Scientists find hint of alien life on distant world

What happened

Astrophysicists reported Wednesday they had found significant evidence that life may exist on a planet called K2-18b, some 124 light years away. The report, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, said NASA's James Webb Space Telescope had detected large amounts of dimethyl sulfide and/or dimethyl disulfide — gasses that on Earth are only created by living organisms — in the exoplanet's atmosphere.

Who said what

Study leader Nikku Madhusudhan, from Cambridge University's Institute of Astronomy, said the new findings point to K2-18b, discovered in 2015, being a "hycean world" covered by a deep ocean "teeming with life." The team didn't prove the existence of alien life, but "this is a revolutionary moment," he said at a news conference. "It's the first time humanity has seen potential biosignatures on a habitable planet."

Other scientists urged caution. A "molecule glimpsed in the air of a planet 729 trillion miles away is a thin reed upon which to rest what would be the historic discovery of alien life," The Washington Post said.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

What next?

The "rich data from K2-18b make it a tantalizing world," and "I look forward to seeing additional, independent work on the data analysis starting as soon as next week," said planetary scientist Christopher Glein of the Southwest Research Institute in Texas, per The New York Times. But "unless we see E.T. waving at us, it's not going to be a smoking gun."