Cold Dust Discovered Around Nearest Star

[Waspie_Dwarf]

ALMA Discovers Cold Dust Around Nearest Star

Quote

The ALMA Observatory in Chile has detected dust around the closest star to the Solar System, Proxima Centauri. These new observations reveal the glow coming from cold dust in a region between one to four times as far from Proxima Centauri as the Earth is from the Sun. The data also hint at the presence of an even cooler outer dust belt and may indicate the presence of an elaborate planetary system. These structures are similar to the much larger belts in the Solar System and are also expected to be made from particles of rock and ice that failed to form planets.

Proxima Centauri is the closest star to the Sun. It is a faint red dwarf lying just four light-years away in the southern constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur). It is orbited by the Earth-sized temperate world Proxima b, discovered in 2016 and the closest planet to the Solar System. But there is more to this system than just a single planet. The new ALMA observations reveal emission from clouds of cold cosmic dust surrounding the star.

  Read More: ESO

 

[Twin]

If we leave now we can probably get there in about 40,000 yrs.

[FateAmeniableToChange]

interesting! i think a major problem any future missions to other solar systems are going to have is being able to enter the inner system due to dense clouds of debris,asteroids etc leftover from planet formation and held by gravity, every star will be densely encapsulated.

[Waspie_Dwarf]

6 minutes ago, FateAmeniableToChange said:

interesting! i think a major problem any future missions to other solar systems are going to have is being able to enter the inner system due to dense clouds of debris,asteroids etc leftover from planet formation and held by gravity, every star will be densely encapsulated.

It won't be a problem. Asteroid fields are nothing like they are shown in the movies, they are thousand of mile apart. You would have to be extraordinarily unlucky to hit anything large enough to damage a spacecraft. Spacecraft have passed through Earth's asteroid belt regularly with no incident, the asteroid belts of other solar systems will be no different.

[fred_mc]

10 hours ago, Twin said:

If we leave now we can probably get there in about 40,000 yrs.

Yes, and since technology and understanding of physics move forward we will probably be overtaken by a ship that left much later but which has technology that can take it there faster.

[paperdyer]

Perhaps we should send a probe once we get the ion drive far enough developed and worth trying out on a trip.

Edited November 7, 2017 by paperdyer
clarified, hopefully, my thought process. It's on of those days.

[I'mConvinced]

19 hours ago, Twin said:

If we leave now we can probably get there in about 40,000 yrs.

If our solar sail technology works we could be there in 20 years...

[I'mConvinced]

9 minutes ago, paperdyer said:

Perhaps we should send a probe once we get the ion drive far enough developed and worth trying out on a trip.

We're already doing it.  The plan is to send tiny probes, sped up to 1/5th the speed of light by Earth based laser light, to make the first determinations.   

[paperdyer]

@I'mConvinced - Thanks, I said it was one of those days.  After you mentioned it I remembered.  I couldn't remember my daughter's wedding anniversary date yesterday.  Sometimes meds are a bad thing.