Alpha Centauri Region News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

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...

 E-Mail IMAGE: Alpha Centauri A (left) and Alpha Centauri B imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope. Located in the constellation The Centaur, at a distance of 4.3 light-years, the pair of stars... view more  Credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble Imaging planets orbiting around nearby stars, which could potentially harbour life, has become a possibility thanks to the progress made in observational methods by an international team of astronomers. First candidate: Alpha Centauri, a system similar to ours, "only" 4.3 light years away. This study is the subject of a publication in the journal Nature Co...