A University of Cambridge-led team of astronomers made worldwide headlines last night with claims that they had found the “strongest hints yet of biological activity outside the Solar System”. The discovery involves a distant planet known as K2-18 b, which the team says has one or more molecules in its atmosphere that might have been generated by living things.
The announcement has been met with floods of scepticism from other researchers who study such ‘biosignatures’ in exoplanet atmospheres.
“It is not strong evidence,” says Stephen Schmidt, an astronomer at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. “It’s almost certainly not life,” says Tessa Fisher, an astrobiologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Here, Nature explores the high-profile claim — and why many scientists say it’s far from proof of alien life.
Popper falsifiability is important. These observations will need to be duplicated and undergo further study and analysis before any proclamations can be made.
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