Astronomers have detected evidence of a third planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, our sun's nearest stellar neighbour, some 40 trillion kilometres away.
A light-year, the distance light travels in one year in a vacuum, is equivalent to about 9.5 trillion kilometres
As far as its neighbours go, Proxima d is too close to the star to be in the habitable zone, and Proxima c, which takes about five years to orbit the star, is too distant. During recent follow-up observations of the system, the astronomers detected a weak signal from an object with a quick orbit around the star.
"After obtaining new observations, we were able to confirm this signal as a new planet candidate," Faria said. "I was excited by the challenge of detecting such a small signal and, by doing so, discovering an exoplanet so close to Earth."
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