Signs of alien life were observed on one distant planet. According to astronomers, they detected a compound "only produced by life" on Planet K2-18b.
Signs of Life Detected in Planet K2-18b
Planet K2-18b is located in the Leo constellation's habitable zone, more than twice as huge as Earth and 120 light-years away. Researchers believed to have found dimethyl sulfide gas, a substance "only produced by life," in the atmosphere last year.
Webb's initial observations suggested the presence of dimethyl sulfide (DMS). Most of the DMS in Earth's atmosphere is released by sea phytoplankton, indicating that the planet's biology may be similar tours.
In reality, scientists have not been able to conceive of a natural geological or chemical process that could produce DMS in the absence of living things. According to Dr. Nikku Madhusudhan, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge, the discovery was unexpected. Still, given these were preliminary observations, he could only declare with 50% certainty that K2-18b has DMS.
Madhusudhan is in charge of the planet K2-18b investigation. He refers to it as a "hycean" world, a relatively recent name he invented to describe a rocky planet with oceans of water and an atmosphere rich in hydrogen. He described the discovery as a "very profound moment" since it lends credence to the idea that a water ocean tops an atmosphere rich in hydrogen.
"If we do detect DMS [on K2-18b] it does put it basically at the top for potential signs of habitability," Madhusudhan said.
The James Webb Space Telescope will observe the planet for hours on Friday (April 26) to validate the discovery. However, space enthusiasts must wait a few months for the data to be verified and released.
New Exoplanet With Potential Signs of Life
Last year, astronomers found a new exoplanet that showed signs of life. The planet is about the size of Earth and 31 light-years away.
The limitations of current technology hinder the search for exoplanets, or extrasolar planets, those beyond our Solar System. While this is an amazing technology, our current methods for finding exoplanets are far more effective at finding large worlds than small ones.
To ascertain the existence of an exoplanet, they rely on indirect signs, such as the planet's impacts on its home star. The radial velocity method measures minute changes in light wavelength as the exoplanet's gravitational pull slightly displaces the star. In contrast, the transit method detects the extremely faint, regular dips in starlight as an exoplanet orbits between us and its star.
The first step in figuring out a planet's potential habitability is where it lies in the so-called habitable zone. This information about the nearby red dwarf star Wolf 1069, which has a mass 1.36 times that of Earth, was found by a group of German astronomers under the direction of Diana Kossakowski of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA).
Kossakowski claims that upon analyzing the Wolf 1069 data, they found that the signal was low-amplitude. It travels one-fifth the distance between the Earth and the Sun in an orbit around the star every 15.6 days.
The radiation received by Wolf 1069b is around 65 percent of that received by Earth, even though it is 15 times closer to its star than Earth is to the Sun.
RELATED ARTICLE: ESA Approves The Next-Generation Exoplanet Mission Plato, Development Moves to Second Stage
Check out more news and information on Space in Science Times.
