Signature of life on a distant planet detected by scientists, study suggests

K2-18B No, it's not a character from St It's a planet two and a half times the size of Earth and 700 trillion miles away.

And it could be home to living o Here's what we know right now, P The James Webb Space Telescope is so powerful that it actually can analyze the chemical composition of atmo from far, far away.

And the atmosphere analyzed from K to 18 B shows mo that can only be produced by living organisms.

In other words, it's a step potentially closer to directing life on another pla For more, we're joined now by astrophysici and NASA advisor Paul Sutter.

Paul, this is potentially an extremely exciting finding.

How compelling is the evidence of life on another planet?

Oh, this is definitely very exciting and very interesting.

But I have a personal mantra when I encounter results like th which is if it's interesting, it's probably wrong.

And that helps me temper my enthusiasm in my my ge exciting ness or with a healthy dose of scientific skepticism, which we need to approach these kinds of results.

Now, the evidence here is certai the strongest evidence we've ever had for life on another planet.

But in an absolute sense, the evidence isn't all that stro It's a very weak signal here of these elements.

And even if these elements are o the planet, it's not necessarily generated b We are at the very, very edge of what we can discover and detect with the James Webb.

And it will take a lot more anal a lot more study, a lot more investigation to to rule this in or rule this out which is how science progresses.

We're all we were looking for you to say, this is proof that aliens exist.

Clearly you're not going there.

I was going to ask you if we could actually call and speak to somebody a few hundred trillion miles awa We can definitely make the call.

But, you're going to have to wait for that respons All right.

So what does it mean?

You know, we talk about life on another pl This could be a wide range, righ A ray, I should say, of the type of lif that could be there.

Correct?

Absolutely.

Like we're the only known living creatures in the universe We don't know the true variety o out there in the cosmos.

We are hunting for life like our because we know what it looks li We know what it does to planets.

We know how it alters the chemistry of an atmosphere.

And so this planet, K2 18 B, it has water vapor, it has metha And in the latest discovery it has dimethyl sulfide, which is made by algae on the Ea Is there some sort of alien life We don't know.

But it's very intriguing in this I should say this world is compl unlike the Earth.

It's twice as wide.

It's eight times as massive.

It orbits a small red star.

It has a year that only lasts 33 If there is life here, it is truly alien in a very real Walk us through the science a bi how does this telescope actually Because this planet is, what, trillions of miles away?

Yeah, this is fascinating.

This is exactly what the James W was built to do.

This is what we waited so long to be able to accomplish we're not taking pictures of thi This thing is way too tiny for t All we get is the light from its parent sta which appears as nothing more than a dot of light, even with our most advanced inst But what happens is that this planet in its orbit in front of the face of that sta And so the light from the star f through the planet's atmosphere on its way to us.

And then any chemicals, any mole in the atmosphere, change the light from that star, and we can pick up that change and figure out what's in the atm The fact that we can even do thi that we can say, oh, yeah, yeah, there are these elements on this 700 trillion miles away is a testament to just how powerful James Webb and the creative creativity and ingenuity of my fellow astronomers.

Yeah, I mean, really remarkable people who built that and all that goes into it.

Are you concerned about NASA's science budget and how that coul further discoveries like this?

yeah, I'm frankly, I'm I'm scare And when I'm not scared, I'm exh And when I'm not exhausted, I'm scared of what's happening to science in our coun and the future of science.

And I empathize with people, I r I understand that if if budgets are tight, if times are uncertain, you know, things like the James things like looking for life outside the solar system, things like astronomy, seem like unnecessary expenses.

And.

Yeah, this is this is extra stuf Also, if we were to eliminate all of NASA's budget, nobody's life in the United States would change.

I mean, it's not going to affect our bottom line.

We take the tiniest fraction out of the federal budget to make this kind of stuff happen, to make our science adva And what we do is make the world more beautiful, more wondrous pl What we do is, is create excitin for us to talk about and think a Let's bring in Professor of Astrophysics and Exoplanetary Science at the University of Cambridge, Nick Amadeu Soudan.

Not only is he part of Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy, he's also the lead researcher of the evidence of life beyond E Professor, we've been so looking to this conversation with you.

This is rather exciting.

And you call this a revolutionar as it is the first time humanity has seen potential bias snatchers on a habitable planet.

And it all comes in the form of a molecule, as Zain had described, which shares worlds is exactly a similar mole that we have here on Earth.

What is the significance of this molecule?

Yeah.

Hi. glad to be on here.

the the molecule DMs and potenti one other molecule, dimethyl dis We are seeing, hints of at least one of the two molecule maybe even both.

And both of these molecules are known to be uniquely produced by life.

here on on the Earth, mostly by microorganisms and organic matter in general.

And, the amounts that we are seeing o on this planet, it is currently, we don't know of an abiotic proc non-biological process that can cause, these molecules in the atmosphere at the levels we are seeing.

So, so that is sort of the hints for biological activity, that we may be seeing, but we also want to be extremely in, at this stage.

This is very early stage, and we don't want to rule out non-biological processes, but I want to take a step back.

And for us as a species, to appr how far we have come, the even the act of being able to detect these molecules in a habitable zone, planet 120 light years away is a huge technological achievem And that, in my mind, is the real breakthrough for us as a species.

How far we have come as an advanced civilization, when you put it like that, I mean, it's incredibly humbling, not just the fact that that, you we're seeing signs of potential on, on another planet, but just you're right, how far we've come, just in terms of the science and the technology to even be able to detect, the compound known as dimethyl s as you were just mentioning.

So how do we know for sure or when will we know for sure?

Probably is a better question.

If this planet is actually habit Yeah.

So so we don't have a definite t Obviously, this is a major, majo of, of study.

And we don't want to quickly go to conclusions whether we have detected, like we want to take our time and we have done that for this observation as well.

We have taken our time, did very robust studie but we want to do more observati to confirm if the signal that we are seeing is real and, and we want it to be confirmed robustly the confidence such that there is less than one in a million chance of it being a complete fluke.

That is the level of robustness we are aiming for here.

We are not there yet.

We are a few parts in a thousand chance of a fluke, but we want to go much further.

And we also want to do theoretical studies and experimental studies to make sure that there is like no other abiotic process that we have missed as a field.

that could explain these abundan But so far, based on the knowledge that we have currently, the only way we can interpret it a biological process causing significant amount of these fluxes on this planet.

But we want to remain open. Obvi you talk about taking a minute to note the inroads and advances in technology and science that got us and you specifically, we had nothing to do with it.

It was you and your brilliant colleagues to this moment.

Can you speak to the impact of s as powerful as the James Webb Telescope and the role that it has played in helping you as a tool relative to its predec the Hubble?

Yeah, I mean, it's kind of you to attribute the success to me and my team, but, actually, I think you are also involved in, in an indirect way.

And the model that Orcid is, it comes from remarkable efforts from thousands of people over de But NASA is a, the Canadian Spac All of us, as a society, as a civilization, are responsible for the technological marvel, th And we have put that icing on th with our science.

But fundamentally, that's how I is that it's our contribution as a society where we are that we are able to do this scie And it would not have possible without what what these agencies have done fo Right.

So it's all our result in that s And and more specifically for this science, yes, we have detected these molecules at the we are talking about here.

And we want to remain open.

And we'll see, if this is confirmed, this is going to be a major transformational moment in the history of science.

If this is confirmed, like in a maybe in a couple of d we might look back at science and think that that's when that breakthrough happened.

And that was a turning point.

It is also possible that in a fe we will realize that actually there is other another chemical processes, a process that could explain thi and that would be a discovery of new chemical process.

So however you cut it, I think this is a win for scienc