“Most promising signs yet” of alien life on a planet beyond our Solar System • Hacker News Board

Re: “Most promising signs yet” of alien life on a planet beyond our Solar System

#261

Post by ninetyninenine » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 1:45 PM UTC

pfdietz wrote: post #232

ninetyninenine wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlikely we will ever be interstellar. The technology involved is speculative and the physics barriers needed to be surpassed are impossible and not well understood. To reach another star by the laws of physics involves many human lifetimes and that’s just the nearest star. That in itself makes it more likely that we will never be interstellar.

Slow but plausible starships can be designed with 1960s technology. The obstacle is not the technology but the scale of the effort, a problem that could be solved by extension of civilization into the solar system with much larger populations. https://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/classes/109.jvn.spring00/n...

Humanity will never put effort into this. We don’t have the technology yet but yes we can develop it but doing this is harder than building a bridge across the ocean between Asia and the US.

That bridge is also within our technological capacity. But it’s not happening period.

Re: “Most promising signs yet” of alien life on a planet beyond our Solar System

#262

Post by spacemark » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 1:47 PM UTC

perihelions wrote: post #146

weberer wrote: post #5

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.

I'm not convinced about the methods. It looks a lot like p-hacking to me: they have a highly specific hypothesis drawn from a large universe—that dozen or so molecules (§3.1) in their infrared spectrum model they're fitting experimental data against. I don't buy the way they created that hypothesis. The put a handful of highly specific biosignature gases into it, things that were proposed by exobiology theory papers.…

Don't be bothered by the down votes. HN consensus is not something worth pursuing. Your criticism is valid, it's just that it runs against what HN readers want to believe in this instance. Readers here like to think they're motivated by reason and intelligence and whatnot, but that is laughable - examples of logical fallacies and assertions of fact rocketing to the top comments abound. Overconfidence and readiness to accept bold claims is a more dangerous cultural dysfunction than the lack of seriousness and ubiquitous monetization that plagues other platforms.

In any case this study will likely go on the pile of papers judged by time to be an overreach of conclusions and a dead end.

Re: “Most promising signs yet” of alien life on a planet beyond our Solar System

#263

Post by kevin_thibedeau » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 1:50 PM UTC

ninetyninenine wrote: post #149

trhway wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>we are only aware of one species that developed civilization building capabilities. well, the first one just doesn't leave any chance for any other one. >Life might be very common, but intelligent life still be incrediblY rare. the time period between big ape and nuclear bomb is extremely short - few millions years. In a hundred or a thousand - doesn't really matter - years we'll be an interstellar species or may be…

Unlikely we will ever be interstellar. The technology involved is speculative and the physics barriers needed to be surpassed are impossible and not well understood. To reach another star by the laws of physics involves many human lifetimes and that’s just the nearest star. That in itself makes it more likely that we will never be interstellar.

We can disperse intelligent machines. Possibly with the ability to regenerate biological life.

Re: “Most promising signs yet” of alien life on a planet beyond our Solar System

#264

Post by ChicagoBoy11 » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 1:54 PM UTC

Phelinofist wrote: post #247

Aren't we looking into the past when looking at things this far away? So, just assuming here, that these are indeed signs of life, would that mean that "they" might have been primitive when these signatures were sent out into space and are now further developed?

Yes, but isn't it "just" 124 light years away. So, we're looking at it 124 years ago, which, in the scale of evolution, isn't particularly long ago?

Re: “Most promising signs yet” of alien life on a planet beyond our Solar System

#265

Post by api » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 1:56 PM UTC

belter wrote: post #207

weberer wrote: post #5

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.

> which is only known to be produced by living organisms. Comets with DMS: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.08724 And the interstellar medium. "On the abiotic origin of dimethyl sulfide: discovery of DMS in the Interstellar Medium" - https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.08892 "...Although the chemistry of DMS beyond Earth is yet to be fully disclosed, this discovery provides conclusive observational evidence on its efficient abiotic…

But in a concentration sufficient to be visible from this far away with spectroscopy?

It's not definitive but it is suggestive. A detection would require multiple pieces of evidence. We should be building specialized space telescopes designed specifically for the characterization of extrasolar planet atmospheres, since that's the best way we have to potentially detect something.

Re: “Most promising signs yet” of alien life on a planet beyond our Solar System

#266

Post by qudat » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 2:01 PM UTC

seanhunter wrote: post #6

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…

The universe is so big that even very rare anomalies are common. There is life outside of earth, that is all but confirmed.

Re: “Most promising signs yet” of alien life on a planet beyond our Solar System

#267

Post by griffzhowl » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 2:02 PM UTC

rpastuszak wrote: post #226

mr_toad wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing that could make a nerd happier than detecting alien life would be detecting alien robots.

Wait, what's the difference?

Alien life could just be microbial, while alien robots would require an advanced technological civilization, I guess

Re: “Most promising signs yet” of alien life on a planet beyond our Solar System

#268

Post by kstrauser » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 2:10 PM UTC

andreygrehov wrote: post #157

Let’s assume there is alien life on many planets beyond our solar system. Now what? What’s the practical benefit?

Suppose it were somehow possible to prove that alien life exists. Like, we get a radio signal saying "hey, Earth! We see you looking at us!" that's conclusive and undeniable.

That would upend a lot of religious teachings which say we're unique and that the world was given to us, as the unique creations of a creator, to consume for our own benefit.

It seems like there could be many practical benefits to showing that's not true. Hey, maybe the concept of infinite exponential growth is a bad idea. Maybe we shouldn't burn the skies and boil the seas. Maybe we should be nice to other intelligent animals, at the very least.

Re: “Most promising signs yet” of alien life on a planet beyond our Solar System

#269

Post by teamonkey » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 2:16 PM UTC

weberer wrote: post #5

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.

A lot of science papers are like “we found a hint of this thing, we need to do more research” and it’s reported as “ALIENS??!?”

I understand why this is the case but I think it can lead to a loss in trust in science when the reporting jumps to conclusions that aren’t supported by the research itself.

In this case the abstract is far more grounded. In particular,

> The observations also provided a tentative hint of dimethyl sulfide (DMS), a possible biosignature gas, but the inference was of low statistical significance.

> We find that the spectrum cannot be explained by most molecules predicted for K2-18 b, with the exception of DMS and dimethyl disulfide (DMDS), also a potential biosignature gas.

> More observations are needed to increase the robustness of the findings and resolve the degeneracy between DMS and DMDS. The results also highlight the need for additional experimental and theoretical work to determine accurate cross sections of important biosignature gases and identify potential abiotic sources.

Re: “Most promising signs yet” of alien life on a planet beyond our Solar System

#270

Post by hackeraccount » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 2:29 PM UTC

seanhunter wrote: post #6

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…

My prior is that life is not uncommon in the universe, multicellular eukaryotic type life less common and intelligent (whatever that means) life less common still.

If the closest prokaryotic type life is 100 light year away then the the closest intelligent life might is pretty far away.

I base this on almost nothing - other then the time it took for prokaryotic and eukaryotic life to emerge on Earth; which to my mind is surprisingly quick for the former an weirdly long for the later.