Are we alone? Tiny spacecraft will head to Alpha Centauri to find out

Re:Are we alone? Tiny spacecraft will head to Alpha Centauri... by salutonmundo on Thursday August 23, 2018 @05:43PM (#17830925)

I liked that book, but if anything, it made me of the opinion that life in the Centauri system (or any three-body star system) is extremely unlikely.

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Re:Are we alone? Tiny spacecraft will head to Alpha Centauri... by Semiapies on Thursday August 23, 2018 @06:07PM (#17831054)

I liked the novel, but the whole setup is written under an inaccurate understanding of how the Centauri system is arranged. Proxima is a long way out from Alpha Centauri A and B (0.21 light years), orbiting their mutual center of mass, and A and B themselves are a fair distance apart (from 11.2 to 35.6 AU). Any of the three stars could have planets in close stable orbits; we already know Proxima has one.

ETA: Actually, we know of another one around B.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Centauri#Planets

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