Scientists have detected unique chemical patterns similar to those produced by Earth’s algae and seaweed. With a 7 trillion planet, it increases the possibility of a warm ocean full of life.
According to a team of researchers led by the University of Cambridge, the sign was found on K2-18B, an ex-sect planet orbiting a star of the red star, twice the size of the Earth and 124 light years away. On the scale of the universe, planets are neighbors, sharing the Milky Way galaxy with Earth.
After performing repeated analysis of observations made on K2-18B using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, they made groundbreaking discoveries to detect chemical fingerprints produced primarily by microorganisms such as algae, seaweed, seaweed, and phytoplankton on Earth.
The findings are “the most powerful evidence that life could exist on planets outside our solar system,” Cambridge University said at a press conference Thursday.
Illustration of the world of Hycean. (A. Smith / N. Madhusdan / University of Cambridge)
But the team that published the study in an astrophysics letter on the same day remains cautious about how new findings can tell us about life beyond our solar system.
“It’s not anyone’s interest to make an early claim that we’ve detected life,” Cambridge astrophysicist Nick Madusdan, who led the study, said at a press conference Tuesday.
However, he added, “We want to stay open and do more experiments and theoretical calculations.” It added that this could strengthen evidence that there is a molecule known as dimethyl sulfide (DMS) present in the exoplanet discovered by NASA’s Kepler mission in 2015.
Madhusudhan and his colleagues have been based on their research since 2023. There, the mid-red layer instrument of the James Webb telescope was used to detect carbon-based molecules in the atmosphere of K2-18b.
The findings suggest that a molecule that is almost identical to DMS, known as dimethyldisulfide (DMDS), may also be present on deplanets. This is the first hint that K2-18b could be a Hycean world, meaning a warm ocean rich in hydrogen-rich atmosphere.
“The only scenario that currently explains all the data we have obtained from JWST, including past and present observations, is that K2-18 B is a life-filled Hycean world,” Madhusudhan said at a press conference on Tuesday.
At the same time, he noted that there is still a 0.3% chance that their observations are statistical flukes. “We need to be open and continue to explore other scenarios,” he added.
The K2-18B is part of the “subneptin” class of nearly 6,000 exoplanets discovered beyond our solar system since the 1990s.
Finding evidence of life in space was the “holy grail” of exoplanet science, Madhusdan said.
Jake Taylor, an astrophysics and hyper-number fellow at Oxford University, also expressed caution to the findings, adding that it was a “good first step” in searching for biosignature gases that are found in the planet’s atmosphere and suggest the existence of life.
“I don’t think this is a biosignature detection that will revolutionize astronomy,” Taylor said, adding that DMS and DMDS molecules can also be produced non-biometrically on comets.
He added that “convincing me that these signals are real,” along with reanalysis of data from millimeter instruments, which have proven difficult among past exoplanet communities, and independent verification from different teams of scientists.
Despite the unknown that can only be answered by repeated observations and more theoretical and experimental studies, Madhusdan said in the video that finding signs elsewhere was “one of my deepest moments and at the same time an astronomer.”
He added that even the proposal for “new chemical processes not produced by life” could be a monumental breakthrough.
“This is, in my opinion, a transformational moment to find our place in the universe as a species,” he said.
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