Tuesday, September 19, 2023

Biosignatures Found on an Exoplanet


Nothing definitive yet, but still pretty interesting.  Two chemical compounds – dimethyl sulfide and methyl chloride – that are not known to be produced outside of laboratories by anything other than life have been found in the atmosphere of the 124 light year distant exoplanet K2-18 b by UK scientists using the Webb Space Telescope.  This is in addition to the usual carbon dioxide, methane, etc. that are generally encouraging gasses to find as well.

Here's a link to the paper at arXiv and here's a link to an explainer video.

Promising, but we shall see.

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