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Can 124 light years be calculated in human years? Scientists discover signs of life on a distant planet called K2-18b
Scientists have discovered possible evidence of life on a planet called K2-18b, which is located 124 light-years from Earth. For the unversed, one light year is the distance traveled by light in one year, and that is 5.9 trillion miles. For further clarification, light years is not a unit of measuring time, unlike human years.
As for the latest discovery, the study was published on Wednesday, April 16, in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. Many researchers, however, were reluctant to conclude from the available proof. According to The New York Times, Stephen Schmidt, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University, said:
"It’s not nothing. It’s a hint. But we cannot conclude it’s habitable yet."
Scientists used the James Webb Space Telescope and discovered that the atmosphere in the alien planet had chemical fingerprints of gases that are produced through biological processes on Earth.
Two gases, dimethyl sulfide, or DMS, and dimethyl disulfide, or DMDS, are generated on our Earth primarily by microbial life like marine phytoplankton. Traces of these were reportedly found on K2-18b.
As per Reuters, the researchers also clarified that they weren't announcing presence of life on K2-18b, but were only indicating a possible presence of a biological process. Nikku Madhusudhan of the University of Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy, lead author of the study, voiced excitement over this new discovery.
K2-18b is reportedly about 8.6 times bigger than earth and also has a diameter which is about 2.6 times bigger than the earth's.
"Unless we see E.T. waving at us, it’s not going to be a smoking gun"- said a researcher about finding life on an alien planet
As aforementioned, several researchers were not ready to draw grand conclusions based on the latest study published. One such researcher would be Christopher Glein, who is a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.
"Unless we see E.T. waving at us, it's not going to be a smoking gun," Glein said (via The New York Times).
According to reports by The New York Times, Nikku Madhusudhan too had clarified that it was too early to claim that life has been detected. Madhusudhan, however, added that their observations about K2-18b could possibly imply that there was a warm ocean on the alien celestial body.
He additionally stated:
"This is a revolutionary moment. It's the first time humanity has seen potential biosignatures on a habitable planet."
This is not the first time that scientists have been researching K2-18b. Back in 2019, they seemingly discovered water vapor in the atmosphere of this celestial body through the Hubble Space Telescope. At the time, researchers even called it "the most habitable known world” crossing the solar system.
However, in 2023, Madhusudhan and his team discovered that the presence of water was methane. Even then, the team claimed that K2-18b was most consistent with a habitable world.
K2-18b was discovered in 2017 by Canadian astronomers. As per The New York Times, the discovery was made when they were looking through the ground-based telescopes in Chile.
These celestial bodies known as sub-Neptunes were reportedly bigger than most rocky planets of our solar system but smaller than Neptune.
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