There MAY be a second planet in orbit around the nearest star to the Sun, Proxima Centauri at only 4.2 light years from the Solar System, in the direction of the constellation of the Centaur. The discovery, published in the journal Science Advances by the group coordinated by the Italian Mario Damasso , the National Institute of Astrophysics (Inaf) in Torino, and Fabio Del Sordo , of the University of Crete and the Institute of Astrophysics of the FORTH, thanks to the data collected with spectrographs installed in Chile.
experts suggest the possible presence of a second planet because of the cyclic changes of the brightness of Proxima Centauri. The planet could be, according to the study authors, a super-Earth, and make a complete orbit around Proxima Centauri every 5.2 years, at a distance from the star of about 1.5 Astronomical Units. You would be, i.e., a distance equal to one and a half time the average between the Earth and the Sun, which is about 150 million kilometers.
