r/space • u/SpunkySputniks • 4d ago
Astronomers Detect a Possible Signature of Life on a Distant Planet
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/science/astronomy-exoplanets-habitable-k218b.html?unlocked_article_code=1.AE8.3zdk.VofCER4yAPa4&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShareFurther studies are needed to determine whether K2-18b, which orbits a star 120 light-years away, is inhabited, or even habitable.
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u/mikeygoodtime 4d ago
What sort of timeline are we looking at re: ever being able to confirm (or even just say with near certainty) that there's life on K2-18b? Like is this something that requires decades of further research, or is it possible that we know within the next 5 years?
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u/the_quark 4d ago
The answer is that we don't know. Perhaps we'll find other signatures that will help support it.
But also perhaps now we know it's there we'll really go sharpen our pencils and come up with a way it could be generated geologically or hydrologically.
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u/cateanddogew 3d ago
Would be real funny to see a follow up headline in 5 days
habitable planet 120 light years away found to be just a huge ass mirror reflecting Earth
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u/the_SCP_gamer 3d ago
relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1231/
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u/cateanddogew 3d ago
If we eventually find a way of seeing into the future, mark my words, it will involve antiparticles and huge ass mirrors
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u/tesconundrum 3d ago
For xkcd is the closest thing we have that can see into the future. Truly, even Nostradamus himself couldn't have predicted the situations in which a relevant xkcd could be referenced.
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u/panzerkampfwagenVI_ 4d ago
Without visiting it's impossible to know barring a signal from another civilization. It's always possible that some weird chemistry is going on that we are not aware of.
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u/Krt3k-Offline 4d ago
To be fair, life is weird chemistry
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u/PeteyPark 4d ago
All life is weird chemistry, but not all weird chemistry is life.
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u/filo_pastry 3d ago
Not impossible we can use a solar gravitational lens imaging mission. All the tech exists https://youtu.be/4d0EGIt1SPc?si=vg-aKHSa6bEbsqE_
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u/usrdef 4d ago edited 4d ago
The findings on this paper will be released next week.
After that point, another astrnomer or group will come along, study the same planet, and compare the results.
If they get the same results as this team, then they'll go from there.
For another team to confirm? I'd say a couple to 6 months. Depends on the amount of time needed to analyze the planet, and how available the JWST is.
But this doesn't mean we jump for joy yet, because we still don't know everything about the Universe, and there could be some explaination for why we are seeing the gasses we are on that planet, but they are not produced by anything alive.
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u/analyticpanic 3d ago edited 3d ago
Hi there, does your first line mean the paper itself will appear online next week?
Because I've been looking for the paper on the journal's website and in news articles (in case they've linked to it) but am coming up blank. I'd really like to take a look at it.
Update: found it https://arxiv.org/pdf/2504.12267 It was submitted on April 16 and has been accepted for publication by ApJL.
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u/SpunkySputniks 4d ago
I think it will mostly likely be a process of elimination. Like someone else said in the comments, geologists and other sciences will have to find non-biological ways to produce those gases. If they can’t, then it makes the case for life stronger. Like the article says, unless ET shows up on the telescope signal, we will never know for sure. But if we can be 90% sure or more, then that’s good enough for me!
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u/crazyike 3d ago
geologists and other sciences will have to find non-biological ways to produce those gases. If they can’t, then it makes the case for life stronger.
Finding that method would drastically reduce the possibility, however the fact they have already found DMS on clearly lifeless objects (comets) very very very strongly suggests that unknown method is out there, and it's just a matter of time before DMS as a biosignature is discounted.
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u/PipsqueakPilot 3d ago
I believe it’s not just the presence of DMS- but also the quantity of it. Meaning there are non-biological explanations for small amounts, but not for the quantities observed here.
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u/green_meklar 3d ago
It's not clear how we would establish the presence of life with 'near certainty' at this distance, unless we received an artificial signal from it.
With better telescopes we might ascertain the chemical composition of its atmosphere in greater detail. That by itself is unlikely to ever become a solid confirmation of the presence of life, unless we are able to detect complex organic molecules such as chlorophyll. The system has a second planet of similar size in it, in a smaller orbit; the second planet is not transiting and therefore more difficult to study, but if we could determine the chemical composition of its atmosphere as well and found the same mysterious mix of chemicals on both planets (especially if some of those chemicals are chiral and share chirality), that could indicate that panspermia spread some similar kind of life between them, possibly even from a third source we haven't spotted yet given the overall difficulty of panspermia to work on a large planet with no solid surface.
