Scientists find strongest evidence yet of life on planet

Scientists find strongest evidence yet of life on planet – astonishing vision

The scientists have found new but tentative evidence that a faraway world orbiting another star may be home to life.

A Cambridge team studying the atmosphere of a planet called K2-18b detected the signs of molecules. Which on Earth are only produced by simple organisms.

This is the second, and more promising, time chemicals associated with life detected in the planet’s atmosphere by Nasa’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

But the team and independent astronomers stress that more data is needed to confirm these results.

The lead researcher, Prof Nikku Madhusudhan, told me at his lab at Cambridge University’s Institute of Astronomy that he hopes to obtain the clinching evidence soon.

“This is the strongest evidence yet there is possibly life out there. I can realistically say that we can confirm this signal within one to two years.”

K2-18b is two-and-a-half times the size of Earth and is 700 trillion miles, or 124 light years, away from us – a distance far beyond what any human could travel in a lifetime.

JWST is so powerful that it can analyse the chemical composition of the planet’s atmosphere from the light that passes through from the small red Sun it orbits.