Possible signs of life found on k2-18b

Bojji said:
Confirmation of ANY life outside of earth would be groundbreaking.

This would mean that life is super common and there are billions of planets with it.
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I wouldn't go that far, we need more than two examples, there is still a chance this is an extreme rare planet.

If James Webb can find many planets with these gasses though, then we are talking.

First we need to know for sure that this is indeed plant life, which we simply won't be able to know.

I think it's highly likely this is indeed the real deal, we know no other natural means of producing what they have seen aside from life. I think this is it.
 
Won't it take like 8,000 years to send a probe to it? It's not like any of us will know for sure as we'll be long dead
 
Were he not hiding from the media*, Elon Musk would be getting ready to start talking about cryo-sleep and colonisation.

*I presume, I've not heard much from him this week.
 
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kpopSuperstar said:
Proper signs. They found gasses that are only produced by plants.

The problem is, there may be other ways to produce said gasses that we don't know about.

But there is a damn good likelihood that this is indeed from plants.
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Incredible.

However to most people their excitement over "life" really varies based on intelligence.

Bacteria or plankton found on another planet? Forgotten by most people after a week.

Intelligent life or civilisation? This would transform humanity.
 
RetroGamingUK said:
Incredible.

However to most people their excitement over "life" really varies based on intelligence.

Bacteria or plankton found on another planet? Forgotten by most people after a week.

Intelligent life or civilisation? This would transform humanity.
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I think definitively knowing there's alien life on another planet, even if simple, would be the greatest event in human history. It completely changes our story as a species.
 
Great Auk said:
I think definitively knowing there's alien life on another planet, even if simple, would be the greatest event in human history. It completely changes our story as a species.
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I agree it would.

However most of society doesn't care about the kind of life being described here.

Encountering intelligent aliens, however, would be society transforming.
 
K2-18b is two-and-a-half times the size of Earth and is 700 trillion miles, or 124 light years, away from us - a distance far beyond what any human could travel in a lifetime.
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Great spend of money. Cant wait for the results.
 
They thought the same thing with Venus a year or two back. Some gasses that could only be produced by life in the atmosphere but then it just evaporated as a news story and went nowhere.
 
Skyfox said:
They thought the same thing with Venus a year or two back. Some gasses that could only be produced by life in the atmosphere but then it just evaporated as a news story and went nowhere.
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They put out these articles to try to get more funding. They do it every year and people fall for it every year.

NASA is a nonfunctional government bureaucracy and has been for 30 years at this point.
 
Great Auk said:
I think definitively knowing there's alien life on another planet, even if simple, would be the greatest event in human history. It completely changes our story as a species.
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I wouldn't take it that far.
I' say, it completely contradicts the story some religions have been promoting for over a thousand years now.

But it still is, the greatest discovery astronomy has ever done, and one that proves once more how insignificant we are from the universe's perspective, as Carl Sagan told us years ago.
 
Fascinating stuff. Shame that we're stuck at the level of space travel that we're currently at. Statistically there has to be (at least) simple life elsewhere in the universe, but seeing it first hand is a whole different thing. I don't think we'll be going there anytime soon, but hopefully in the next decade we can create even better telescopes and scanners and find out more.
 
Skyfox said:
They thought the same thing with Venus a year or two back. Some gasses that could only be produced by life in the atmosphere but then it just evaporated as a news story and went nowhere.
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Well, they found a gas in Venus's clouds, that on Earth is made by life. It hints at microrganisms in the clouds on Venus. Yet there are reasons to think its made by other processes, its a mystery.

This other planet though, has gasses made by algea, and tons of it. It's a very strong sign that something is producing a lot of it non-stop.

They say in the article that they will have a clear answer in a year or two, so we will hopefully know soon.
 
Its Happening GIF by MOODMAN
 
YCoCg said:
Won't it take like 8,000 years to send a probe to it? It's not like any of us will know for sure as we'll be long dead
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Just looked it up. Our fastest space probe goes 700,000 km/h.

It would take it 191,000 years to travel 124 lightyears. We're cooked.
 
Great Auk said:
I think definitively knowing there's alien life on another planet, even if simple, would be the greatest event in human history. It completely changes our story as a species.
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I agree, but sadly it'd be forgotten half an hour later and people would be back to petty squabbles, arguments and the thirst for power and greed that has defined our species.
 
This is an extremely big deal. I'd still say the most likely explanation is some unknown natural chemical reaction we don't understand yet, but for now K2-18b is about to become the most studied object in the sky. It's really exciting.
 
Can't this James Webb cunt just point his camera at the closest star and just tell us what's on the planet.
Surely this latest and greatest scope has the power to directly see the planets there.

Zoom in
 
Unfortunately telescopes are fully booked long in advance so when something like this or Tabby's star get found they can't just point them at it for 5 years to figure it out. It's off being used on less interesting things.
 
Donald mac Ronald said:
Can't this James Webb cunt just point his camera at the closest star and just tell us what's on the planet.
Surely this latest and greatest scope has the power to directly see the planets there.

Zoom in
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The James Webb Space Telescope can directly image planets. It happened just last month. This is as good as it gets unfortunately.

webb-STScI-01JNH6R2GJGFNPBKD3Z4T0A8PB-1K.png
 
That article is a bit unbalanced - on the one hand practically claiming it is found but then also saying need another two years work! why do the Cambridge team another two years to confrim when they seem to have been studying the data from this planet for years..

Need a different team to confirm the result independently.
 
I bet during humanity's entire existance, we won't find anything other than simple ass primordial bacteria out there
 
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RetroGamingUK said:
Bacteria or plankton found on another planet? Forgotten by most people after a week.
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If that's the case then hunanity is lost. Finding bacteria on anywhere other than Earth would be the greatest scientific discovery ever. Nothing comes close.

Personally, I believe life is far more common in the universe. There is a very high chance life exists on places in our own system such as Europa and even Titan.

Bert Big Balls said:
Just looked it up. Our fastest space probe goes 700,000 km/h.

It would take it 191,000 years to travel 124 lightyears. We're cooked.
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Currently we lack the tech to conduct interstellar travel in a relatively short time span.

Interstellar travel is actually a problem that could be solved in our lifetimes, but it would take the whole planet coming together to work towards a common goal.

Unfortunately that seems very unlikely.

Our only hope is that quantum computers and AI develop at a break neck speed and they can solve the problem for us.
 
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IDKFA said:
If that's the case then hunanity is lost. Finding bacteria on anywhere other than Earth would be the greatest scientific discovery ever. Nothing comes close.

Personally, I believe life is far more common in the universe. There is a very high chance life exists on places in our own system such as Europa and even Titan.



Currently we lack the tech to conduct interstellar travel in a relatively short time span.

Interstellar travel is actually like a problem that could be solved in our lifetimes, but it would take the whole planet coming together to work towards a common goal.

Unfortunately that seems very unlikely.

Our only hope is that quantum computers and AI develop at a break neck speed and they can solve the problem for us.
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I bet when the conundrum of interstellar travel is eventually solved, it will be super simple and will have been right under our noses the entire time, and will be easier to deal with than chemical rockets. like some shit that works with spinning repelling magnets or something
 
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