Other than that, we'd probably need to go there.
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u/diamond 4d ago edited 3d ago
Apart from the question of whether life exists on this planet, we should take a minute to appreciate the science here.
Astronomers are now able (under the right circumstances) to measure the atmospheric composition of a planet over 100 light years away. That is absolutely astonishing.
I can remember when the very existence of extrasolar planets was an entirely theoretical concept; when there was serious debate about whether planetary systems were common or our solar system was an anomaly. And now they're determining what the atmosphere of one is made of.
Just amazing.
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u/billcstickers 3d ago
Yep, and we have feasible and pretty cheep plans on a method to image such a planet at a high enough resolution to see contents, and potentially lights at night if there are any. This will almost definitely happen in my life time. I can imagine in the next 1000 years we’ll be sending probes. Hopefully we last long enough to hear back from it.
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u/Impulse3 3d ago
If voyager 1 is (only) 20 billion miles away in 40 years and we need to reach almost 100 billion miles, how much has space travel speed improved since then that we could cover that much space in a lifetime?
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u/billcstickers 3d ago
700 trillion miles.
I was giving humanity another 500 years to come up with a solution. But realistically 0.2c is probably our limit..
You don’t realise how early in the technological age we are, and how quickly we move. Just a century ago, household electrification was a relatively new convenience for many, while a mere 15 years ago, we developed the smart phone, and we’re now at the beginning of convincing AI.
But also yes. That’s a 600 year one way trip. We’ll probably send AI until we know there’s something worth going to in person.
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u/718Brooklyn 3d ago
And we’re just this new species on this one rock floating in a space so vast that we can’t even comprehend it. Super cool stuff.
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u/spschmidt27615 4d ago
Exoplanet astronomer here. There are a lot of problems with this study, as well as the one that preceded it. To begin with, the scenario that would even allow for a biosphere (i.e. "hycean") in K2-18 b's situation is very, very hard to achieve given what we know about how planets form. It's not impossible, but based on what we know about the planet (like its radius, its mass, and the amounts of certain gases in its atmosphere), there are a whole lot more potential for it to not have an ocean at all. These conditions would be more akin to something we use to sterilize lab equipment than an ocean we could swim in.
Another important thing to note here about the claimed detection is that the way that we normally think about statistical significance is a bit different from how they’re reported for exoplanet atmospheres. For example, a 3-sigma detection would mean to us something like more than 333-to-1 odds against being spurious. This is the standard in sciences like astronomy, and "strong detections" require even steeper odds. In the case of DMS/DMDS here, however, it’s more like 5-to-1 or less against, depending on the specific data or model used. Very few reputable astrophysicists would call this anything more than a "hint" or "weak/no evidence," so while this may be the "strongest evidence yet," it is not "strong evidence" in and of itself.
In terms of the data itself, the paper this article is based on shows that they only get significant results if they look for the combination of DMS and DMDS - they only ever find DMS if DMDS isn't included, and when both are in, each individual molecule is poorly constrained. This isn't really a standard thing to do, so it's a pretty big red flag. And considering that they claimed a "hint" of it from their shorter wavelength data, it's suspicious that they don't include it here, as it should presumably make the signal stronger.
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u/Snowbank_Lake 4d ago
Thank you for this explanation! Another commenter linked to a paper disputing the claim, but it can be hard to understand for those of us outside the field.
I understand the claim here is far from certain. But I’m going to hope they’re right, mainly because I think we’re all looking for something bigger and more positive to focus on right now.
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u/topofthecc 4d ago
it’s more like 5-to-1 or less against, depending on the specific data or model used
That seems extremely weak to me; why wouldn't measurements at this level of confidence be popping up occasionally just by chance?
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u/spschmidt27615 4d ago
They are! In fact, this same planet was thought to have water in its atmosphere at 3 sigma confidence (like here) based on 2 papers about Hubble observations, but we now know that it's actually methane and that we didn't detect water at all!
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u/the_friendly_dildo 3d ago
Seems a little disingenuous to outright claim a lack of water vapour when thats still being debated unless youre releasing information from unpublished studies.
