Washington:
In the discovery of a potential landmark, scientists using the James Web Space Telescope have achieved what they call the strongest signs of possible life beyond our solar system, the chemical fingers of gases to detect in the environment of a foreign planet are produced by only biological processes on Earth.
Two gases – dimethyl sulfide, or DMS, and dimethyl disalfide, or DMD – include the comments of the web of the planet called 2–18B, which are generated on Earth by living organisms, mainly microbial life such as marine phytoplankton – algae.
It suggests that the planet can work with microbial life, the researchers said. However, he stressed that they are not announcing the discovery of real living organisms, but a potential bioscnecher – an indicator of a biological process – and that the conclusions should be carefully viewed, with the need for more observations.
However, he gave a voice. These are the first signs in the foreign world that is probably inhabited, said that Nikku Madhusudhan, a university’s university, is a leading writer of the study published in astrophysical journal letters by Nikku Madhusudhan.
“This is a transformational moment in search for life beyond the solar system, where we have demonstrated that it is possible to detect biosignatures in potentially living planets with current features. We have entered the era of observational astronomy,” Madhusudan said.
Madhusudhan said that our solar system has various efforts to discover signs of life, in which life can be favorable in places such as Mars, Venus and various icy moon.
K2–18 b is 8.6 times larger than the Earth and is about 2.6 times larger than our planet.
It revolves in a “living area” – a distance where liquid water, a major component for life, may be present on the surface of a planet – small and less shiny around a red dwarf star compared to our sun, about 124 lights from the Earth in the Nakshatra Leo. A light-year is a distance lighting in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km). Another planet has also been identified by revolving around this star.
A ‘Hyssian World’
About 5,800 planets beyond our solar system, called exoplanet, have been discovered since the 1990s. Scientists have envisaged the existence of exoplanets called Hyxian Worlds – by a liquid water ocean living by microorganisms and covered with a hydrogen -environment.
The first web observation, which was launched in 2021 and started in 2022, identified methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of the K2–18B, first when a carbon-based molecules were discovered in an exxoplanetic environment in the habitable area of an star.
“The only landscape that currently explains all the data obtained from JWST (James Web Space Telescope), including past and current comments, is where K2–18 B is a hycean world that is with life,” Madhusudhan said. “However, we need to be open and continue searching for other scenarios.”
Madhusudhan said that with the hician world, if they exist, “We are talking about microbial life, possibly as we see in the Earth’s oceans.” Their oceans are envisaged to warm up compared to the earth. When asked about possible multicellular organisms or even intelligent life, Madhusudhan said, “We will not be able to answer this question at this level. The basic perception is of simple microbial life.”
Both DMS and DMD have been predicted from the same chemical family, significant exoplanet biosphere. The web found that 99.7% in the planet’s atmosphere was present at the level of confidence in the planet’s atmosphere, meaning that there is still a 0.3% chance of observation which is a statistical flower.
The gases were detected by the volume in atmospheric concentrations of more than 10 parts per million.
“For reference, it is thousands of times more than their concentrations in the Earth’s atmosphere, and cannot be explained without biological activity based on the current knowledge,” Madhusudhan said.
Scientists have not included the study.
“The rich data of the K2–18 B makes it a tentalizing world,” said Christopher Gleen, leading scientist at the Space Sciences Division of the South West Research Institute in Texas. “These latest data is a valuable contribution to our understanding. Nevertheless, we should be very careful to test the data.
Transit method
The K2–18 B is part of the “sub-naptune” square of the planets, which has more diameter than the Earth, but less than Neptune, the smallest gas planet of our solar system.
To detect the chemical composition of an exoplanet’s atmosphere, astronomers analyze light from their host stars because the planet passes in front of the Earth’s perspective, which is called transit method. As soon as the planet transfects, the web steller can detect a decrease in brightness, and a small fraction of the starlight passes through the atmosphere of planetary before detection by the telescope. This allows scientists to determine the ingredient gases of the planet’s atmosphere.
The previous comments of this planet’s web provided a temporary signal of DMS. Its new comments used a separate tool and a different wavelength range of light.
Madhusudhan said that the “holy grave” of exoplanet science, beyond our solar system, has to find evidence of life on an Earth -like planet. Madhusudhan said that for thousands of years our species has surprised that “are we alone” in the universe, and now within a few years of detecting a possible foreign life on a hysterian world.
But Madhusudhan still took precautions.
“First of all we need to repeat the comments two to three times to ensure that the signs we are seeing is strong and to increase the importance of detection” at the level on which the statistical flowers are almost below one million in a million, Madhusudhan said.
“Second, we require more theoretical and practical studies to ensure what is another abiotic system (not involving biological processes), which is to make DMS or DMDS in the planetary atmosphere of K2-18 B.
So the conclusions represent “if a large” representation is the reasons for life, and it is “nobody interested to claim prematurely that we have detected life,” Madhusudhan said.
(Reporting by Will Dunham in Washington; Additional Reporting by Stuart McDil in London; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)
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