About this episode
🌍 What's the nearest habitable planet? Many of us on Earth are asking this question. The search for life on Mars, the nearest habitable planet to Earth, began in the 19th century and continues today with in situ exploration missions. Rovers are regularly sent to the Red Planet to collect samples of Martian soil that may give us clues to past or present life on Mars. However, no extraterrestrials have yet been found on Mars. The Red Planet is indeed in the Sun's habitable zone, but at its extreme limit, so it's very cold there, with an average temperature of -63°C, compared with 15°C on Earth!The discovery of the first exoplanet, 51 Pegasi b, on October 6, 1995, changed all that. Exoplanets are planets orbiting a star other than the Sun. To date, over 5,300 exoplanets have been discovered, according to the Encyclopedia of Extrasolar Planets! But not all exoplanets are habitable: some orbit very close to their star, while others are ice planets like Uranus or Neptune. And fewer than 200 of the exoplanets discovered are rocky, like Earth, the others being gaseous like Jupiter. The search for a habitable exoplanet has become one of the goals of astronomers, who study the characteristics of each exoplanet discovered using powerful telescopes in the hope of finding bio signatures, i.e. traces of life. 🔥 As a reminder, videos are published on SUNDAYS at 6pm.-------------------------💥Trip to the exoplanets of the Wolf 1061 star system: - The Wolf 1061 star system is located 13.8 light-years from our solar system. Between Earth and Wolf 1061, there's no void - quite the contrary. Contrary to popular belief, space is not empty. There's no air, but there are gases, dust, molecules and atoms. There are also numerous celestial objects: stars, exoplanets, satellites, comets, pulsars... There are thought to be around 30 stars between Earth and Wolf 1061. On our way, we'll come across a multitude of stars, some of which are the center of a planetary system. Wolf 1061 c isn't the closest exoplanet to Earth, but it's one of the few that seems most likely to harbor life. We'll be taking advantage of our journey to the Wolf 1061 star system to observe several exoplanets that astronomers have already studied in the hope of finding traces of extraterrestrial life. On our way, we'll come across several exoplanets that are already candidates for the title of the closest exoplanet to Earth where life exists. First stop: the Proxima Centauri planetary system!Let's continue our journey into the Universe to discover the closest exoplanets to Earth. Not far from GI411 b is the exoplanet Ross 128 b, located 11 light-years from our planet. Discovered in 2017, exoplanet Ross 128 b orbits a red dwarf, Ross 128, and was detected with the HARPS spectrograph at La Silla Observatory in Chile. This is the closest exoplanet to Earth that could potentially be inhabited, as Ross 168 is