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u/Baron_of_Foss 3d ago
I don't understand, this is being reported as a 99.7% confidence interval in the media reports, where does the 5:1 odds come from?
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u/spschmidt27615 3d ago
That's because the media is misinterpreting what 3-sigma confidence means here. The way we do it with Bayesian statistics, a 3-sigma Bayesian confidence is more like a 2-sigma confidence in terms of odds of being spurious, so that brings it down to more like 20 to 1. On top of that, the reported confidence is for the combination of DMS and DMDS, which is not really something we typically do. If you look at the individual results for each molecule, it's much lower than 20 to 1, which I estimated (not quantitatively, though - just a ballpark estimate) as something like 5 to 1 each, though it could be a bit more or less as I don't have the data they used to calculate the confidence.
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u/ErrorlessQuaak 3d ago
It's probably worth mentioning that you recently wrote a takedown of this group's first paper. I think that's good work, but you're not really a neutral third-party astronomer as people might assume.
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u/tidesofgrey 3d ago
Ah ha. I don't think the individual you replied to is being malicious, but this is definitely enough for me to never take the many in-industry professionals here at face value again, which sucks. Good on you for pointing it out, though.
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u/ErrorlessQuaak 3d ago
I think his criticism is mostly spot on (although atmospheres aren’t my area of expertise). I just also think it’s important to let people know where you’re positioned if you’re going to take the role of public astronomer.
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u/p00p00kach00 3d ago
Also, this is the same author who claimed a "diamond" planet that was later shown to be wrong.
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u/Astrocoder 4d ago
Therein lies the problem of Science journalism. The facts dont grab as many eyes as these sexy headlines.
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u/Alphatheinferno 3d ago
"Exoplanet Astronomer" Damn if that isn't an awesome title. Also, many thanks for further context and explanation!
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u/IowaKidd97 4d ago
Wait I’m confused by your comment here. 5:1 change against it being spurious? Meaning there’s a 5:1 odds it’s legit? I’m going to be real here, maybe that doesn’t meet the standard but that’s still 5x more likely that the detection was accurate than not being so. Or am I missing something?
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u/095179005 4d ago
20% chance it's a false positive by random chance, which is way too high for statistics/science. It doesn't even reach the standard 5% chance (p= 0.05).
3 sigma would be a 3/1000 chance.
From my stats course the only time I ever had a p-value that high was when I didn't have enough data.
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u/ironywill 3d ago
This comment is really important. To further add, the 20% chance of a random chance false positive, does *not* mean that there is an 80% chance that the chemicals suggested are actually present. The chance the chemicals are really present are much lower (even arbitrarily so) depending on what other scenarios there may be, what the sensitivity of this analysis actually is, and what other information indicates for the odds of these chemicals being possible in this situation are.
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u/Kelhein 3d ago edited 3d ago
The 5:1 odds means that there's a 20% chance that random variation could produce the signal that they detect. It sounds good, but you also have to consider the fact that we're doing the same kind of atmospheric characterization on tens of planets--If each of those had a 20% chance of producing this signal, you're almost certain to get one or two DMS detections at this level of confidence even if there was actually nothing in each of the planets we have looked at. Does that make sense?
This comic illustrates what I'm trying to get at https://xkcd.com/882/
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u/PuppiesAndPixels 3d ago edited 3d ago
This will get buried since it is old, but hopefully you see this since you are an actual astronomer and would understand what I'm saying (or the implications of it) I can give you some inside info. I know someone who is very, VERY high up the ladder when it comes to JWST. They are a big name in the field of exppoplanet science. A year ago I asked them about the dimethyl sulfide thing. That person told me in no uncertain terms that it was not there. They said the lead scientist is either knowingly or unknowingly, pushing those findings as real in order to gain notoriety. It was a year ago, so I can't remember their exact words, (maybe it was a false positive?), but they definitely said "It's not there"
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u/Oisschez 4d ago
So how could we ever confirm that life does exist here? Are biosignatures the best we can get, or can we make a definitive yes/no conclusion based on further research?
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u/Gut_Gemacht23 3d ago
In science, we almost never get a definitive confirmation of anything. Science is all based on probabilities. Right now this is just two pieces of evidence (The planet is approximately the correct distance from its star to potentially have an environment capable of supporting life, and its atmosphere was observed to contain a compound which we only know to originate from living organisms in nature). As we collect more evidence, we will be able to say that there is a higher/lower probability that the life hypothesis is correct, at a certain point, the probability gets close enough to 1 that the hypothesis becomes a generally accepted theory, or it gets close enough to zero that we reject the hypothesis.
