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The universe is a big, big identify. When you're dealing with distances that stretch into many light years, finding something that'south but a few light years away counts equally "shut." Astronomers from the ESO'southward HARPS Observatory were excited in 2022 when an exoplanet was found "shut by" in orbit of Blastoff Centauri B. At merely iv.3 low-cal years distant, information technology was the nearest exoplanet to Earth and a probable target for future study. At that place'south just ane problem — it doesn't exist.

The non-existent planet was known as Blastoff Centauri Bb. The characteristics for the reported planet were strange to begin with. It was roughly Earth-sized and orbited Alpha Centauri every iii.2 Earth days, making it difficult to detect in the first place. The showtime attempts to confirm the existence of Alpha Centauri Bb failed, but that was chalked upwardly to its size and velocity. Nevertheless, a new comprehensive review of the published data has led the original discoverers to conclude at that place is no Alpha Centauri Bb.

The original detection was made with a technique chosen radial velocity (RV) measurement (sometimes chosen the Doppler method). This approach consists of watching for subtle ruby-red and blue shifting in the spectra of a star as the gravity of a planet tugs on information technology. In this instance, astronomers were looking for these aberrations every three days to account for Alpha Centauri Bb. This approach works fine when it comes to larger planets in the range of Jupiter or Neptune, or fifty-fifty a super-Earth several times the size of our planet, but something the size of Earth would produce very modest Doppler signals.

Sun-Alpha-Centauri

Re-analysis of the data by a team at Oxford pointed to a number of factors that could completely explicate the bleep in the planet, which was previously seen every bit evidence of Blastoff Centauri Bb. Factors like solar weather condition, instrument problems, and the tug from another star could all account for the phantom planet. With no boosted data to testify Alpha Centauri Bb is out at that place, the original HARPS squad has penned a paper to be published side by side month that concurs with the new analysis. There is no Blastoff Centauri Bb.

Just because this one planet turned out to be a ghost in the data doesn't hateful there can't exist a planet in orbit of Alpha Centauri B. Astronomers are certain to go hunting for some other planet in orbit of Blastoff Centauri B or one of the other stars in the arrangement (Blastoff Centauri A and Proxima Centauri). For now, the closest confirmed exoplanet is Gliese 15Ab, which is eleven light years away. It'southward about five times as massive every bit Earth and orbits close to its parent star, a small cerise dwarf.