With the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers say they are working to confirm potential evidence of life on a distant exoplanet.
A team of astronomers led by the University of Cambridge say they are closer to a statistically significant scientific finding that would show the signs of life they detected from the distant exoplanet dubbed "K2-18b" are no accident. The astronomers used data from the James Webb Space Telescope, which has only been in use since the end of 2021, to detect chemical traces of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and/or dimethyl disulfide (DMDS), which they say can only be produced by life such as phytoplankton in the sea. According to the university, "the results are the strongest evidence yet that life may exist on a planet outside our solar system." The findings were published this week in the Astrophysical Journal Letters and point to the possibility of an ocean on this planet's surface, which scientists have been hoping to discover for years. In the abstract for the paper, the team says, "The possibility of hycean worlds, with planet-wide oceans and H2-rich atmospheres, significantly expands and accelerates the search for habitable environments elsewhere." Not everyone agrees, however, that what the team found proves there's life on the exoplanet. Science writer and…