Proxima Centauri and the recent interest in it

  • Astronomers recently picked up an “intriguing” radio wave emission from the direction of Proxima Centauri.
  • The beam was named BLC1 or Breakthrough Listen Candidate 1. 
  • It was found in the archival data of the Parkes observatory, which picked up the beam in April and May last year. 
  • It has not been spotted again. 
  • The news has sparked renewed interest in Proxima Centauri, one of whose planets is believed to revolve in the star’s habitable zone, giving rise to the possibility that it could have, or does, sustain life.

BREAKTHROUGH LISTEN

  • The discovery was made by the astronomers at the $100 million Breakthrough Listen project.
  • This is the world’s largest initiative to look for alien life. 
  • It was started by the legendary physicist Stephen Hawking. 
  • The astronomers here regularly spot blasts of radio waves using two powerful telescopes– the Parkes Observatory in Australia or the Green Bank Observatory in the US. 
  • All of their findings so far, though, have been attributed either to natural sources or interference caused by humans.

WHAT IS SPECIAL?

  • This time, the beam picked up from the direction of Proxima Centauri has two interesting characteristics. 
  • First, its signal frequency is 982 Mhz– a narrow-band value that is not transmitted by human-made spacecraft or satellites. 
  • Neither do we know of a natural astronomical phenomenon that can generate such a radio signal. 
  • Second, the apparent shift in this frequency is reportedly consistent with the movement of the planet.
  • This raises the possibility that the emission could be an alien “technosignature”, meaning something which provides evidence of alien technology, and could have arisen from some form of advanced extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI). 

PROXIMA CENTAURI

  • Proxima Centauri is 4.2 light-years away from the Sun.
  • This object was discovered in 1915 by Robert Innes and is the nearest-known star to the Sun.
  • Proxima b, one of the two planets that revolve around the star, is the subject of significant curiosity. 
  • It is sized 1.2 times larger than Earth, and orbits its star every 11 days.
  • Proxima b lies in Proxima Centauri’s “Goldilocks zone”, meaning the area around a star where it is not too hot and not too cold for liquid water to exist on the surface of surrounding planets. 
  • However, this does not mean for sure that water is present on Proxima b. 
  • It could also be hostile to life, if its atmosphere has been stripped away by solar flares from Proxima Centauri.

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