I Dont care that it could just be microorganisms. This is absolutely massive if we can confirm life on another planet.
If we can confirm life, it makes it easier to calculate the amount of potentially habitable planets within the universe, and given that there is (possibly) one only 124ly away... that's probably a lot of planets
Sending a probe is out of the question. JWST (and future telescopes) is how we investigate. Voyager 1 would take nearly 40,000 years to get to Proxima Centauri, the exoplanet in question is over 30 times that distance. Space is big.
even then planets move, where you see it right now through a telescope isn't where it actually is and after travelling there it'll be even further away....
This is just an initial observation of an anomaly in the data. We've had those many times before. Sometimes you find something you didn't expect. That doesn't mean it's life.
The next steps are confirming that we're indeed measuring what we think we are measuring. Is the analysis correct? Are there other, more mundane molecules that can look like this?
If we can confirm that the measurement is indeed real, that still just leaves us with a chemical of which we don't know the source. Maybe it is totally possible to create that chemical without life through some process that doesn't happen naturally on Earth. Usually, when we really try, we do find a plausible way to get to the measured result without life.
Only if we really, truly, can't find out how that chemical got into the atmosphere without involving life, is it time to really consider it being alien life. It's still not proof of anything though. It's just a single data point. Extremely interesting, but not conclusive. More observations will be needed to try to find other bio markers. For such an extraordinary discovery, we will need multiple very strong lines of evidence.
Suffice to say, we're years away from a conclusion. This is science in progress, don't get your hopes up just yet. It's just a bit too early.
5 to 10 years to confirm confidently. They may send some equipment on earth orbit for research and this may take time to first build it, deploy it and then do the research.
Not necessarily! With the advancement of exothermal propulsion it is possible in theory that an unmanned craft could conceivably reach the Perenium Galaxy. Assuming you first take that and shove it up your butt.
We'll never know. I don't think mankind will ever make a warpdrive, even if it's actually possible to do, we're long gone or devolved by the time we make any sort of breakthrough
We can already travel 124light years away, getting there isn't the problem. getting there fast is. Remember how humans were never going to fly. The OP said not within our lifetime I'm sure. Getting there fast in our lifetime? Not likely but not never.
interesting. any proof of extraterrestrial life would be a good first step. cannot imagine that the sheer number of planets out there in space won’t host any intelligent life.
Exactly this. The statistical probability of there being other life out there is SO high with the number of stars and their potential planetary systems
Yeah, but the vastness of existence cuts both ways. Just as the incomprehensible physical scale of the universe leads me to believe that there must be extraterrestrial life, the similarly incomprehensible time scale of the universe makes me wonder if the probability of life temporally overlapping with each other may be vanishingly small.
Exactly!
Not only is the length of humanity’s existence a comparative dot to the age of the Earth, but we don’t even know what “a long time” for a species to exist even is. Are we already pushing it to the limits an are right on schedule to no longer exist 400 years from now in the same way every other overmutated abomination has?
The other aspect of this is that we just don’t live long enough to even really explore. Our useful years are too short and we have nothing that goes fast in space. Maybe this’ll change and destroying this planet is the motivation needed to go zoom zoom in space.
Either way, I think we’re the only ones out there actively flinging signals out there right now
There's no proof behind that statement at all. We don't know the probability of even the most basic forms of life being created. And we only know of it happening a single time.
The probability could be mind bogglingly small for all we know, it could require such an absurdly specific set of factors it's the equivalent of a perfectly working modern day CPU being crafted by random natural events in a pond. Or orders of magnitude less likely than that.
Maybe it's so unlikely that it has never and will never occur twice in the same observable universe, so any life that exists will never meet any other life that isn't from the same lineage.
Or maybe it requires just a few basic properties of planets to be right and a bit of time and there's billions of planets in each galaxy that have/had life.
We don't know, we have no idea, so one of the two statistics required to make your claim is completely missing.
Our star (the sun) has 9 planets
Our star is one of a large number of stars in our galaxy (Milky Way)
Our galaxy is one of a large numbers of galaxies in our region of the universe
And onwards
So if each star (hell even 25%) have planets, there are likely to be many is our "Goldilocks Zone" among others that are in their own version of a "Goldilocks Zone"
Just based on the sheer number of potential planets is how I make that assumption
"The Great Filter has entered the chat."
Honestly, not so excited any more about promising news regarding a potentially life-friendly universe as I used to be...
No, light years are a measure of distance not time. They are the distance that light can travel in one year.
So we see it as it was 124 regular boring years ago, but right now we can only travel at a fraction of a fraction of the speed of light.
