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Old October 6th 18, 03:10 PM posted to sci.astro.amateur
Quadibloc
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Default Proxima Centauri b - may not exist

On Monday, July 30, 2018 at 8:21:48 AM UTC-6, Quadibloc wrote:
Ran across this:


https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2015...-reconsidered/


I looked at Wikipedia, and found no mention of this controversy.

Then I looked at the original paper, and did a search for the names of its
authors... and found where on Wikipedia they are mentioned, and then checked
that against the paper.

It turns out that they debunked a *different* exoplanet, Alpha Centauri B b, not
Proxima Centauri b.

Proxima Centauri is at such a distance from Alpha Centauri that it was only
recently proved that it is gravitationally bound to Alpha Centauri. Alpha
Centauri B, on the other hand, orbits Alpha Centauri A at a mean distance of
23.4 AU in a highly eccentric orbit.

So no doubts about the existence of Proxima Centauri b have been raised after
all.

John Savard