Nasa’s James Webb Space Telescope may have discovered tentative evidence of a sign of life on a faraway planet.
Prof Nikku Madhusudhan, of the University of Cambridge, who led the research, told BBC News that his entire team were ‘‘shocked’’ when they saw the results.
But they are treating the results with caution, noting that a claim made in 2020 about the presence of another molecule, called phosphine, that could be produced by living organisms in the clouds of Venus was disputed a year later.
Even so, Dr Robert Massey, who is independent of the research and deputy director of the Royal Astronomical Society in London, said he was excited by the results.
Nasa’s Hubble telescope had detected the presence of water vapour previously, which is why the planet, which has been named K2-18b, was one of the first to be investigated by the vastly more powerful JWST, but the possibility of an ocean is a big step forward.
This means that these ‘sub-Neptunes’ are poorly understood, as is the nature their atmospheres, according to Dr Subhajit Sarkar of Cardiff University, who is another member of the analysis team.
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
Nasa’s James Webb Space Telescope may have discovered tentative evidence of a sign of life on a faraway planet.
Prof Nikku Madhusudhan, of the University of Cambridge, who led the research, told BBC News that his entire team were ‘‘shocked’’ when they saw the results.
But they are treating the results with caution, noting that a claim made in 2020 about the presence of another molecule, called phosphine, that could be produced by living organisms in the clouds of Venus was disputed a year later.
Even so, Dr Robert Massey, who is independent of the research and deputy director of the Royal Astronomical Society in London, said he was excited by the results.
Nasa’s Hubble telescope had detected the presence of water vapour previously, which is why the planet, which has been named K2-18b, was one of the first to be investigated by the vastly more powerful JWST, but the possibility of an ocean is a big step forward.
This means that these ‘sub-Neptunes’ are poorly understood, as is the nature their atmospheres, according to Dr Subhajit Sarkar of Cardiff University, who is another member of the analysis team.
The original article contains 750 words, the summary contains 189 words. Saved 75%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!