'Second Earth' to be revealed...

[guohua]

That's what they are saying and the shocking part, they are also saying that with a Laser Sail Nano Craft they can be there in 20 years.
OK, so,,,,,, That's a Damn Small Craft and I always thought that Proxima Centauri was a long ways away or am I wrong.

ASTRONOMERS are preparing to announce the discovery of a potentially habitable second Earth orbiting a nearby star, it has been claimed.

An anonymous source from the ESO told German publication Der Spiegel the discovery is the closest habitable planet to Earth, which means we could reach it within our lifetime.

Really, in our lifetime

But the astonishing finding was not officially announced, sparking furious speculation that the second Earth has deliberately been kept a secret.
Now the ESO is set to finally reveal details of the planet at a press conference tomorrow and astronomers are also likely to discuss whether it has the potential to support life.
“The still nameless planet is believed to be Earth-like and orbits at a distance to Proxima Centauri that could allow it to have liquid water on its surface — an important requirement for the emergence of life,” the source said.
“Never before have scientists discovered a second Earth that is so close by.”
Since its launch in 2009, NASA’s planet finding Kepler Spacecraft has discovered more than 4000 exoplanet candidates.
Of these, there have been 216 Earth-like located within the Goldilocks Zone — the region around a star in which the surface temperature of an orbiting planet might support water.
The problem is that while most of these Earth-like planets are habitable, they are located thousands of light years away, which means they are out of our reach.
Astronomers from the observatory had previously claimed to have found the then-closest exoplanet to Earth in 2012, although subsequent analysis cast doubt on its existence.

If the findings are correct, Russian billionaire Yuri Milner’s search for intelligent life could focus on heading to the planet.

As part of Milner’s plans, Project Starshot intends to send a laser-sail driven-nanocraft to Alpha Centauri — the closest star system to the Solar System — in the coming years.
With the craft able to travel up to 20 per cent of the speed of light, if Project Starshot was to rethink its objective, it would be able to reach the Earth-like planet orbiting Proxima Centauri in less than 20 years.
However, mastermind of Project Starshot Professor Phillip Lubin said the focus will likely stay on Alpha Centauri.
“The discovery of possible planet around Proxima Centauri is very exciting. It makes the case of visiting nearby stellar systems even more compelling, though we know there are many exoplanets around other nearby stars and it is very likely that the Alpha Centauri system will also have planets,”

Source

Now they're talking like travel between these distant Stars is possible.
Reminds you of the Secret Space Program.

[Ninurta]

OK, so,,,,,, That's a Damn Small Craft and I always thought that Proxima Centauri was a long ways away or am I wrong.

Proxima Centauri is the closest star to Earth at the moment other than the sun. It's just under 4 1/4 light years away, the third star in the Alpha Centauri trinary system, orbiting in a wide orbit around the binary pair forming the primary of the system.

That's the good news. Now for the bad.

Proxima Centauri is a class M red dwarf star. It outputs low power, but will outlive both Alpha Centauri A + B and the sun itself. The reasons for that are sort of complicated, but the essence is that it burns so cool that it will burn longer than the others mentioned because it burns it's fuel at a much slower rate, even though it has far less mass to burn. That also means that the so-called "Goldilocks zone" is so close to the star that any planets in it would likely be tidally locked, always keeping the same side facing the star, making for a hot side and a cold side, permanent day on the hot side, permanent night on the cold one.

This can have some bizarre effects. I had a long discussion with my physics advisor a few years ago regarding just such a planet. Conventional wisdom would not allow for life to develop on such a planet because if the permanent hot/cold sides, but he had a different take. He reasoned that there might be a zone at the terminator (the area where night becomes day and vice versa) that could have conditions amenable to life. Neither too hot nor too cold, this zone (from the surface it would be the "twilight" area, so we could call it the Twilight Zone in honor of Rod Serling) could have the right temperatures, and the right amount of light and so on and so forth to support a ring of life around the planet.

Because of the way heat and cold affect air flow, the atmospheric currents would probably be violent, perhaps with long lived or more or less permanent hurricane force winds, meaning any life there would have to be exceptionally hardy, and likely without enough leisure time to develop any sort of technology. Intelligence is a different matter - dolphins are very intelligent, perhaps as intelligent as humans, yet have been unable to develop technology because of their circumstances.

Fascinating possibilities to run with in speculation, but I'd wait for spectral analysis of the planet to see if it even has an atmosphere, or what that atmo may be composed of, as well as analyses to determine possible mass ranges and the like.

