SPACE.COM - Recent reports of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) detecting signs of life of a distant planet outside the solar system are, unfortunately, somewhat premature. That's the conclusion of research conducted by scientists from the University of California Riverside (UCR).
While likely to disappoint all of us eager for the confirmation of extraterrestrial life, however, it doesn't mean the JWST won't find traces of life in the atmosphere of an extrasolar planet, or "exoplanet," in the future.
The recent excitement around the potential detection of life signs on an exoplanet started in 2023 when the JWST detected potential "biosignature" elements in the atmosphere of the exoplanet K2-18 b, a super-Earth located around 120 light-years from Earth.
"This planet gets almost the same amount of solar radiation as Earth. And if atmosphere is removed as a factor, K2-18 b has a temperature close to Earth's, which is also an ideal situation in which to find life," team member and UCR project scientist Shang-Min Tsai said in a statement.