Life Possibly Discovered

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"If it's interesting, it's probably wrong."

He's sure right about that.

Scientist dude said that so he doesn't "geek out" his words.
truth is, water vapour, methane and Dimethyl Sulphide strongly indicates
a) the planet is covered in water
b) CH4 and DMS indicate there are algae in the water as exactly the same signs are detected over earth.

I wonder if Trump will cut any NASA funding so his Co-President can send (exploding) rockets there for profit.

It would be funny if the residents of Planet 54PXP1 were also wondering the same thing after they detected "gas" in our solar system?

Or maybe not.

From https://www.npr.org/2025/04/25/g-s1-62610/biosignatures-k2-18b-james-webb-exoplanet-doubt:

^^^ to be fair even the lead researchers from Cambridge cautioned their findings do not prove life on the planet. While its probably easy to poke holes in claims of detecting chemicals light years from earth, the strengths of the findings are worth noting.

In three separate scans of the planet's atmosphere the Cambridge team used 3 different analytical techniques since 2023 and were able to replicate similar findings in terms of
a) water vapour indicating the planet has water
b) Dimethyl Sulphide (DMS is an indicator of microalgal respiration/photosynthesis) was present.
Replication is usually a requirement for scientific plausibility
Since then both Oxford and Max Planck have indicated the signal to noise ratio in their attempts to detect signatures of life may cast doubt on drawing conclusions about the original findings, they do however provide a springboard for further investigation (rather than shutting down investigation). As mentioned, our ability to detect gases on other planets is improving and perhaps better methods of calibration might reduce the statistical noise and improve the confidence in the readings.

I wonder if they'll be included in the next round of US tariffs.

Woke algae?

^^^ Its been established that microbial life can travel through space in both spores and hibernated freeze dried form in comets and in space winds. Much of the microbial growth on the Russian space station MIR included microbes that inoculated the station from space. Collection slides on weather balloons sent to orbital positions over earth have also collected spores of organisms which have been able to be grown in agar/broth culture later.

therefore given water is present elsewhere in the universe and given material has been travelling around the universe for billions of years prior to the formation of the earth its not only likely microbial life exists elsewhere, but that earth itself might have been inoculated by spores several billion years ago. Concept is called panspermia.

Logic dictates if microbes exist on other earth like planets then over billions years there is a probability advanced sentient life has arose millions of times across the universe long before earth cooled down for life to emerge here. Statistically it's actually far more likely other advanced life forms have chosen not to reveal themselves to us > we humans are the only advanced beings in the universe. the latter theory makes no sense given what we know about how life evolved on earth.

I believe .....

It could easily be thousands of years before we find actual signs of life outside our solar system.

Skepticism is a very important part of science. We shouldn't go heading off on wild goose chases based on what we might want to believe.

It might be worth remembering that we have found organic molecules, some reportedly fairly complex, in space for years. None of that is any sign of life.

Also, we must keep in mind that life was extremely unlikely in the early Universe. It takes time to build up the atoms we have via nucleosynthesis. Stellar nucleosynthesis works okay for lighter elements, but most of our elements required supernova nucleosynthesis. There are suggestions that for any advanced civilization to form such ours, it has to have elements formed from supernova nucleosynthesis to account for the amount of heavier elements we have. Naturally, if there is any kind of life in these "spores", a supernova would destroy them far out into space. It would take a very long time for spores to be able to cross such a large distance.

Remember the "oumamua" interstellar visitor? It is going very fast -- something like 50 to 60 miles per second. At that rate, it would take many thousands of years to arrive from another planet with life and for that to happen, the "spores" would have to be accelerated to very high speeds by some mechanism that seems little more than science fiction.

I don't buy into the "panspermia" conjecture at all. Even more, we don't need it. It is enormously more likely that the organic molecules that are the building blocks of life formed naturally in Earth's atmosphere that that some "spores" from outer space made it here and started life.