The billionaire and CEO of SpaceX Elon Musk appeared motivated to seek habitability of humankind outside Earth as he shared a study from 2018 of exoplanets which, according to scientists, could host life.
Musk was very eloquent about his plans to make human beings species that can travel back and forth to different planets with the help of his aerospace company. Our solar system’s fourth planet in a row Mars is also under a 51-year-old’s radar to turn it into a colony in the coming decades.
The study regarding Proxima Centauri b — a super Earth
exoplanet that orbits Proxima Centauri star — was conducted to determine
whether water could be sustained on the planet as it resides in the
Goldilocks Zone or habitable zone.
The habitable zone is a
distance in which water can stay in its liquid form to host microbes due to
the compatible temperatures.
This exoplanet is the nearest to the
Earth.
Anthony Del Genio, a planetary scientist at the Nasa
Goddard Institute for Space Studies said: "The major message from our
simulations is that there’s a decent chance that the planet would be
habitable."
According to the study, the Earth-sized planet is potentially
the closest "highly habitable" planet to our Solar System, located 4.2
light-years away from the Sun.
"Practically next door," CEO Musk
wrote in a tweet Sunday while sharing the study.
There is a "Highly Habitable" Planet Just 4 light years from Us, Astronomers Say https://t.co/U68pFbRBHm
— Amazing Astronomy (@MAstronomers) June 11, 2023
Since its discovery in 2016, Proxima Centauri b was being
studied by astronomers about whether the planet could host life.
Similar
to the Earth’s moon, the planet is “locked” due to gravitational forces,
meaning that the same side of Proxima Centauri b always faces its parent
star.
As the study was carried out on the basis of computational
simulations, it indicated that exoplanet’s oceans and atmosphere act as an
effective transfer of heat, so that its dark side is not permanently
frozen.
Notwithstanding its close distance from Earth, it is 4.2
light-years away and to date, there is no such technology which could take
humans to that far.
It would take 80,000 years for Nasa’s
spacecraft Voyager 1 to travel to Proxima Centauri, but the agency’s DEEP-IN
programme intends to make it possible within a single lifetime.
Experts
who are working on DEEP-IN state that small crafts propelled by light could
travel at speeds of up to 161 million kilometres per hour and reach the
neighbouring star and exoplanet in 20 years.
51-year-old Musk
frequently voiced his concerns about humanity’s long-term survival, claiming
that “setting up self-sustaining colonies on other planets is vital to
ensure the continuation of our species.”
