Another exoplanet with water and… life?

There’s more potentially exciting news for all of you science geeks out there this week, coming to us from NASA. And the latest revelations were once again brought to us by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), as it peers deeper into the universe with greater clarity than we’ve ever had before. This time they have locked in on a cool dwarf star (that’s “cool” as in lower temperature than our sun, though it’s the other kind of “cool” also) in the constellation Leo roughly 120 light years from Earth with the unsexy name K2-18. Orbiting that star is a planet with the even less sexy name K2-18 b. But it may prove to be exciting indeed because K2-18 b is in the Goldilocks zone of its star and it has liquid water on it. And now they have discovered carbon dioxide and methane in its atmosphere. So what does that prove? Well… nothing, at least not yet. But it could definitely be a signature of life.Read More