Posted on 04/16/2025 7:27:48 PM PDT by Coronal
The search for life beyond Earth has led scientists to explore many suggestive mysteries, from plumes of methane on Mars to clouds of phosphine gas on Venus. But as far as we can tell, Earth’s inhabitants remain alone in the cosmos.
Now a team of researchers is offering what it contends is the strongest indication yet of extraterrestrial life, not in our solar system but on a massive planet, known as K2-18b, that orbits a star 120 light-years from Earth. A repeated analysis of the exoplanet’s atmosphere suggests an abundance of a molecule that on Earth has only one known source: living organisms such as marine algae.
“It is in no one’s interest to claim prematurely that we have detected life,” Nikku Madhusudhan, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge and an author of the new study, said at a news conference Tuesday. Still, he said, the best explanation for his group’s observations is that K2-18b is covered with a warm ocean, brimming with life.
“This is a revolutionary moment,” Madhusudhan said. “It’s the first time humanity has seen potential biosignatures on a habitable planet.”
The study was published Wednesday in the Astrophysical Journal. Other researchers called it an exciting, thought-provoking first step to making sense of what’s on K2-18b. But they were reluctant to draw grand conclusions.
“It’s not nothing,” said Stephen Schmidt, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University. “It’s a hint. But we cannot conclude it’s habitable yet.”
If there is extraterrestrial life on K2-18b, or anywhere else, its discovery will arrive at a frustratingly slow pace. “Unless we see E.T. waving at us, it’s not going to be a smoking gun,” said Christopher Glein, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.com ...
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“… on a massive planet.”
No chance for a space-faring intelligent life. They can’t launch rockets. They might have a sophisticated culture, but they can’t get off their own planet.
“by treating hydrogen sulfide with excess methanol over an aluminium oxide catalyst”
But that’s an industrial process, not a natural one. Again however, that doesn’t exclude the possibility of their being one.
S H E C A M E F R O M P L A N E T C L A I R E
Huh, marry a Filipina and you'll know all about it. (It's produced among other ways by the cooking of some vegetables and some seafoods.)
Much more info:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethyl_sulfide
Surface gravity is 26.8% higher than Earth’s per Wikipedia. Not impossible to get off-planet, but a lot less economical than from Earth.
I happen to have a penchant for seafood, and things with a garlicy flavor (the garlicy flavor comes from sulfur). Combine them and you have a devil’s brew of things that I like. Perhaps one of these Filipina vixens with a flair for cooking is exactly why I might find them popular.
“Garlicy” is one thing. I like garlic just fine. My wife sometimes cooks stuff that could bring in investigators from Geneva...
Thank God the weather is getting warmer so she can cook those outside on the grille. The neighbor most usually downwind is over 800 feet away.
That said, MOST of my wife’s recipes are quite good, savory to both taste and smell. :-)
Yeah, but to the photon, it's instantaneous. ;)
It was in cursive, but it read:
“Get off my lawn!”
i would prefer a good chemist to weigh in, but:
Ok, on earth dimethyl sulfide, hereafter “it”. is usually created incidentally by life or industrially using a catalyst.
So it is a product of decomposition of biomolecules here. It is kind of thing that is found in an anaerobic environment, and notably is highly flammable. You need the reducing environment to have a hope of favorable free energy of synthesis from simpler things. But in a world that had methane bubbling up through reducing, anaerobic sulfurous solutions you might get it. Inorganically produced methane exists in the cosmos, e.g. from radio astronomy. Carbon and hydrogen are common.
A better marker for life is simply an atmosphere with a lot more O ₂ vs CO ₂ and a net oxidative chemical atmosphere. THAT is much better spectroscopic indication of life. AKA an oxidizing atmosphere. I think a molecule indicative of a reducing atmosphere although unusual on earth, should be more common on lifeless worlds.
No, to a photon it’s 320 years.
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Did you notice I mentioned “Earth Light Years?” What you say is true at higher levels of consciousness.
cool, send them a post card
Oxygen would be one possible marker for life, being the product of photosynthesis, but large amounts of it like we see on earth today is probably uncommon. In large amounts it was once a poison that caused repeated extinction events until a strain of bacteria evolved that was resistant to it. In small amounts it is also produced by the splitting of water molecules from solar radiation. So it is or is not an indicator of life.
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