The search for life in space just took a big leap forward. Researchers working on the New Earths in the Alpha Centauri Region (NEAR) project, funded by entrepreneur Yuri Milner's Breakthrough Initiatives, have potentially discovered a new planet in the habitable zone of the nearby star Alpha Centauri A, located 4.37 light-years from Earth. Their report was published in the
Nature Communications journal this week.
In an image taken of the star via the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, the team spotted a separate glowing object. They suspect it might be a planet — one that's four to five times larger than Earth, or roughly the size of Neptune. It's located between one to two astronomical units (AU) from its star (one AU is the distance from the Earth to the sun), putting the planet in the habitable zone, where water might be able to form to support life.