Another strong dimethyl sulfide and dimethyl disulfide signal found by the Webb telescope. Article at BBC.
What to say? Another case of "insofar as we know, only life makes this stinky stuff." Sure, there could be abiotic causes for DMS and DMDS, it's just that we don't know of any. What's more, there's still a 0.3% chance that just the chemical detection itself (let alone life) is a statistical fluke. Doing atmospheric chemistry is hard enough here on Earth. Doing it on a planet 124 light-years away is a tad more difficult. Also, note well that this isn't any kind of discovery of intelligent life. If confirmed this would only indicate bacteria and maybe ocean plankton.
I'm sure reasonably certain the there are teams all over Earth sifting through the data in search of other biomarkers as you read this. For the moment, let's keep the stress on the "Possibly" part in the title here.
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