ESO’s Wednesday Presser: Earth 2.0 at Proxima Centauri?

Proxima Centauri Imaged by Hubble Space Telescope

German rocket pioneer Krafft Ehricke supposedly once said “if God had meant mankind to become a spacefaring species he would have given us a Moon.”

Based on that sentiment, tomorrow could be a bad day for atheists.

Last month, word began to come out that an Earth sized planet has been discovered in the habitable zone around our nearest neighbor, Proxima Centauri, the third (and closest) member of the trinary system most people know simply as “Alpha Centauri.”

The discovery, if that is indeed what it was, is likely to be the subject of a press conference being held tomorrow at the Headquarters of the European Southern Observatory. Given that a previous ESO finding regarding a possible planet around Centauri B has been largely refuted, the organization has perhaps been understandably reticent to come forward too quickly with the latest revelation.

And what a revelation it would be; an Earth sized planet potentially capable of holding liquid water on its surface, dangled before us in space only 4.25 light years away.

We should doubtlessly save the dramatic conclusions until the finding is confirmed, and even then we still won’t know all that much until more powerful, yet to be launched space-based instruments such as TESS or JWST can directly confirm the planet’s presence and characteristics, but even the possibility is beyond tantalizing.

As we are coming to think of solar systems not just in terms of the major planets they hold and the stars they orbit, but as reservoirs of vast resources, an Earth analog, even (and perhaps preferably) if it is a barren world done devoid of life, situated so agonizingly close would likely become as culturally compelling as Mars is today. The logical next step, and one that simply must be taken.

SpaceX after all, still needs a stretch goal.