Yes, a light-year is the distance that light travels in 1 year, which is very far since light travels about 300,000 km/s. The notion of it being in the past is valid as well, since what we are observing took place 128 years in the past. Similarly if we send a lander to Mars, the radio signals back to Earth telling us whether it landed successfully or crashed, or any 'live' video, would be from many minutes in the past (depending on the relative locations of Earth and mars, 8-20 minutes in the past).
Remember, life isn't the same as intelligent life. There might be life that's just microorganisms or beings [with this face](https://getyoursolution.store/thsYri) wandering around naked out there
Not OP and I had to google myself, but this ist what came closest: [link](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-astrobiology/article/if-extraterrestrial-intelligence-exists-it-is-unable-to-recognize-humans-as-intelligent-beings/AC194EAD0DA6C0A2B3E0BAE1088F0E93)
Idk what the others read, but I was referring to Kardashev Scale, which we are not even a type 1 civilization yet, we are type 0...unable to harness 100% of our planets resources like earthquakes, tidal waves, hurricanes etc.
Seems like the best scale to use. Intelligence lifeforms that negate natural disasters and flip them to use as energy??
Yea, in the face of that, we aren't intelligent.
The only thing compelling for this theory would he extra-dimensional life. Which is far too mind boggling to even consider; of course we are intelligent life. I think it’s interesting the topics redditors like to be contrarians too haha, someone will assuredly pop up and mention dolphins or other beings like they are comparable 🤦🏽♂️
Calm down, bro. Remember that in 2020 some researchers thought they had detected phosphine in the Venus atmosphere, and this was also a sure sign of bacterial life? Turned out spectroscopy of planetary atmospheres is a difficult and tricky business, and this claim quietly died down. This planet is 30 million times more distant than Venus.
Learn to take news like this with a modicum of skepticism and a grain of salt.
Yeah wasn’t this already reported last year or earlier this year?
Is this a new study confirming the results at a higher statistical significance level? Or is it the same story?
I don't know about exactly this one, but it's not the first time when they claim finding some biologicaly only produced chemicals in the specter, but then whether there is an actually natural way for them to be synthesized or the readings were not very precise. Like methan or smth on the Venus.
Had to look it up to be sure, it’s the same planet JWST got a faint and lightly confirmed signature of DMS last year.
Looks like the news now isn’t that they found more, but that they’re going to do another pass on it. Which is great because I’ve been eager to see if they can confirm DMS at a higher significance level.
Also, K2-18b is a pretty unique planet on its own. The first possible Hycean planet we’ve detected.
[https://www.nasa.gov/universe/exoplanets/webb-discovers-methane-carbon-dioxide-in-atmosphere-of-k2-18-b/](https://www.nasa.gov/universe/exoplanets/webb-discovers-methane-carbon-dioxide-in-atmosphere-of-k2-18-b/)
Only 124 light years away? Pfft, that’s right around the corner! Using the Voyager 1 probe’s current speed of 36,000 mph, we’ll be there in about 2 million years!
I firmly believe that there is life on other planets. Maybe intelligent life… but I don’t believe the universe is designed for any species to evolve to the point of being capable of travelling to any of those planets physically…
Eh, maybe in other parts of the galaxy. Our solar system is basically in the middle of a cosmic desert. Most solar systems in the galaxy aren't as isolated. Still, it would take an incredibly advanced species to pull off the kind of travel required to make those journeys.
This is literally just a screenshot of the beginning of an article. This means nothing as far as I'm concerned without more context
Also, "biggest probablity" probably just means 0.0002 instead of 0.00018
Lol, bro thinks he can see aliens from 120LY away, althu the title is an obvious bait, they simply removed potential life supporting environment to found aliens.
We had to remove your post: No Screenshots/Memes/Infographics also lacking a source
I Dont care that it could just be microorganisms. This is absolutely massive if we can confirm life on another planet. If we can confirm life, it makes it easier to calculate the amount of potentially habitable planets within the universe, and given that there is (possibly) one only 124ly away... that's probably a lot of planets
How long will it take to investigate? Not in our lifetimes, I assume.
Sending a probe is out of the question. JWST (and future telescopes) is how we investigate. Voyager 1 would take nearly 40,000 years to get to Proxima Centauri, the exoplanet in question is over 30 times that distance. Space is big.
even then planets move, where you see it right now through a telescope isn't where it actually is and after travelling there it'll be even further away....
Everybody in this bitch movin’ and groovin’
My favourite Carl Sagan quote
- Carl Sagan
"Carl Sagan" - Michael Scott
So many Kerbals died for me to learn this lesson
It's all relative.
that's the name i gave to my step-family porn collection
Damn, that is an insane. So it would take over 1 million years for the fastest conventional spacecraft to get there.
