This needs a great deal of additional outside verification. But definitely sounds promising...
Exoplanet K2-18b: alien ocean world may be ‘teeming with life’
There is a 99.7 per cent certainty that the hycean planet has at least one gas in its atmosphere that, on Earth, is produced by living things
These are the first hints we are seeing of an alien world that is possibly inhabited.”
These words from a Cambridge astrophysicist signalled an “astounding” leap forward in the quest to find extraterrestrial life.
Thanks to data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), there is now a 99.7 per cent certainty that the atmosphere of a planet called K2-18b contains at least one gas that, on Earth, is uniquely produced by living organisms in nature.
The best explanation is that K2-18b — which orbits a star 124 light years away, a distance it would take 187,000 years to reach in our fastest spacecraft — is a water-covered planet “teeming” with algae-like microbes in its oceans, the lead scientist has suggested.
Dr Nikku Madhusudhan of the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge, who led the study, said of the findings: “Given everything we know about this planet, a hycean world with an ocean that is teeming with life is the scenario that best fits the data we have.”
The word “hycean” is a combination of the terms “hydrogen” and “ocean”, coined to describe a planet such as K2-18b, which is thought to have a hydrogen-rich atmosphere and is entirely covered in liquid water on its surface. It orbits once every 33 days within the habitable zone of its star, K2-18, which can be found in the constellation of Leo, and the planet is about 2.6 times the radius of Earth.
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The scientist was, however, keen to sound a loud note of caution. Another 16 to 24 hours of observations with the JWST would be needed to boost the confidence levels for the detection of the DMS gases up from a 3-sigma level, a certainty of 99.7 per cent, to the gold standard 5-sigma level, a certainty of 99.99994 per cent, required to make a definitive declaration.
Further theoretical work, to conceive of any non-living process that could explain the presence of the gas, is also underway. Some recent studies have suggested that DMS can be present in deep space in interstellar gases and even comets.
“We cannot at this stage make the claim that, even if we detect DMS and DMDS, it is [certainly] due to life, let me be very clear about that,” Madhusudhan said. “But if you take published studies so far, then there is no mechanism in the literature that can explain what we are seeing without life.”