SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY

Astronomers Seek New Home Closer to Home

from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

The nearest Earth out there in space? It might be right next door, galactically speaking.

Two teams of astronomers, one from the United States and one from Europe, are in a race to find a planet orbiting our near neighbors Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B, twin stars that appear from Earth as a single point of light.

"I'm betting that there are planets like Earth or Mars or Venus around either or both of those stars, and the only question is whether we'll be able to detect them," said Debra Fischer, an astronomer at San Francisco State University. Backed with U.S. government funding, she is using a telescope in Chile to assemble 100,000 observations of the Centauri system.