The long-sought world, designated Proxima b, orbits its cool red parent star every 11 days and has a temperature suitable for liquid water to exist on its surface. This rocky world is a little more massive than the Earth and is the closest exoplanet to us — and it may also be the closest possible abode for life outside the Solar System.
The team led by Guillem Anglada-Escudé (professor at Queen Mary University of London and doctorate from the University of Barcelona), has found a tiny back and forth wobble in the star attributed to its gravitational interaction with the planet, which has been final data for the acceptance of the finding.
The team was working in the Pale Red Dot Campaign analysing data from earlier observations made at ESO observatories and elsewhere. A careful analysis of the tiny Doppler shifts showed that they indicated the presence of a planet with a mass at least 1.3 times that of the Earth, orbiting about 7 million kilometres from Proxima Centauri — only 5% of the Earth-Sun distance.
