hope that robotic probes could someday zoom past the planet for a look. 

A privately funded team of scientists and technology titans, led by the Russian entrepreneur Yuri Millner  and the theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, have announced-

Breakthrough Starshot  Initiative,   a project to launch a fleet of iPhone size spacecraft within two or three decades.

Their proposed destination is the  Alpha-Centauri systems, which includes a pair of larger sunlike stars in addition to Proxima Centrauri

'' We will definitely aim at  Proxima,'' said Avi Loeb, a  Harvard astronomer who is chairman of an advisory committee for   Breakthrough Starshot . ''This is like finding prime real estate in our neighbourhood.'' 

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