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MaTT FLaMMaBLe
@mattflammable.com

This is K2-18b. It’s a planet outside of our solar system, about 2 1/2 times the size of earth, orbiting a small red dwarf star. The James Webb space telescope spent time studying this planet via spectroscopy and determined it has gases in its atmosphere that are only created through biology!

Doug Berntson
@dougberntson.bsky.social

Sadly even reputable media sources are ignoring that life on K2-18b remains unlikely, preferring to sensationalize that remote possibility. The detected chemicals can be produced without life, the planet is quite inhospitable, including likely being tidally locked and more like Neptune than Earth.

MaTT FLaMMaBLe
@mattflammable.com

Very true, and we’ve had numerous false positives in the past in terms of biological signatures. But the detected gases have only been reproduced in lab environments, not in a natural environment. So that’s why I think it’s rightfully a reason to be excited, but cautiously.

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sefinh.bsky.social
@sefinh.bsky.social

Isn't the very fact that it is an alien planet and therefore unfamiliar, enough reason to say that there's lots of potential ways that we could be wrong about those only occurring due to life? I feel like "those gasses are only produced by biology *here on Earth*" is a pretty important distinction