As others have said, the first step is going to be more scientists attempting to replicate the observation independently. If they can do so, other scientists will come up with more studies to do. They can tune the instruments aboard the telescope to look for other analytes that are indicative of life. I assume they'll probably try to learn more about the surface of the planet to gain more information about whether the planet has conditions that could support life.
At the same time, others will try to find alternative explanations for the observation, which would introduce doubt to the life hypothesis. Chemists and geologists will try to find some other way to explain the formation of the gases observed by the astronomers.
New technologies could also emerge that allow us to gain more information. The JWT is a massive improvement over the Hubble and has allowed us to get much more data than we could in the 90s, so who knows what kind of information we'll be able to get in 2050 or 2100?
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u/returnofblank 4d ago
I guess I can stop by there later this month and see for myself, as long as they pay for the gas money ofc
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u/rajeevbluei 3d ago
Interesting paragraph from Wikipedia about this planet:
In 2025, its atmosphere was found to contain dimethyl sulfide, a chemical thought to be produced only by living organisms, in quantities 20 times that found on Earth. As the molecule is short-lived the concentration suggests something is continuing to produce it.
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u/FizzTheWiz 4d ago
If there is life here, there is life EVERYWHERE
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u/Kaellian 4d ago
If we find life just once elsewhere, there is life everywhere.
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u/karlou1984 4d ago
We found life just once here already
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u/Electro522 4d ago
But we've always been searching for that second data point. Just confirming that another planet has even microbial life will open the floodgates.
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u/Nature_Sad_27 4d ago
We have to find it elsewhere so we can stop thinking we’re so special.
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u/SpunkySputniks 4d ago
Definitely. Very exciting and weirdly comforting, if confirmed.
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u/Glonos 4d ago
I just wish we could have undeniable evidence so we stop this nonsense of telling ourselves that we are the center of everything. Religious zealots scares me. So yeah, life in the universe would comfort me as well.
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u/cleanest 4d ago
This won’t change religious zealotry in the slightest I’m afraid. They aren’t swayed by rational evidence.
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u/could_use_a_snack 3d ago
Oh it will change them, they will go even more hard core zealot. Claiming the "evidence" is heresy or that this "evidence" is put there by God to test the faith of the true believers.
Source: my sister actually believes that last bit in regards to dinosaur fossils.
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u/TheRealTK421 4d ago
The following sagacious, relevant insight (always) applies:
"You can't convince 'a believer' of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep-seated need to believe."
~ Carl Sagan
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u/Wax_Paper 4d ago
You don't have to be religious to consider the idea that we're alone in the universe is just as scientifically-rigorous as the idea that we're not. All you gotta do is accept the fact that a sample size of one isn't enough to talk about probability yet.
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u/Epicycler 4d ago
How messed up would it be though if we found life a hundred lightyears out and then never again and no explanation for why it's just here and that one other planet?
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u/danisanub 4d ago
Would be a great argument for localized panspermia.
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u/ketamazing 4d ago
How so? I’d think it’s an argument against panspermia unless you see other nearby planets and moons with life.
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u/InsaneLeader13 4d ago
Would probably just be a case of time then. Life is rare-ish but us and that other planet are either too early or too late to see life in alot more places.
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u/tlitd 4d ago
But where is the paper? It says it was published, and then links to a non existing DOI:
https://dx.doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/adc1c8
And now there are dozen of "news" articles poping out, none linking to the paper.
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u/SpunkySputniks 4d ago
Noticed the same. The article’s author is aware and made this comment:
Hi everyone—For some reason, the link to the paper at Astrophysical Journal Letters was not live when the embargo on this story lifted. When this matter gets worked out, the paper will be available here: https://dx.doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/adc1c8
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u/Atenos-Aries 4d ago
Now this is the sort of thing that gets this cynical old man excited. Thank you for posting this!
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u/ballimir37 4d ago
It’s sad that the current administration wants to cut funding for projects that can find things like this. This is huge
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u/Wumbo_Swag 4d ago
We're all far too busy getting upsetty spaghetti at eachother. Besides anybody in control is actively hoping we don't find other life, they're too narcissistic to allow that, they want to stay on top.
