Maybe we have nearby cousins in the universe

When I was a student, the only star whose name I could remember was Proxima Centauri. That was because I had been told that it was our closest stellar neighbor. Today, we learn with excitement that this star has a planet, known as Proxima B, that sounds as if it could be relatively similar to our Earth. Inevitably, we ask the breathtaking question: Could there be, or have been, life on this exoplanet?

That sphere in the foreground is an artist's impression

of the Proxima B exoplanet, which gravitates around

the little orange star in the background.

It’s not exactly just down the road. The distance between Earth and Proxima B is over 4.2 light years. That’s to say, over 40 thousand billion kilometers. But that’s neither here nor there. In more down-to-earth terms, it will probably take our human scientists another ten or so years to use new scientific instruments to tell us whether or not there might be, or might have been, life of some kind on Proxima B.