How David Hardy predicted, that two planets are orbiting Proxima Centauri?

 

How David Hardy predicted, that two planets are orbiting Proxima Centauri?

The second planet orbiting Proxima Centauri (1)is now confirmed. 

When we are looking at the painting above this text, we can say that maybe this scene is true. Maybe someday our descendants would stand on that beach and look at the Proxima Centauri(2). The thing is that two planets are orbiting the closest star of our solar system, and the journey to that system would take about 21 years if we can create the probe, which travels about 20 percent of the speed of the light. 

The question is why this planetary system, what locates 4,244 light-years from Earth is not discovered earlier? There have been found exoplanets in bigger distances. The distance to the famous Gliese 581 system is 20,56 light-years. (3)

The confirmation of the second planet of Proxima Centauri has been got. And that is the time to celebrate that interesting thing, and when we are looking at the image above this writing, we are looking again at the David Hardy's painting about the surface of the planet of Proxima Centauri, what is painted a long time before those planets are found. That painting is from the 1970s and that means there could not be observations about those exoplanets. 

In that time there was suspicious that there could be another planetary system because the "Barnard's star" (4)was traveling in the space with zig-zag movements. And that causes suspicious about the existence of Barnard B. The thing is that "Barnard's star" is a small red dwarf and the small mass of that star causes that the planets, what is about the Jupiter-sized can affect the movement of that star. Now we know, that the "Barnard's star" has a companion "super-earth", known as "Barnard's star B". (5) 

The question is, how Hardy Could predict the existence of those planets, and how he imagined that two planets are orbiting that red dwarf? The interesting detail in that painting is that there are just two planets. But the thing is that the world is full of mysteries, and we are living in the Universe, where the solved mystery will create another mystery. And this makes science and astronomy so interesting. 

(1) https://earthsky.org/space/2nd-exoplanet-confirmed-proxima-centauri

(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri

(3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliese_581

(4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnard%27s_Star

(5) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnard%27s_Star_b

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