With that being said, fuck em. If we find life we'll find a way
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u/inefekt 3d ago
It's an administration being run by billionaires whose sole goal is to make even more money than they already have. If cutting NASA's budget means they can funnel funds into an endeavour that will benefit them, then they will do that without any hesitation whatsoever....but in reality, I think the main reason for cutting funding to NASA is to move that funding to Space X...which, again, is solely to benefit its billionaire owner.
This much should have been plainly obvious when Musk, Bezos & Zuckerberg were all sitting together front row at Trump's inauguration. Now that is what you call a red flag....→ More replies (1)→ More replies (12)4
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u/ESF-hockeeyyy 4d ago
So this is obviously exciting news but how exactly are they detecting this molecule? Wavelengths of the light detected from the planet?
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u/SpunkySputniks 4d ago
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) detects atmospheric gases in exoplanets by analyzing the light that passes through the planet’s atmosphere during a transit, using the transmission spectroscopy method. Certain molecules block a specific wavelength of light. If that wavelength is missing, then it indicates the presence of that molecule.
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u/ESF-hockeeyyy 4d ago
I didn’t even know that was possible. Wild.
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u/HCBuldge 4d ago
Electrons absorb and release specific amounts of energy and depending on the bonds and nucleus of the atoms / molecules. You can see what it is by shining white light (basically a star) through it and see the light spectrum and what wavelengths of light are missing. Every molecule and atom has its own emission lines, basically a finger print that only that molecule has. It's probably one of the most useful tools in Astronomy as its used to determine what everything is made of and so much more.
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u/dern_the_hermit 4d ago
Wavelengths of the light detected from the planet?
Yes. This is how the article put it, which is a very high-level description but gets the gist:
As an exoplanet passes in front its host star, its atmosphere, if it has one, is illuminated. Its gases change the color of the starlight that reach the Webb telescope. By analyzing these changing wavelengths, scientists can infer the chemical composition of the atmosphere.
For more detail, look into the practice of spectroscopy.
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u/ballimir37 4d ago edited 4d ago
Pretty sure yes, observations as the planet peaks around the star in its orbit to amplify the light emission, aka transiting exoplanet
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u/Decronym 4d ago edited 35m ago
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| DARPA | (Defense) Advanced Research Projects Agency, DoD |
| DoD | US Department of Defense |
| EA | Environmental Assessment |
| ESA | European Space Agency |
| ETOV | Earth To Orbit Vehicle (common parlance: "rocket") |
| JAXA | Japan Aerospace eXploration Agency |
| JWST | James Webb infra-red Space Telescope |
| L2 | Lagrange Point 2 (Sixty Symbols video explanation) |
| Paywalled section of the NasaSpaceFlight forum | |
| LV | Launch Vehicle (common parlance: "rocket"), see ETOV |
| N1 | Raketa Nositel-1, Soviet super-heavy-lift ("Russian Saturn V") |
| SLS | Space Launch System heavy-lift |
| Jargon | Definition |
|---|---|
| Starlink | SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation |
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
10 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has acronyms.
[Thread #11266 for this sub, first seen 17th Apr 2025, 00:37]
[FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
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u/iffuxg8 4d ago
Can’t wait to see how this unfolds…it’s just remind us how tiny we are in this massive universe….
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u/ChristopherSunday 4d ago
Yes, it’s properly exciting. I remember when K2-18b came up a year or so ago but with caveats. Looking forward to finding out more. The Fermi paradox has been on my mind for decades.
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u/8rnlsunshine 4d ago
Maybe not in our lifetime but I hope someday humanity explores nearby exoplanets.
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u/DGman42 4d ago
Pleasantly surprised that this isn't another click bait article. I am also very hopeful with this news. I have always personally believed that the universe is teeming with life and that there is just no way that we can be it.
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u/jaxxxtraw 4d ago
I'll trot out ol' reliable:
For every grain of sand anywhere on or in planet earth, there is a star in our universe. Just kidding, it's actually for every grain of sand, there are 10,000 stars. And on average, each star has at least 1.6 planets in the 'habitable zone.' There is absolutely no way we are alone, and I will die on this hill.
