Proxima Centauri

Risks For Life On Proxima b From Sterilizing Asteroid Impacts

By Keith Cowing

Press Release

June 23, 2020

Filed under asteroids, exoplanet, extrasolar, Impact events, Proxima b

Risks For Life On Proxima b From Sterilizing Asteroid Impacts — Proxima b Impact Event

We consider the implications that a debris belt located between Proxima b and Proxima c would pose for the rate of large asteroid impacts that could sterilize Proxima b from life.

Future observations by ALMA or JWST could constrain the existence of an asteroid belt in the life-threatening regime. We generalize our rate calculation of sterilizing impacts for habitable planets in systems with an asteroid belt and an outer planet.

Amir Siraj, Abraham Loeb
Comments: 4 pages, 5 figures; submitted for publication in ApJL
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as: arXiv:2006.12503 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2006.12503v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Amir Siraj
[v1] Mon, 22 Jun 2020 18:00:00 UTC (4,287 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.12503
Astrobiology, Astrochemistry

Keith Cowing

Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na’Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he/him) 🖖🏻

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