Joseph Alberti, age l0, of Venice, Fla., for his question:

Does Alpha Centauri have an orbiting planet?

It would be nice to know that the sun's nearest star neighbor has a family of orbiting planets. But at the moment nobody knows enough to say yes or no. A true scientist is not likely to give a definite answer without a lot of definite proof.  In this case he or she might have a very strong suspicion that Alpha Centauri does indeed have a family of planets.

Most modern astronomers feel sure that our solar system is not the only one of its kind. In fact, they suspect that most of the starry suns produced planets as they were formed. If this proves to be true, then there must be about 100 billion other solar families in our galaxy alone. Alpha Centauri, Sirius, Polaris and all the other familiar stars could have orbiting planets. So we can hope, but let's not be too certain. It is likely that all or most stars have planets, but as of now nobody has proved this friendly theory to be a known fact.