Earth-like planet spotted orbiting Sun’s closest star
Another point for anyone considering whether we should send a space-probe there...<p>The current fastest man-man object is the Helios 2 space-probe, reaching something like 25 000 kilometres per hour. Proxima Centauri is 1.3020 parsecs away from Earth.<p>So, just diving one by the other, we'd looking at something like 18 000 years as a rough order of magnitude for sending something from Earth to Proxima Centauri.<p>You'd be much better off waiting, well, even a thousand years for technology to improve rather than sending something now.<p>Note: this is a <i>very</i> dodgy line of reasoning. The Helios probe got a massive speed boost from a close encounter with the sun. But even if the speed is wrong by a factor of ten, we're still looking at somewhere between a thousand and a hundred-thousand years.