Alpha Centauri Bb

An ESO artist's impression of the disproven planet Alpha Centauri Bb.

Alpha Centauri Bb (α Cen Bb) was a proposed exoplanet orbiting the K-type main-sequence star Alpha Centauri B, located 4.37 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation of Centaurus, but there has not been enough evidence to support the claim.[1][2]

The claimed discovery of the planet was announced in October 2012 by a team of European observers, and the finding received widespread media attention.[3][4][5][6] However, the announcement was met with scepticism by some astronomers, who thought that the European team was over-interpreting its data.[7]

In October 2015, astronomers from the University of Oxford published a scientific paper disproving the existence of the planet. They observed that an identical statistical analysis of randomly-generated synthetic data gave the same results as the actual astronomical data.[8] This led Xavier Dumusque, the lead author of the original paper, to concede "We are not 100 percent sure, but probably the planet is not there."[9]

  1. ^ Dumusque, X.; Pepe, F.; Lovis, C.; Ségransan, D.; Sahlmann, J.; Benz, W.; Bouchy, F.; Mayor, M.; et al. (17 October 2012). "An Earth mass planet orbiting Alpha Centauri B" (PDF). Nature. 490 (7423): 207–11. Bibcode:2012Natur.491..207D. doi:10.1038/nature11572. PMID 23075844. S2CID 1110271. Retrieved 17 October 2012.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference eso1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Wall, Mike (16 October 2012). "Discovery! Earth-Size Alien Planet at Alpha Centauri Is Closest Ever Seen". Space.Com web site. TechMediaNetwork. Retrieved 17 October 2012.
  4. ^ Overbye, Dennis (17 October 2012). "New Planet in Neighborhood, Astronomically Speaking". New York Times. Retrieved 17 October 2012.
  5. ^ Palmer, Jason (17 October 2012). "Exoplanet around Alpha Centauri is nearest-ever". BBC. Retrieved 17 October 2012.
  6. ^ Kaufman, Marc (17 October 2012). "New Planet Is Closest Yet: Earth-Size Lava World a Space "Landmark"". National Geographic. Archived from the original on 18 October 2012. Retrieved 18 October 2012.
  7. ^ Hatzes, A. P. (17 October 2012). "Meet our closest neighbour". Nature. 491 (7423): 200–201. Bibcode:2012Natur.491..200H. doi:10.1038/nature11636. PMID 23075846. S2CID 37768785.
  8. ^ Rajpaul, Vinesh (19 October 2015). "Ghost in the time series: no planet for Alpha Cen B". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters. 456 (1): L6–L10. arXiv:1510.05598. Bibcode:2016MNRAS.456L...6R. doi:10.1093/mnrasl/slv164.
  9. ^ Powell, Devin (29 October 2015). "Poof! The Planet Closest To Our Solar System Just Vanished". National Geographic. Archived from the original on 30 October 2015. Retrieved 15 January 2015.