Potential Signs of Life on Distant Exoplanet

In what could be a historic breakthrough, scientists using the James Webb Space Telescope have detected chemical traces in a distant planet’s atmosphere that may signal the presence of life.

The planet, K2-18 b, orbits a star 124 light years away and shows high concentrations of gases, dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and dimethyl disulfide (DMDS), which, on Earth, are produced only by living organisms, mainly marine microbes like phytoplankton.

Researchers caution that this is not direct evidence of life, but a potential biosignature, a chemical hint of biological processes.