The Nearest Star Is Only 4 Light-Years Away — And We May Reach It Sooner Than You Think
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The James Webb Space Telescope may have detected a giant planet around Alpha Centauri A — the closest Sun-like star to Earth. But when JWST returned to search for it again, the mysterious planet candidate had disappeared. In August 2024, Webb detected a faint infrared object near Alpha Centauri A, just over four light-years from Earth. Its position and brightness were consistent with a cold giant exoplanet, potentially around the mass of Saturn and located roughly twice the Earth-Sun distance from its star. But follow-up JWST observations in February and April 2025 found nothing. So where did the disappearing planet go? Astronomers simulated millions of possible orbits and discovered something surprising: in many viable scenarios, the Alpha Centauri planet candidate would simply move too close to the brilliant light of its star for James Webb to detect it. That means the planet may never have disappeared at all. In this video, we investigate the mysterious Alpha Centauri A planet candi
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