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417 points fuidani | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.304s | source
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throwaway290 ◴[] No.43714434[source]
TL;DR

- K2-18b

- detected dimethyl sulfide and dimethyl disulfide, false positive possibility is now very low

- "produced by marine-dwelling organisms on Earth", possibility they were produced by other processes (unrelated to life as we know it) not high but maybe unknown unknowns

- other factors like distance from the star are in favor of life & water

- previous studies detected methane and carbon dioxide

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energy123 ◴[] No.43714523[source]
> false positive possibility is now very low

It's not that low, unfortunately. From the article:

> They say their observations have reached the ‘three-sigma’ level of statistical significance. This means there's a 0.3% probability the detection occurred by chance. And to reach the accepted level that would mean scientific discovery, observations would have to meet the five-sigma threshold. In other words, there would need to be below a 0.00006% probability they occurred by chance.

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1. fullstackchris ◴[] No.43715055[source]
Thats what I'd like to know, is this the kind of process that we can _get_ to 6 sigma by more observation time? Or would we need other observations / thats "as good as it gets" for the Webb's capabilities?