Whats the closest potentially habital star system?

Question

Yes Byron. I am sorta now.

Answer 1

Sorry, no earth-like planets found yet.

Answer 2

I have no idea. I honestly don't know. I have no fragment of a clue.

Answer 3

alpha centauri ...but i dont think it's habitated

Answer 4

that would have to be alpha centauri, about 4 light years away. we don't know if there are habitable planets there or not, but there could be. a lot turns on what you mean by 'habitable'. if you mean the closest detected planet within its star's habitable zone, that's most likely gliese 581 c, about 20 light years away. on the other hand some would say that mars is habitable (stretching the definition a bit, to be sure), and that's obviously a lot closer!

Answer 5

Theoretically, life can survive around nearly any star.  So if that's your only consideration, the closest star besides our own is Proxima Centauri, about 4 light years away.

The real trick is finding a planet that's the right distance away from the star so that it's warm enough for liquid water, but not too hot for life to survive.  Also, the planet has to have an atmosphere and a surface (no gas giants).  Depending if you're talking habitable for humans, or for any life, there are other considerations... for example, the planet has to be small enough that gravity won't crush us if you're talking human habitation... but other lifeforms could have evolved with much stronger bodies to resist the gravity.  Similar considerations are pressure of the atmosphere and chemicals found on the planet.

Considering all that, we haven't found any planets yet that could be potentially habitable.  We've found several hundred extrasolar (outside our solar system) planets.  Since our telescopes are limited, we find most of these planets by the effect they have on their stars; the gravity from a large planet will cause its star to wobble as it orbits.  Because we're limited by this technique, most of the planets we've found are very large gas giants.  Several months ago we found a rocky planet about 8 times the size of Earth, but it is too cold for liquid water.

But all that certainly doesn't mean habitable planets aren't out there.  The number of stars in the universe is so incredibly great that it's almost a certainty that there are thousands of other planets with intelligent life.  The problem is, the distances are so huge we may never be able to reach them.

Answer 6

Milkyway. That thing is infested.

Answer 7

A planet in a star system 175 light years away.Its like earth but much bigger and a little bit hotter.It has water but the gravity is 30% stronger than earth.You can breath the air but alot of the plants are very toxic indeed.

Answer 8

really nobody has any idea. the nearest star would take 170,000 years to get to with current human technology. That would make the trip impossible let alone whether you could survive once you got there.