Part of my work at that university was research into habitable extrasolar planets (the other part was mapping "local' space in 3 dimensions for interstellar navigation), and there is an amazingly narrow range of possibilities to support life as we know it. That would include possible humans as colonizers.

This planet has potential, but don't hold your breath until they get the parameters narrowed down.

ETA: for a good, scientifically sound discussion of the "solar sailboat" concept driven to 20 PSOL by lasers, see the "Rocheworld" Speculative science fiction series by Robert L. Forward. The star in it is Barnard's Star, 5.9 light years away (and so farther out than Proxima Centauri). I actually at one time made a 3D model for use inside the program Celestia of the Rocheworld System from studying those books, so it's as accurate as possible within the Rocheworld universe. You can actually fly there yourself inside Celestia by using it, and see what the explorers in the books saw.

[Mystic Wanderer]

Now they're talking like travel between these distant Stars is possible.

Reminds you of the Secret Space Program.

It's their way of slowing leaking the truth out to the general population.  DRIP...DRIP...DRIP!

Can't just come out and say, "Well, let's go hop on the port-a-bus and see what the people on Saturn are doing."  

[guohua]

That's Very Interesting Information Ninurta, Thanks!
So, I'll tell My Husband Not To be Holding His Breath For a Visit From Three Titted Aliens!

[Ninurta]

That's Very Interesting Information Ninurta, Thanks!
So, I'll tell My Husband Not To be Holding His Breath For a Visit From Three Titted Aliens!

Also make sure he knows to avoid the green ones - they're not ripe yet!

[guohua]

That's Very Interesting Information Ninurta, Thanks!
So, I'll tell My Husband Not To be Holding His Breath For a Visit From Three Titted Aliens!

Also make sure he knows to avoid the green ones - they're not ripe yet!

[guohua]

OK, seriously, Mystic Wanderer, didn't you do an thread about these alien call Hands that a woman in California was suppose to be in contact with.
Well, they are suppose to be from the planet or at least the Star System.
There was a book written,

As the story goes:

The ink is barely dry on stories of the discovery of Proxima-B, an Earth-like exoplanet orbiting in the habitable zone of Proxima Centauri, our closest neighbor just four light years away, when even bigger news hits of a long-forgotten out-of-print book written in the 1970s describing 8-foot-tall humanoid aliens from Proxima Centauri that have already visited Earth and may still be here. Too soon?

Hands: A True Case Study Of A Phenomenal Hypnotic Subject was written by Margaret Williams and Lee Gladden. The book tells the allegedly true story of a group of California psychologists lead by Williams and Gladden who spent seven years telepathically communicating with a being from somewhere near Alpha Centauri, the star system which includes Proxima Centauri. The being was described as huge, dome-shaped and friendly “with an intelligence that was perhaps somewhere between that of a human and a dog.” Oh, and it had eight hands – hence the cruel nickname.

The “phenomenal hypnotic subject” in the title was a young woman who facilitated the telepathic communications. Through her, Hands talked about the Cenos, another alien species from a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri who had actually visited Earth in the alien flesh. The Cenos were described as being 8-foot-tall humanoids with multiple hearts, the physical strength of five humans, no need for sleep, no diseases or ailments other than big pores in their skin and a lifespan of 120 human years. Hands said the Cenos had elongated skulls and big hands – but only two of them – and had visited Earth many times, including during World War II.

  A sketch of a Cenos allegedly seen in Taiwan in 2012

Unbelievable, right? Not to Dr. Barry Warmkessel, a physicist and well-known alien technology expert who conducted intense research on the book in 2012 as part of his broader studies on alien life forms, including one reported in Taiwan in 2012 that resembled a Cenos. His study is available on the Internet and credit goes to Eric Mackof c/net for finding it and Hands and bringing them to light so soon after the Proxima-B discovery.

Warmkessel claims the Cenos visited Earth during the time of the Akkadian civilization (~2300 BC). One was designated the Sumerian god Enki (or the Akkadian god Ea).

So, we have an account from an out-of-print 1976 book of a 1957 telepathic conversation with multi-handed alien through a hypnotized woman in which another alien species from Proxima Centauri is revealed and described. An alien expert says that species has allegedly visited Earth as late as 2012 and may possibly still be here.

Source
Did they visit Earth Sp Long Ago, Maybe They Did!