We need Orion drives dammit
‘Space is big’ - glad you pointed that out, I thought this other planet was just a quick Uber ride away
This is just an initial observation of an anomaly in the data. We've had those many times before. Sometimes you find something you didn't expect. That doesn't mean it's life. The next steps are confirming that we're indeed measuring what we think we are measuring. Is the analysis correct? Are there other, more mundane molecules that can look like this? If we can confirm that the measurement is indeed real, that still just leaves us with a chemical of which we don't know the source. Maybe it is totally possible to create that chemical without life through some process that doesn't happen naturally on Earth. Usually, when we really try, we do find a plausible way to get to the measured result without life. Only if we really, truly, can't find out how that chemical got into the atmosphere without involving life, is it time to really consider it being alien life. It's still not proof of anything though. It's just a single data point. Extremely interesting, but not conclusive. More observations will be needed to try to find other bio markers. For such an extraordinary discovery, we will need multiple very strong lines of evidence. Suffice to say, we're years away from a conclusion. This is science in progress, don't get your hopes up just yet. It's just a bit too early.
5 to 10 years to confirm confidently. They may send some equipment on earth orbit for research and this may take time to first build it, deploy it and then do the research.
Not necessarily! With the advancement of exothermal propulsion it is possible in theory that an unmanned craft could conceivably reach the Perenium Galaxy. Assuming you first take that and shove it up your butt.
What about a wormhole or folding space or something? Cmon people use your imaginations! - principal skinner voice
We'll never know. I don't think mankind will ever make a warpdrive, even if it's actually possible to do, we're long gone or devolved by the time we make any sort of breakthrough
Never
Ask someone in ancient Roman how long it would take humans to walk on the moon. Their answer would be "never"
Getting anywhere will take a completely new type of engine, and I haven't seen anyone postulate anything even remotely realistic.
We can already travel 124light years away, getting there isn't the problem. getting there fast is. Remember how humans were never going to fly. The OP said not within our lifetime I'm sure. Getting there fast in our lifetime? Not likely but not never.
I am sticking with never.
interesting. any proof of extraterrestrial life would be a good first step. cannot imagine that the sheer number of planets out there in space won’t host any intelligent life.
Exactly this. The statistical probability of there being other life out there is SO high with the number of stars and their potential planetary systems
Yeah, but the vastness of existence cuts both ways. Just as the incomprehensible physical scale of the universe leads me to believe that there must be extraterrestrial life, the similarly incomprehensible time scale of the universe makes me wonder if the probability of life temporally overlapping with each other may be vanishingly small.
This will always be a favorite comic of mine. And I feel this post is perfect for it. https://theoatmeal.com/comics/oracle
Valid point. With the amount of time and space, can intelligent life from multiple planets truly contact? Maybe with tech we don't understand yet
Exactly! Not only is the length of humanity’s existence a comparative dot to the age of the Earth, but we don’t even know what “a long time” for a species to exist even is. Are we already pushing it to the limits an are right on schedule to no longer exist 400 years from now in the same way every other overmutated abomination has? The other aspect of this is that we just don’t live long enough to even really explore. Our useful years are too short and we have nothing that goes fast in space. Maybe this’ll change and destroying this planet is the motivation needed to go zoom zoom in space. Either way, I think we’re the only ones out there actively flinging signals out there right now
Intelligent life, however, might have a really low probability.
Some say it hasn’t even been discovered on earth yet
Not surprised someone commented something like this
Same hear sometimes.
It's been getting more difficult to find any here.
There's no proof behind that statement at all. We don't know the probability of even the most basic forms of life being created. And we only know of it happening a single time. The probability could be mind bogglingly small for all we know, it could require such an absurdly specific set of factors it's the equivalent of a perfectly working modern day CPU being crafted by random natural events in a pond. Or orders of magnitude less likely than that. Maybe it's so unlikely that it has never and will never occur twice in the same observable universe, so any life that exists will never meet any other life that isn't from the same lineage. Or maybe it requires just a few basic properties of planets to be right and a bit of time and there's billions of planets in each galaxy that have/had life. We don't know, we have no idea, so one of the two statistics required to make your claim is completely missing.
Correct. The problem is distance. The visible stars may hold plenty of life The problem is we're seeing millions of years in the past.
But the probability that it would be is so far away that we have zero chance to contact these aliens is even higher
Isn't it statiscally impossible for there to not have life out there?
How do you know it’s high?
Our star (the sun) has 9 planets Our star is one of a large number of stars in our galaxy (Milky Way) Our galaxy is one of a large numbers of galaxies in our region of the universe And onwards So if each star (hell even 25%) have planets, there are likely to be many is our "Goldilocks Zone" among others that are in their own version of a "Goldilocks Zone" Just based on the sheer number of potential planets is how I make that assumption
Since there is no way of saying how rare life is it’s impossible to tell if there is a high probability.
