Last year, members of the Breakthrough Listen Project – a $100 million initiative to find alien life through radio telescopes – 'carefully investigated' the mysterious signal that emanated from the star system. The radio wave signal was initially detected in April and May 2019 from the Australia-based Parkes Telescope at a frequency of 980 MHz. 'The original signal found by Shane Smith is not obviously detected when the telescope is pointed away from Proxima Centauri – but given a haystack of millions of signals, the most likely explanation is still that it is a transmission from human technology that happens to be "weird" in just the right way to fool our filters.'
There is also a theoretical mission to send a probe to the planet in 2069 to search for biosignatures.
Scientists hope the James Webb Space Telescope - due to come online next year - could detect the atmosphere of Proxima Centauri b. If water and an atmosphere are present, even with the extensive radiation, it could be possible life has developed on the planet. Studies have suggested the planet could have surface oceans and a thin atmosphere, but that hasn't been confirmed.Īstronomers won't know if it has water or an atmosphere until it can be seen transiting in front of its star - which has yet to happen.
The planet was discovered in August 2016 and is likely tidally locked.įor these reasons, despite being in the habitable zone, its actual habitability has not been established. While it is within a zone where liquid water could form - these stellar winds make it unlikely life could evolve. The rocky world is subject to solar winds 2,000 times those experienced on Earth from the Sun. Proxima b orbits its star every 11.2 Earth days and has a mass of about 1.2 times that of the Earth. It orbits within the habitable zone of the star - but as Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf and much smaller than the Sun this zone is very close to the star. Proxima b is the nearest exoplanet to the Earth and the closest planet to the star Proxima Centauri. 'Taken together, this evidence suggests that the signal is interference from human technology, although we were unable to identify its specific source,' Sheikh said in a statement. The researchers pointed the Parkes Telescope at the star and then pointed it away, toggling between the 'on-off' pattern several times, which left them with 5,160 possible candidates.Īfter weeding out more signals, there was one – known as BLC1 – that had 'characteristics broadly consistent with hypothesized technosignatures,' but it too is likely just a case of human technology. The researchers scanned the Proxima Centauri star system across a wide range of frequencies, from 700 megahertz to 4 gigahertz '(in other words, performing the equivalent of tuning to over 800 million radio channels at a time,' according to a statement) and found 4 million hits that were eventually whittled away to 1 million after looking at hits with no motion.Īnother filter was applied for the remaining hits, as they had to appear to come from the direction of Proxima Centauri. Four million hits that were eventually whittled away to 1 million after looking at hits with no motion