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’s furnace than the Earth is from the Sun, in order for it to support life based on liquid water. In August 2016, astronomers <a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/1609.03449.pdf" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">discovered</a> a planet weighing 1.3 Earth masses in this habitable zone. Because of its proximity to the star, this planet — Proxima b — is thought to be tidally locked, showing the same side to the star at all times — 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>