Word: proxima
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There is less debate about where comets originate. The most widely accepted explanation is that of Dutch Astronomer Jan Oort, who says that comets exist by the billions in a vast swarm of debris beyond Pluto that stretches halfway to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri. The debris, called Oort's Cloud, coalesced from the swirling dust and gases in the original solar nebula, from which the sun, earth and other planets and moons were formed. Thus comets are primordial matter, largely unchanged since the solar system's birth. (Lyttleton ascribes a different origin to the comets: he thinks...
...with planetary systems, some of which may contain worlds inhabited by intelligent life. Yet they have been hard-pressed to prove their case. Interstellar distances are so vast that even the most powerful telescopes on earth could not spot a planet orbiting the sun's nearest stellar neighbor, Proxima Centauri, which is a relatively scant 4.3 light-years (or about 26 trillion miles) away...
...event that a civilization exists on some planet orbiting a nearby star, and has been able to detect transmissions from Earth, it is unlikely that any of its saucers have yet arrived to investigate. Even the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is 4.3 light-years away. And because presumably no spaceship-or any matter-can travel at or beyond the velocity of light, which is the universal speed limit according to the Einstein theory of relativity, it would take considerably longer than 4.3 light-years to reach the earth from its nearest stellar neighbor. At the 17,500 m.p.h. that astronauts...
...need 36,800 m.p.h. Soaring past Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, it would reach the outer limits of the solar system with almost no speed left. Then, like a chip on a glassy lake, it could drift for millions of years before it approached the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, which is 25 trillion miles away from the sun. Man's spaceships can probably reach interstellar escape velocity in a generation, but there will be little profit in interstellar voyages. They will take too long. The barrier that protects the stars and their planetary systems from human invasion...
...discovery by Shapley and his Harvard colleagues of the periodic flare-up of Proxima Centauri, the star nearest the earth (25 trillion miles). These explosive flashes double the intensity of the star, which is normally 10,000 times brighter than...