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Just A Hop, Skip And A Parsec Away
An artist’s impression of the planet Proxima b. Photo: ESO
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You’ve probably already heard by now, but scientists just discovered an exoplanet that might be like Earth. It’s pretty close, too — only about a parsec, or 4 light years away. Observers discovered it by noticing a wobble in the star Proxima Centari. That wobble was from the tug of this exoplanet.
Now, it’s time to verify the results. Joseph Harrington is a planetary scientist in the Department of Physics at the University of Central Florida. He’s going to try and spot evidence of the planet using telescopes in space. He talks to host Brendan Byrne about the work and what a discovery of this magnitude means for astronomy.
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