Astronomers have discovered an important sign of life, and “the first suggestions … or an alien world” on a distant planet that orbits outside the solar system, according to a new report.
Scientists believe that the Exoplanet, K2-18B, is a “planet Hycean” that means is the home of an abundance of a particular molecule that only occurs on Earth by living organisms such as seaweed, according to a new report.
K2-18B-that is eight times the size of the earth and 124 signs of the years of light of the molecule of dimethylsulfuro of the single molecule, according to a new study published in the magazine Astrophysical the magazine on Wednesday.
“This is a revolutionary moment,” said Dr. Nikku Madhusudhan, astronomer from the University of Cambridge and author of the study, at a press conference on Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesday, Conformity with NPR.
“These are the first suggestions we are seeing of an alien world that is possible,” he said.
The organic compound, composed of sulfur, carbon and hydrogen, is naturally produced by phytoplankton and, sometimes, in beer bacteria, and appears and mass over the oceans of the earth.
Madhusudhan and his team reported that they took atmospheric measurements of the dimethyl sulfide in K2-18B in 2023 and confirmed the excessive presence of the molecule in the year of behavior of the tests with the James Webb space telescope.
These signals of the Byproduct life were so strong that the researchers had to work diligently simply to omit their presence while performing tests of Eather-Dimethyl sulfide measured 1,000 times the levels found in the earth, according to the study.
“It’s a shock for the system,” Madhusudhan said in the press event. “We spend a huge amount of time trying to get rid of the signal.”
It was already known that K2-18B contained water vapor and the newly found presence of dimethyl sulfide indicated to the researchers something that first predicted in 2021-that K2-18b is a “world hycean”.
“Hycean” is a term Coined by Dr. Madhusudhan In 2021 for an exoplanet subpecie called “sub-neptunas”, which have liquid oceans and have hydrogen-rich atmospheres, which they believed at that time applied to K2-18B.
Duration James Webb Readings in 2023, Madhusudhan and her team could confirm the presence of several predicted molecules for their “Hycean” theory, including hydrogen, methane and other carbon components, and also the initials.
To obtain these measurements, scientists use the James Webb space telescope to record the light of the host star, since it is refracted through the planet’s atmosphere as the subneptune passes through the star of the star from the perspective of the earth.
The elements within the atmosphere will produce different colors as the planet passes through its native star, which tells scientists that, if any, there are atmospheric conditions.
Despite the indisputable measurements of life’s maintenance elements, some scientists said that more information and confirmation are needed before a consensus on life in K2-18B can be confirmed.
“It’s nothing,” said the planetary scientist of Johns Hopkins Stephen Schmidt at New York Times. “It’s a track. But we can’t conclude that it is still habitable.”
“Unless we see Et agitating, it will not be a smoking gun,” Christopher Glein, a planetary scientist at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, told The Outlet.
Mans Holmberg, a researcher at the Institute of Space Telescope Sciences, participated in the study and asked astronomers to carry out their own independent analysis of the data, NPR reported.
“To look at things like this, it requires an effort from the dedicated community,” Holmberg told The Outlet.
“We should be cautious. I want that to be in charge and the center. Any claim of life on another planet requires a lot of justification, and I don’t think we are still there,” he added.
In 2015, K2-18B was first discovered by NASA’s Kepler mission, which determined that it was in the “gold gold zone” or in its local star, which means that temperatures were appropriate for water, which is presumed as a lifelong construction component.
K2-18B is approximately eight times the size of the earth, but it has a much shorter orbital path, completing a circuit around its host star in just 33 days.
