The mysterious ‘ring’ could mean that there are more unseen planets lurking around the dim red dwarf, in addition to the rocky Proxima B.
The ALMA Observatory in Chile spotted a glow coming from cold dust in a region between one to four times as far from Proxima Centauri as the Earth is from the Sun.
Dust appears to lie in a belt that extends a few hundred million kilometers from Proxima Centauri and has a total mass of about one-hundredth of the Earth’s mass.
This belt is estimated to have a temperature of about -230 degrees Celsius, as cold as that of the Kuiper Belt in the outer Solar System.
Lead author Guillem Anglada from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (CSIC), Granada, Spain said: ‘The dust around Proxima is important because, following the discovery of the terrestrial planet Proxima b, it’s the first indication of the presence of an elaborate planetary system, and not just a single planet, around the star closest to our Sun.’
The ALMA Observatory in Chile spotted a glow coming from cold dust in a region between one to four times as far from Proxima Centauri as the Earth is from the Sun.
Dust appears to lie in a belt that extends a few hundred million kilometers from Proxima Centauri and has a total mass of about one-hundredth of the Earth’s mass.
This belt is estimated to have a temperature of about -230 degrees Celsius, as cold as that of the Kuiper Belt in the outer Solar System.
Lead author Guillem Anglada from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (CSIC), Granada, Spain said: ‘The dust around Proxima is important because, following the discovery of the terrestrial planet Proxima b, it’s the first indication of the presence of an elaborate planetary system, and not just a single planet, around the star closest to our Sun.’