City Lights on Other Planets

<p>Our best chance for imaging city lights outside the solar system is around the nearest star to the Sun, Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf located 4.25 light years away. This star is nearly six hundred times fainter than the Sun, and so a planet needs to be twenty times closer to Proxima&rsquo;s furnace than the Earth is from the Sun, in order for it to support life based on liquid water. In August 2016, astronomers&nbsp;<a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/1609.03449.pdf" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">discovered</a>&nbsp;a planet weighing 1.3 Earth masses in this habitable zone. Because of its proximity to the star, this planet &mdash; Proxima b &mdash; is thought to be tidally locked, showing the same side to the star at all times &mdash; just like the Moon does relative to Earth. Proxima b has a permanent dayside and a permanent nightside. My daughters say that if we ever move there, they want a house on the strip that separates the two sides, where they can watch the sunset forever.</p> <p><a href="https://avi-loeb.medium.com/city-lights-on-other-planets-5953e2f5c05f"><strong>Visit Now</strong></a></p>
Tags: City lights