Pale blue dot, meet pale red dot. Astronomers have spent decades scouring the skies looking for Earth-sized planets around distant stars. And now they’ve found one, sitting smack in the habitable zone of our nearest stellar neighbor. Proxima b, described Wednesday in the journal Nature, could be one of the first planets wherehumans might findlife outside our solar system. “It’s the closest star. It has a potentially habitable world — I just think it’s amazing,” said Cornell astrophysicist Lisa Kaltenegger, who was not involved in the discovery . “This is just such a great exciting time to live in because we’ll figure out how we fit into all of this — and hopefully, also, if we’re alone in the universe.” Read more http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-proxima-b-planet-20160824-snap-story.html
