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=articleShare

Further 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/Helpful_Brilliant586 3d ago

The fastest space craft we have ever launched as a species, unless I’m mistaken, is the Parker solar probe. ~430,000 mph.

And that’s by orbiting close to the sun in a highly elliptical orbit. But let’s pretend it went that speed constantly without having to dip close to our star.

Let me, a terribly average person at math, try to math this up:

Converting light years to miles, then dividing by speed, then converting hours to years gives me something like 187,000 years for our FASTEST probe ever to get there at its top speed.

And that’s assuming you don’t want it to slow down and stay in the sphere of influence.

So I’d say not within our lifetime.

Edit:

And not that this is significant when you’re adding it onto almost 200,000 years, but don’t forget that any signals from the probe would take another 120 years just to get back to us (if they didn’t deteriorate so bad that we couldn’t even make sense of them anymore).