An Avatar movie planet can exist in real life

Only 4.3 light years from Earth is a star named Alpha Centauri A, which is famous for being the nearest star that resembles our sun.

In the popular Avatar movies, the system of this star is the home of a bright fantasy land called Pandorathe moon invented from an imaginary planet similar to Jupiter.

It turns out that, in real life, a giant giant planet seems to be orbiting, according to the astronomers who observed it with the James Webb space telescope.

In addition, the planet apparently orbits at a distance from the star where temperatures may be comfortable enough for lifeaccording to two reports accepted by The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

According to, some scientists are unable to have no moon, as in the Avatar movie.

“There are probably moons,” he says Charles Beichmanan astronomer of Caltech and the NASA jet propulsion lab.

Alfa Centauro A is part of a triple star system and has close companions known as Alfa Centauro B e Centaur. Together, they seem to be One of the brightest objects in the night skyand have long been present in the imagination of scientists and science fiction authors.

“This goes back to the books of Arthur C. Clarke And more recently, to the Avatar movie, ”says Beichman.“ In our science fiction dream, we say, ‘Well, if we want to get somewhere, we have to go to Alfa Centauro’ ”, as, in cosmic terms, it gets very close.

But although in recent years scientists have been able to discover thousands of planets in orbit of stars outside our solar system, including some around next Centauri, which is a quite a lot of fienue star, it has been difficult to hunt for planets around Alpha Centauri A and B, which orbit one around each other.

Part of the problem, says Beichman, is that the gravitational interactions between these two stars complicate a common method To find planets, which is based on the detection of the way the severity of the planets pulls their host stars.

And then there is the fact that its starlight is so bright that it can overshadow the telescopes. It’s as if we tried to point the camera of our mobile phone to a very bright object, says Beichman: “Everything is blurred or bursts with everything.”

But the James Webb space telescope offers Some advantages. One of his instruments was designed to detect exactly the type of infrared light that would come from a seasoned planet. It also has “specially designed masks” that block the light of a central star “and allow you to see closely to see if you can see a planet,” explains Beichman.

The first time Beichman and his colleagues had seen a planet around Alpha Centauri A was about a year ago. They have tried to watch him since, but his orbit may have taken him to a place where he is hidden from the view of the telescope. As your presence still needs to be confirmed with more observations, for now it is considered only a candidate planet.

However, from what you can see, it seems to have the right size and dough to be a gaseous giant.

“It’s something like a mass of Saturn, a radius of Jupiter, and just like the giant giant planets of our solar system, if we approach them,” says Beichman, who adds that the Planet may even have rings.

Temperatures can surround the 40 to 50 degrees below zero Fahrenheitwhich makes it “on the outside of the habitable zone,” he says, but may have warmer periods, as he seems to have an eccentric orbit that brings him closer to his star.

And although a giant giant planet seems to be a unlikely home for lifemoons offer the possibility of solid soil, or even oceans.

“I would expect to exist my moons. The formation of moons around giant planets should be quite common,” he says Mary Anne Limbachan astronoma from the University of Michigan that has sought out alien moons, but was not part of the team of researchers who worked on the discovery of this planet.

Limbach thinks that this candidate for planet may even have large moons largeperhaps the size of Mars, “in a kind of optimistic case.”

“I think it is undoubtedly a environment where life can evolve”He says, saying that even in our solar system, many scientists see moons – such as Europe, Jupiter’s cold moon, or Titan, rich in hydrocarbons, from Saturn – as the best places to look for life beyond Earth.

David kippingColumbia University astronomer said this planet candidate seems to be small to expect a large moon. For the astronomer, Something the size of Titan seems more likely.

“But Titan is too small to keep his atmosphere if we moved to the habitable zone” around a star, he notes. This means that in order to have a moon potentially capable of sustaining life around this planet candidate, “this planet must have an unexpectedly large moon.”

So, can this star system have a pandora, like in the Avatar movie? “It is not impossibleKipping says, but it seems a little exaggerated and would require a number of things to align properly.

However, the question of whether there is a moon that could have a life is very different from knowing if it could have a lush and complex web of life forms, such as science fiction writers dreamed of Pandora de Avatar, says Limbach.

The researcher states that while investigators found signs of moons outside our solar system, these moons detections have not been confirmed as real, such as this supposed new giant gaseous planet has not yet been confirmed for sure.

“I think the first thing I want to see before we claim victory and say that it is a planet,” says Limbach, “are accompanying observations to confirm it.” Still, he adds, “I think it’s Really exciting May our neighbor have a giant planet, so close. ”