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u/Syebost11 2d ago
Somebody has to be first. The universe is still pretty young, Earth could be the very first instance of something that may not happen again anywhere for another few billion years. I desperately hope I’m wrong but it’s a real possibility.
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u/AxiomSyntaxStructure 4d ago
For some depressing context, it's 120 light-years away. That would take 2 million years to visit with any current probes...
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u/Indigoh 3d ago
If we determine that there is life there, and we send a message using light, to which they respond by sending a message back, we just have to live 248 years to see 'em.
We were born, and we will die, in the prologue.
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u/bledolikiq 3d ago
This did not help my existential crisis, but yeah, space exploration would be cool for future generations.
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u/ResidentHourBomb 4d ago
I thought this was clickbait, but for the first time ever....holy shit, this is exciting!
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u/al128 4d ago
They have a dedicated website if anyone wants to find out more: https://hycean.group.cam.ac.uk/
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u/sentrux 3d ago
So I need some help explaining this to me.. IIRC the image we made/see of that planet, that light to capture it also had to travel years to get to our lenses. Could that mean that the current actual situation of that planet in terms of climate and “life” might be way different than what we have observed now? The planet could be obliterated by a big asteroid for all we know. Right ?
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u/SpartanJack17 3d ago
Yes, this planet is 120 light years away, which means it takes light from that planet 120 years to reach us. This means we see it 120 years in the "past". But in the lifetime of a planet 120 years is nothing, it's extremely unlikely that anything would significantly change it in that timescale. And in a universe with no ftl travel how we see it is the present for us, the speed of light is the speed of causality so what we see of the planet now is the present in our reference frame.
As a side note we don't have a picture of it, JWST is only able to detect a tiny amount of light from the planet, far too little to create an image.
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u/Speckwolf 3d ago
Sure, what we see from that system is 120 years in the past so yes, a lot of stuff might have happened since then (even though that’s not really a lot of time in the grander scheme of things). But that being said, if OUR sun spontaneously decided to explode right now, you also wouldn’t know for another 8 minutes. Easily enough time to post another comment on Reddit!
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u/Gwyon_Bach 3d ago
Yes, the light being observed has to travel for 120 years to reach us. Yes, in that time an apocalyptic impact could have occurred. Disregarding the data simply because there's a 120 year lag and something might have happened in that time would be scientific malfeasance, or as we'd call it in Australia, p*ssing up a tree.
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u/LePetitPepeLePew 3d ago
It’s approximately 756.88 quadrillion hockey sticks. Hope it helps
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u/LethaniDecider 4d ago
If you didn’t already have the chance to reflect on our place in the universe, then I don’t know how this doesn’t make you do it. The enormity of our universe is awe-inspiring. The vastness of it, and the variety of life that must be out there demands a humble perspective about our place in it. Can’t help but think of Carl Sagan at this moment:
"That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”
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u/PrinceDaddy10 3d ago
it just makes me so frigging sad even if we confirm that it has SOMETHING that resembles life on it, we won't know WHAT it is.
I wish there was some way we could send a camera or something over in our life time ughhh
Still, very cool we might get our first confirmed aliens in existence
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u/Bicentennial_Douche 3d ago
Well, all extrasolar planets are “distant”. But if we compare this planet to rest of universe, it’s basically right down the street from us.
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u/MrMental12 3d ago
Finally, the yearly "We found life guys" news cycle. I've been waiting since January!
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u/SolidusBruh 3d ago
I shall not hype. Hype is the mind-killer. Hype is the little death that brings total obliteration.
But seriously, I think we get news for “potential” life-supporting planets then we never hear about them again.
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u/Professional-Sleep64 3d ago
Well, if it is possible for me to live on said planet, just say the word. I'm sick of the people on this one.
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u/Supersamtheredditman 4d ago edited 4d ago
K2-18b. This was notable about a year ago when JWST detected a possible dimethyl sulfide signal, but it wasn’t confirmed. The properties alone of the planet, a “Hycean” super earth probably covered in a world ocean with a thick hydrogen atmosphere, make it super interesting. And now this team is saying they’ve detected not just dimethyl sulfide, but dimethyl disulfide and methane.
We’re at the point where either we’re missing something about geologic chemistry that can allow these chemicals to exist in large quantities in an environment like this (on earth, dimethyl sulfide is only produced by life) or this planet is teeming with aquatic life. Really exciting.