TL;DR - K2-18b - detected dimethyl sulfide and dimethyl disulfide, false positive possibility is now very low - "produced by marine-dwelling organisms on Earth", possibility they were produced by other processes (unrelated to life as we know it) not high but maybe unknown unknowns - other factors like distance from the star are in favor of life & water - previous studies detected methane and carbon dioxide
Is dimethil something expected to be generated with really procaryote life forms, or only from those with more complexe structures?
JSWT... again the most formidable piece of equipment ever shot into outer space. That think is going to shake our understanding of the Universe to its foundations a couple times around
TL;DR - K2-18b - detected dimethyl sulfide and dimethyl disulfide, false positive possibility is now very low - "produced by marine-dwelling organisms on Earth", possibility they were produced by other processes (unrelated to life as we know it) not high but maybe unknown unknowns - other factors like distance from the star are in favor of life & water - previous studies detected methane and carbon dioxide
TL;DR - K2-18b - detected dimethyl sulfide and dimethyl disulfide, false positive possibility is now very low - "produced by marine-dwelling organisms on Earth", possibility they were produced by other processes (unrelated to life as we know it) not high but maybe unknown unknowns - other factors like distance from the star are in favor of life & water - previous studies detected methane and carbon dioxide
> The observations also provided a tentative hint of dimethyl sulfide (DMS), a possible biosignature gas, but the inference was of low statistical significance.
From the source paper. It is a very important result but not definitive, false positive is still possible as well as us finding a new way in which DMS can form without a biological process.
Still freaking exciting and fantastic scientific achievement. JWST is already bearing incredible fruits.
TL;DR - K2-18b - detected dimethyl sulfide and dimethyl disulfide, false positive possibility is now very low - "produced by marine-dwelling organisms on Earth", possibility they were produced by other processes (unrelated to life as we know it) not high but maybe unknown unknowns - other factors like distance from the star are in favor of life & water - previous studies detected methane and carbon dioxide
> false positive possibility is now very low
It's not that low, unfortunately. From the article:
> They say their observations have reached the ‘three-sigma’ level of statistical significance. This means there's a 0.3% probability the detection occurred by chance. And to reach the accepted level that would mean scientific discovery, observations would have to meet the five-sigma threshold. In other words, there would need to be below a 0.00006% probability they occurred by chance.
Firstly that is completely badass science. The idea that you can use observations to detect the chemical composition of an exoplanet millions of kilometres away is an absolute triumph of the work of thousands of people over hundreds of years. Really amazing and deeply humbling to me. Secondly, my prior was always that life existed outside of earth. It just seems so unlikely that we are somehow that special. If life d…
If life is very common in the universe, then that is probably bad news for us. It means that civilizations should exist that are millions of years more technologically advanced than us; and should be leaving telltale signatures across the sky that we'd likely have detected by now. And the absence of those signs would be relatively strong evidence that life, while common, isn't long-lived. Suggesting that our demise too, will come before too long.
If, on the other hand, life is relatively rare, or we're the sole example, our future can't be statistically estimated that way.
Here's the primary source https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/adc1c8 They possibly detected dimethyl sulfide, which is only known to be produced by living organisms.
only know to be produced.....is a whoa bessy phrase,?¿ as in 70 years ago an undergraduate figured out that dimethyl sulfide was produced by living organisms and he asked his professor what else made it, and got shrug and "nothing else I know of" and everybody has been cutting and pasting since, OR, an international team spent years and millions working on the chemistry behind
dimethyl sufide in an epic known to all quest to determine it's origins.
Science does have an issue with cutting and pasting ancient mistakes, and then bieng exceptionaly reluctant to change and move forward,
not to mention that SETI, and the rest of "alien" research is most definitly tainted with public fantasy and entertainment industry influence, so
even with one of the notoriously oderiferous sulfide compounds present, I wont hold my breath
Firstly that is completely badass science. The idea that you can use observations to detect the chemical composition of an exoplanet millions of kilometres away is an absolute triumph of the work of thousands of people over hundreds of years. Really amazing and deeply humbling to me. Secondly, my prior was always that life existed outside of earth. It just seems so unlikely that we are somehow that special. If life d…