Earth's New Neighbor: Proxima b

The planet Proxima b with its host star, Proxima Centauri.

This is an excerpt from my post on Astrobites:

Title:  A terrestrial planet candidate in a temperate orbit around Proxima Centauri
Authors: Guillem Anglada-Escudé, Pedro J. Amado, John Barnes, et al.
First Author’s Institution: Queen Mary University of London
Status: Published in Nature

Earth just got a new neighbor.  Proxima Centauri, the closest star to Earth at just 4.22 light years away, appears to host a planet, but not just any planet.  The planet, Proxima b, is potentially Earth-mass and lies within the habitable zone where liquid water might exist on its surface. The quest for a truly Earth-like planet is the Holy Grail of exoplanet research.  The fact that we might have to go only one star over to find another habitable planet indicates that Earth-like planets are either very common or that we got very lucky.  Whatever the case, this makes Proxima b one of the most interesting planets in the search for extraterrestrial life.