In a potential landmark discovery, scientists using the James Webb Space Telescope have obtained what they call the strongest signs yet of possible life beyond our solar system, detecting in an alien planet’s atmosphere the chemical fingerprints of gases that on Earth are produced only by biological processes.
I read this BBC article about it
Obviously if this turns out to be life that would be interesting, but it could turn out to be nothing.
If it turns out to be some moss or bacteria or other basic life, that would be pretty cool. If it’s humanoid aliens then maybe we’re screwed.
Even if it’s not aliens and it is indeed DMS and DMDS finding the non-biological process that produced them would be neat too
Yes, win-win scenario
The system is at 124 light years from ours, we should be fine.
That’s like 20 days at warp 9, they could be here this year!
What’s warp 9, actually how fast can we travel?
This is a Star Trek reference:
Warp 9 is around 1000 times the speed of light lol
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Warp_factor
I thought I’d remembered reading about this before. Sounds like just a couple more years, and they’ll be sure this gas is there, which is huge, but not totally conclusive.
Personally, I’d bet it’s life. A big rocky planet with an ocean of phytoplankton sounds like our best bet for finding it. The scientists in the article are trying really hard not to be excited
Finding bacterial would be super cool, we could learn a whole lot from that! But if we do find complex alien life, multicellular life or something like animals, well that’s a really, incredibly bad sign.
That suggests that complex life is common in the universe. And if complex life is common, intelligent life should be common. And if intelligent life should be common, but isn’t (because where are they all?), that says bad things about the success and survival rates of intelligent species.