Is there a Life on Proxima Centauri B?
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Have you ever heard about the exoplanet Proxima Centauri B? Do you want to participate in an expedition to reach the surface of the planet? Do you think there's real life outside of our solar system? Those are the questions that will be our guide as we go further on this topic. We all know that our home planet won't last for millions of years especially now that humans are making actions that killing the planet. Global Warming, Climate Change, Natural catastrophes, and human activities might put the planet in end.
Those possibilities lead researchers, astrophysicists, and scientists to discover things outside our solar system. Since the 1900s, humanity manage to discover the moon and even land on it, other planets in the solar system, and even recognize other dwarf planets. Along with the evolution of technology NASA manages to invent telescopes that travel along in vast cosmos. Hubble Telescope is a successful object that travels across the vast cosmos and captured magnificent celestial objects in the universe. Until now Hubble Telescope is still traveling in the cosmos continuously capturing images.
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Due to Hubble Telescope, we discovered a lot of exoplanets outside our solar system that categorize into terrestrial, gas giants, Neptunian, and super earth, there are only a few terrestrial planets had been discovered and no assurance that there's life on them. One of the discovered planets is Proxima Centauri B which revolves around its star Proxima Centauri is considered a red dwarf with a life span of 4 trillion years. Proxima Centauri B is our nearest neighbor which is approximately 4 light-years away from earth.
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It is considered a candidate for human life since the planet is located in the habitable zone of its star. However, it's not easy to say that there's life on Proxima Centauri B since our technology isn't advanced to deliver a probe on the surface of Proxima B. One of the categories which scientists look at if a planet is habitable is the presence of hydrogen. If there's a water presence on one planet then the possibility of life is a guarantee since here on earth, in the beginning, there's already a presence of hydrogen that leads to the formation of life.
There's only one way to know if Proxima Centauri B had life on it, an idea of traveling to Proxima Centauri B is widely accepted by scientists but it's not easy like traveling from one place to another. A journey to Proxima Centauri B needs a lot of money and advanced technology, humanity needs to build a spaceship that had enough power to travel for thousands of years and we all know that humans aren't immortal to live those long long years that's why if the journey will occur then there the next generation of humans will bear and die inside the spaceship.
However, there is a possibility that a journey to Proxima Centauri B will be lesser than 6 years if we can travel equal to the speed of light. The only thing needs to attain is enough amount of dark matter which is a powerful source of energy in the universe. It's not easy to acquire dark matter since it cost quadrillion dollars to create a small amount of dark matter. In the future, I believe that humans will be able to harness the power of dark matter and use it for the evolution of humans and technology.
I'm not against the idea of human relocation to another planet however we already reside on a perfect planet that gives us everything we need to live. Why do we need to discover a new planet if we can make a solution to fix our planet? We don't need to abandon our planet once it's not habitable, we made an action to ruin our planet that's why we are obliged to think of a solution on how to fix the problems of global warming and climate change.
This new generation contributes a lot to science, those professionals sitting on NASA manage to discover new things in our universe. It's a milestone once humans discover things in our universe, it's like we are looking for a treasure in vast space but the reality is, we already found the greatest treasure and it is our planet earth.
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If there would be an oxygen in Proxima Centauri B, then surely life would exist as oxygen is essential for living cells to survive. This content is well written and I am glad to hear about your personal thoughts about an interesting topic in Astronomy. Job well done, Chikaku.