The closest Alien Planet (Shown Above)
By: Mike Wall
Published: 06/03/2013 03:09 PM EDT on SPACE.com
The stars will align for planet hunters twice in the next three years, allowing them to probe the nearest star to our own solar system for Earth-size alien worlds.
Proxima Centauri, which lies just 4.24 light-years from Earth, will pass in front of background stars in both October 2014 and February 2016. Astronomers should scrutinize Proxima during these two periods, looking for subtle light shifts that could reveal the presence of close-orbiting planets, a new study reports.
"This is an opportunity to determine the mass of Proxima, and also detect planets up to 4 AU [astronomical units] around Proxima Centauri," Kailash Sahu, an astronomer with the Space Science Telescope Institute in Baltimore, Md., told reporters today (June 3) at the 222nd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Indianapolis. [Alpha Centauri Star System Explained (Infographic)]
One astronomical unit is the distance from Earth to the sun, or about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers).
The closest alien planets?
Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf, meaning it's cooler and smaller than our own sun.
Red dwarfs are the most common stars in the Milky Way, making up about 75 percent of the galaxy's stellar population. They're good candidates to host rocky, roughly Earth-size worlds, since lower-mass stars tend to have relatively smaller planets, researchers said.
Proxima is part of the three-star Alpha Centauri system, the closest solar system to our own. A scorching-hot rocky exoplanet roughly the size of Earth was discovered circling Alpha Centauri B, another star in the system, last year.
Astronomers have yet to find any worlds circling Proxima, but they continue to look. And the upcoming star alignments — which Sahu and his colleagues predicted by plotting Proxima's path through the heavens using data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope — give them a rare chance to ramp up the search.
The alignments offer an opportunity to take advantage of a phenomenon calledgravitational microlensing. As Proxima passes in front of the two background stars, its gravitational field will bend and magnify the distant stars' light, acting like a lens.
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This is a picture from the doorway of the 11:11 - This happened January 11th & 12th in 1992...
The Keynote of the First Gate of the 11:11 Doorway Is HEALING OUR HEARTS
The Doorway of the 11:11 opened on January 11 – 12, 1992.
There were two Master Cylinders.
The Omega Point was located at the Great Pyramids in Egypt.
The Alpha Point was located in Queenstown, New Zealand.
On January 11 -12, 1992 over 144,000 people gathered together in groups large and small
throughout the planet and opened the Doorway of the 11:11.
This Activation was unique in that a series of Unified Movements and Sacred Dances
were performed at three preordained times – 11:11 am, 11:11 pm & 11:11 am GMT.
The participants wore white to symbolize the purity of our inherent Oneness.
Never before had there been an event of such synchronized unity on this planet.