Petition for renaming "Proxima Centauri b" to "Centauri Prime"

I'm going to object, because RP :p

edit - you know there is a station around Epsilon Eridani 3?
No machine on the planet though, at least I didn't find one.
 
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Surely you can RP the change of a name of planet?

CMDR A: Ok team, let's head over to Proxima Centauri B.
CMDR B: According to GalNet this morning, they've renamed it to Centauri Prime.
CMDR A: Whatever, let's go.
I would then have to invade.

I'd really like to RP something with that cowbell, but that wouldn't be polite :x
 
Proxima B is in fact Eden in game ;-)


It's even weirder than that.

Frontier releases Elite Dangerous two years ago, and in the game, Alpha Centauri and Proxima Centauri are one system.

In orbit around Proxima Centauri is a planet, Eden. And orbiting that is of course our beloved Hutton Orbital. So it's already a famous planet in the game.

Here's a quote from the Galaxy Map description: "Eden was the first planet on which liquid water was detected by spectroscopic methods in 2038, and was consequently a major driving force for the exploration of space. However, Eden turned out to be extremely inhospitable with the added danger of hard radiation from Proxima."

Eden in game is 0.66 Earth masses, is 5,412 km in radius and has surface gravity of 0.92G. Pretty close to Earth at first glance. It is 70% rock, 30% metal, with iron magma vulcanism (like Earth) and a water atmosphere. But there, the promise ends... with a surface temperature of 1,224 Kelvin and a surface pressure of 2,213 atmospheres.

It only has an orbital period of 31 days, because it's orbiting very close to Proxima at 0.01 AU. It's also tidally locked.

And so on to the real world. This discovery was announced yesterday in the journal Nature:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-37167390

Let's quote.

"Neighbouring star Proxima-Centauri has Earth-sized planet."

"The planet's mass would suggest it is a rocky world like Earth."

"Scientists say their investigations of the closest star, Proxima Centauri, show it to have an Earth-sized planet orbiting about it.
What is more, this rocky globe is moving in a zone that would make liquid water on its surface a possibility.
Proxima is 40 trillion km away and would take a spacecraft using current technology thousands of years to reach.
Nonetheless, the discovery of a planet potentially favourable to life in our cosmic neighbourhood is likely to fire the imagination."

"Just how "habitable" this particular planet really is, one has to say is pure speculation for the time being.

The Queen Mary University of London researcher and his group concede they still have much work to do to extend their observations.
Simply identifying the world, catalogued as "Proxima b", was a considerable challenge.
It was made possible through the use of an ultra-precise instrument called HARPS.
This spectrograph, attached to a 3.6m telescope in Chile, detects the very slight wobble induced in a star when circled by a gravitationally bound planet.
Its data suggests Proxima b has a minimum mass 1.3 times that of Earth and orbits at a distance of about 7.5 million km from the star, taking 11.2 days to complete one revolution.

The distance between the star and its planet is considerably smaller than Earth's separation from the Sun (149 million km). But Proxima Centauri is what is termed a red dwarf star. It is much reduced in size and dimmer compared with our Sun, and so a planet can be nearer and still enjoy conditions that are potentially as benign as those on Earth.
"This planet is at 5% of the Earth's distance from the Sun. However, Proxima is 1,000 times fainter than the Sun. So the flux - the energy - reaching Proxima b is about 70% of what the Earth receives. It's like taking Earth a bit further away, but it's comparable," explained Dr Anglada-Escudé.
Whether the temperatures on Proxima b are favourable for life to exist is going to depend on the presence of an atmosphere.
An envelope of greenhouse gases would warm surface conditions and provide sufficient pressure to keep water - essential for biology - in a liquid state.
But even with the limited information we currently have, scientists are excited by the news.
"I think it's the most important exoplanet discovery there will ever be - how can you ever trump something that could be habitable orbiting around the very closest star to the Sun?" commented Dr Carole Haswell from the Open University.
"When I was a kid, it wasn't clear there were any other planets that we could walk around on and find liquid water on - so I think it's absolutely thrilling," she told BBC News."

...

So two things.

One, who else wants the real planet to be renamed Eden?

And two...

puts on tinfoil hat

Who else thinks Frontier are wizards or aliens?

I have this horrible certainty that whenever we finally get there, humanity is going to discover that the planet is far too hot, far too irradiated and far too high pressure to be easily habitable.
 
Proxyma is a flare star so it's very likely that this planet is too irradiated to host life.

Anyway, this is no more wizardry than Swift putting the actual Mars satellites into Gulliver's Travels :)
 
what no mention of instant transfer?

Phew.. thank the heavens, I'll stay here, till it happens

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Proxyma is a flare star so it's very likely that this planet is too irradiated to host life.

Anyway, this is no more wizardry than Swift putting the actual Mars satellites into Gulliver's Travels :)

Yep its lashed with deadly radiation, but with a good magnetosphere and a nice pressurised atmosphere with some very deep oceans then we might have some very friendly intelligent fish
 
Yep its lashed with deadly radiation, but with a good magnetosphere and a nice pressurised atmosphere with some very deep oceans then we might have some very friendly intelligent fish
Our new overlords:
r2jbz9.jpg
 
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