Check out Britannica's new site for parents! But don't get your hopes up of visiting it - its period is only 3.24 days, meaning it must be only about 6 million kilometers (less than 4 million miles) from its star. Its professed…

Imagine were in a spaceship approaching the planet in question. More hypothetical planets to further waste dwindling resources, dreaming for 'a solution' (escape, from, for 'a few') to the effects of our earthly behaviour; we cannot even cope with terrestrial virus ...the first job on any new planet (hypothetically, but 1-1 odds) would be, we'd lumber about killing everything we could ..just in case it wanted to stop us paddling, or some such excuse ...it's us that needs changing, not the planet. David Szondy is a freelance journalist, playwright, and general scribbler based in Seattle, Washington. The other reason this is important is that the signal from the planet is incredibly weak.

If it’s too small, it might last a long time, but the planet will have to be very close to stay warm and that can cause all sorts of problems, such as tidally locking the planet, so one side is always in daylight and the other in night, which isn't good.

Exoplanets that are either 10s of light-years away or are barren aren't going to be important to us, but a potentially "super-habitable" planet next door is something we could potentially visit.Fascinating article David thank you! A slightly more massive planet with more gravity means more tectonic activity, so a better magnetic field and a more stable climate.However, the most striking difference between the superhabitable world and Earth would be that the former would lack our continents and deep oceans. Note that the system is a multiple star system. What term describes the alignment of three celestial bodies? The reason this is a big deal is twofold. The Alpha Centauri star system (Image: Courtesy of PHL @ UPR Arecibo)

I just checked in with Jupiter’s moon Io about your "volcanic Hell Hole" slight.

The closest star system to the Earth is the famous Alpha Centauri group. Your website access code is located in the upper right corner of the Table of Contents page of your digital edition.Sign up for our email newsletter for the latest science news Alpha Centauri is a triple-star system, composed of a binary star, two stars much like the Sun - one slightly larger and hotter, called Alpha Centauri A, and the other slightly smaller and cooler, called Alpha Centauri B - orbited themselves by a red dwarf (called Proxima Centauri) much farther out.

The planet has a mass at least 1.3 times that of Earth.This article was most recently revised and updated by

He has been a New Atlas contributor since 2011.

Alpha Centauri Bb is an unconfirmed exoplanet that orbits around the sun like star Alpha Centauri B. A larger moon that Heller and Armstrong call a "Super Europa" in the right orbit around a gas giant could heat enough to support life even if it’s technically outside the star’s habitable zone.According to Heller and Armstrong, as we orbited above the planet, it would look very different from our own. This would place it in the middle of the "stellar habitable zone," also known as the "Goldilocks zone" or the "Temperate Zone." Comparison of star sizes in the Alpha Centauri system (Image: Courtesy of PHL @ UPR Arecibo)

The first thing wed notice is that its sun isn't a familiar yellow. If it has a planet, it's too small or too far out from the star (or both) to detect it easily.

Plate tectonics constantly draw these silicates into the molten interior, where they’re melted and the carbon dioxide returned to the atmosphere, which helps prevent the planet from overcooling and freezing.

The following plot shows the approximate sizes of the planets in this system There are almost certain to be small, rocky planets around Alpha Centauri A and B. Alpha Centauri system is the star system nearest to our sun. Cosmic bombardments early in the history of the Solar System is how the Earth got its water and minerals in the crust. This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has given us this stunning view of the bright Alpha Centauri A (on the left) and Alpha Centauri B (on the right), shining like huge cosmic headlamps in the dark. It hosts at least 3 stellar components.

Orbits in such a system are so unstable as to be basically unpredictable. Please consider contributing!