This week’s news reports highlighting the discovery of the “strongest evidence yet” of life on a distant planet, K2-18b, raise a number of pertinent questions. If life is confirmed there, what would be the next step? Should humans try to establish some sort of contact with these extraterrestrials once we know where they are?
The reports stem from a new paper based on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)’s detection of the spectral fingerprint of a single molecule, dimethyl sulfide, in the atmosphere of the exoplanet — that is, a planet which exists outside our solar system. This molecule is not a reliable biomarker according to another paper from earlier this year, which shows that it is found in the interstellar medium without the presence of life. On Earth, this molecule is produced by microorganisms in the oceans.
