Astronomers Detect a Possible Signature of Life on a Distant Planet

(www.nytimes.com)

168 points julienchastang | 1 comments | 16 Apr 25 23:20 UTC | HN request time: 0.227s | source

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smitty1e ◴[16 Apr 25 23:41 UTC] No.43711517[source]▶

> While inspecting K2-18b, Dr. Madhusudhan and his colleagues discovered it had many of the molecules they had predicted a Hycean planet would possess. In 2023, they reported they had also detected faint hints of another molecule, and one of huge potential importance: dimethyl sulfide, which is made of sulfur, carbon, and hydrogen. On Earth, the only known source of dimethyl sulfide is life.

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Intriguing.

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Loughla ◴[16 Apr 25 23:53 UTC] No.43711610[source]▶

>>43711517 #

It's absolutely amazing that we can even figure out molecules at that distance. I'm sure it's accurate but it's so sciency to me that it might as well be made up entirely. I can't begin to fathom that process.

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1. vikramkr ◴[17 Apr 25 02:34 UTC] No.43712548[source]▶

>>43711610 #

Spectroscopy is cool! Basically whenever light shines through a thing, the thing can absorb or emit light, and that happens at specific wavelengths depending on what the thing is made of. You can get small spectroscope pretty cheap and play around with a bunch of hone experiments - a common lab project in class is putting salts in a flame and based on the spectra figuring out what atoms are in the salt. It's how we discovered helium must exist in the sun before actually finding any on earth. So basically we just do that, except on a planet that's far away. When it's between it's star and us, we look at the spectra of the light that goes through the planets atmosphere

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