Distant planet found, evidence of life

 

 

 

NASA: Scientists have used a very powerful telescope to find new evidence that a distant world orbiting another star could be a place of life.

A Cambridge team studying the atmosphere of planet K2-18b has found signs of molecules that are only produced by simple organisms on Earth.

This is the second and most promising time that NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has detected chemicals associated with life in the atmosphere of a planet. But the team and independent astronomers stress that more data is needed to confirm these results.

Lead researcher Professor Nikku Madhusudan, based at his lab at the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge, said he hopes to have conclusive evidence soon.

"This is the strongest evidence yet that life could exist here. I can realistically say that we could confirm this signal within one to two years."

K2-18b is two and a half times the size of Earth and seven hundred trillion miles away from us.

The JWST is so powerful that it can analyze the chemical composition of the planet’s atmosphere using light passing through it from the small red sun it orbits.

The Cambridge group found that the atmosphere contains the chemical signature of at least one of two molecules associated with life: dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and dimethyl disulfide (DMDS). On Earth, these gases are produced by marine phytoplankton and bacteria.

Professor Madhusudhanan said he was surprised to see how much gas was clearly detected in a single observation window. “The amount of this gas in the atmosphere is thousands of times greater than on Earth,” he said.

If the connection with life is real, this planet would be teeming with life, "If we confirm that there is life on K2-18b, it should basically confirm that life is very common in the galaxy," said Professor Madhusudan.