NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has detected potential traces of dimethyl sulfide, a chemical known to be produced only by phytoplankton on Earth, in the atmosphere of an exoplanet believed to have its own liquid ocean.

Live Science reported this week that NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) could detect signs of extraterrestrial life on an Earth-like planet up to 50 light-years away. Now, a new study suggests that a state-of-the-art spacecraft may have detected one such clue to life – “alien farts” – in its atmosphere more than twice the distance of the potentially ocean-covered world Goldilocks.

The exoplanet in question, K2-18 b, is a planet below Neptune (between Earth and Earth). by Neptune) is a star orbiting in the habitable zone around a red dwarf star, about 120 light-years from the Sun. K2-18 b, which is about 8.6 times larger and about 2.6 times wider than our planet first discovered By the NASA Kepler telescope in 2015. And the NASA Hubble telescope in 2018 Water discovered in the atmosphere of an exoplanet.

In the new study, uploaded to the arXiv preprint server on September 11 (and to be published in a future issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters), researchers used JWST to further analyze the light passing through K2-18 b. atmosphere.

The resulting atmospheric spectrum, the most detailed of its kind ever obtained from a habitable planet below Neptune, shows that the exoplanet’s atmosphere is rich in hydrogen, methane and carbon dioxide and low in ammonia. These chemical markers indicate that K2-18 b may be a Hytsian world; An exoplanet with a hydrogen-rich atmosphere and a watery ocean covering an icy mantle.

Hycaean worlds are prime candidates for extraterrestrial life. However, even if K2-18 b had an ocean, there’s no guarantee it would be habitable: it might be too hot to support life, or it might lack the nutrients and chemicals needed to fuel life.

The researchers also found what they believe to be traces of dimethyl sulfide (DMS), a foul-smelling chemical known only to be produced by microscopic life in Earth’s oceans.

DMS is mainly released by phytoplankton or photosynthetic algae in the Earth’s oceans. Sulfur consists of carbon and hydrogen and is the most abundant organic form of sulfur in Earth’s atmosphere, making it one of the fundamental biological signatures, or signatures, of biological life on our planet.

But the evidence for DMS “requires further verification,” the researchers wrote. expression. They added that it is also possible that some unknown geological process created a chemical substance rather than biological life.

Regardless of whether K2-18 b harbors alien life forms, the results of the new study further highlight that Hyckeian worlds may be an ideal place to search for extraterrestrial life.

“Traditionally, the search for life on exoplanets has focused mainly on smaller rocky planets, but the larger Hyckeian worlds are much more amenable to atmospheric observations,” said astrophysicist Nikku Madhusudhan, lead author of the study. And exoplanet scientist at the University of Cambridge in England. says in the statement.

It’s unclear how many Hyckeian worlds there are, but “Sub-Neptunes are currently the most common type of planet known in the galaxy,” said study co-author Subhajit Sarkar, an astrophysicist at Cardiff University in Wales. The researchers added that the study also highlights the incredible power of JWST compared to its predecessors such as Hubble and Kepler.

“This result was only possible due to JWST’s extended wavelength range and unprecedented sensitivity,” said Madhusudhan. He added that Hubble would need to observe at least eight times as far as K2-18 b to get the same level of detail.

Researchers plan to use JWST in the future to look again at K2-18 b and see if the telescope can find more evidence of extraterrestrial life on this exoplanet. If this happens, “it will change our understanding of our place in the universe,” Madhusudhan said. Source