There was a lot of buzz about the newly detected potentially rocky planet in the Proxima Centauri system.
CSM interviewed Explainable Daniel Angerhausen and other exoplanet experts to weigh in on the implications of what might be the biggest science news of the year.
This is what Explainable Daniel Angerhausen told staff writer Eva Botkin-Kowacki:
The discovery, announced Wednesday in the journal Nature, "shows that we have entered an era in human history where we finally have the instruments available to answer one of humankind's oldest questions," says Daniel Angerhausen, a researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center who was not involved in the research.
And although Proxima b might not check all the boxes for habitability as we know it on Earth, we may yet find an extreme form of life there, says Dr. Angerhausen. "Life found ways to cover a lot of Earth," including in some very harsh conditions, he writes in an email to the Monitor. "Maybe there are scientists sitting on [Proxima b] that think life on Earth is impossible because we have that weird 24-hour cycle and seasons…"
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