Astronomy / Space About that trip to Proxima Centauri…

[Shadowdancer]

… you may want to bring protection. It looks like the once thought to be quite nice (by astronomical standards) Proxima b would more likely be a blasted irradiated wasteland that frequently gets scoured by massive flares of its parent star that may well have eliminated any atmosphere.

https://carnegiescience.edu/news/pr...-illuminates-lack-dust-ring-puts-habitability

 

[Zak Gordon]

Isaac Arthur just put up a good video on this topic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkeLIAd2Nd0

Proxima would have it's challenges (re radiation), but Alpha Centauri A&B might be more manageable? An interesting topic, as our closest star system, so i really hope Breakthrough Starshot gets proper funding to start our closer look at the system.

 

[Shadowdancer]

Proxima would have it's challenges (re radiation)

A star flaring to a thousand times its "normal" brightness and stripping off the atmosphere with hard radiation sounds challenging indeed Mercury may be more hospitable. Having such events in Elite would be neat too.

Alpha Centauri

That's now Rigil Kentaurus, go with the times

 

[Manticore]

I'll remember that next time I'm in the neighbourhood.