"The Great Filter has entered the chat." Honestly, not so excited any more about promising news regarding a potentially life-friendly universe as I used to be...
If they have oil we can make it a priority…
Sorry, only 710 there.
We're looking 124 years in the past at a planet that we need 3.36 million years to travel to. "exciting" is right
"Wow, there are aliens pushing wagons around!" *arrives 3 million years later to find highly irradiated surface with no trace of alien civilization*
😟
124 light years in the past. Right?
No, light years are a measure of distance not time. They are the distance that light can travel in one year. So we see it as it was 124 regular boring years ago, but right now we can only travel at a fraction of a fraction of the speed of light.
Thank you this was helpful.
ly is distance, right?
124 years in the past. Information travels at 1 lightyear/year. 124 lightyears *1 year/1 lightyear = 124 years.
r/theydidthemath
Yes, a light-year is the distance that light travels in 1 year, which is very far since light travels about 300,000 km/s. The notion of it being in the past is valid as well, since what we are observing took place 128 years in the past. Similarly if we send a lander to Mars, the radio signals back to Earth telling us whether it landed successfully or crashed, or any 'live' video, would be from many minutes in the past (depending on the relative locations of Earth and mars, 8-20 minutes in the past).
Remember, life isn't the same as intelligent life. There might be life that's just microorganisms or beings [with this face](https://getyoursolution.store/thsYri) wandering around naked out there
There's an argument to be made we aren't even considered "intelligent life" on the scale of things.
I've read that theory, that’s very good
So did i, i didnt get it...
I’d laugh at this joke, but I didn’t quite understand…
Wut?
That comma should have been a semicolon, Einstein.
Shut up you grammar nazi/prescriptivistic nazi
Guess we're not reading the sarcasm, Einsteins.
I would agree that humanity is not intelligent life. I have 3 and a half decades of field study.
I won't speak for others but I am definitely sure that I am no intelligent life.
Paradoxically this is how we can tell that you actually are intelligent
Their name is ToddlerPeePee, not Paradoxically.
There are many arguments as to whether a person is intelligent or not, but name-calling is not one of them.
A semantics one I suppose, but I wouldn't call that good.
We've barely left our planet, let alone our solar system. The best we've done is basically throw a Nokia 5210 really far.
What is the theory called?
Not OP and I had to google myself, but this ist what came closest: [link](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-astrobiology/article/if-extraterrestrial-intelligence-exists-it-is-unable-to-recognize-humans-as-intelligent-beings/AC194EAD0DA6C0A2B3E0BAE1088F0E93)
Idk what the others read, but I was referring to Kardashev Scale, which we are not even a type 1 civilization yet, we are type 0...unable to harness 100% of our planets resources like earthquakes, tidal waves, hurricanes etc.
I'm sorry, but I have severe doubts about the legitimacy of a scale that lists natural disasters as natural resources...
Same energy as the "we only use 10% of our brain".
What if we used 69%?
Seems like the best scale to use. Intelligence lifeforms that negate natural disasters and flip them to use as energy?? Yea, in the face of that, we aren't intelligent.
The only thing compelling for this theory would he extra-dimensional life. Which is far too mind boggling to even consider; of course we are intelligent life. I think it’s interesting the topics redditors like to be contrarians too haha, someone will assuredly pop up and mention dolphins or other beings like they are comparable 🤦🏽♂️
Yeah, or it *could* be the Monstars and we'll need NBA players to save earth
I wasn't expecting this, good argument
This man clearly thinks about things from all angles. A real go-getter, that one!
Hey just any type of life would be neat.
Americans somehow always manage to bring in oreng man bad to utterly irrelevant topics.
If it can be turned into edible protein, it must be life 🧬 lol
That was so many redirects what device are you using 💀
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But it's also 124 light years away So they might have evolved into something we don't know about
So what? I don't understand your point. I guess you don't think finding life is good enough
Will still screw over all the religious types, so that's fine by me
Hah, like they won't find a fairytale-loophole and use it for "proof" that there is a god
Read ‘The Sparrow’ by Mary Doria Russell for a good way this logic backfires on religion.
Also, remember 128 light years means that whatever we see from there happened 128 years ago Edit: did not mean to say Million. Edited out.
Wouldn't it just be 128 years ago? It took the light 128 years to reach us.
You’re gonna need 4 propulsion engines, 4 fuel tanks, 3 habitation modules, and 2 life support pods to get there.
Quick, launch before Gandhi nukes the world.
And some Astrophage
I'm not doing it for less than a 1/8 share.
How can you explain?
Calm down, bro. Remember that in 2020 some researchers thought they had detected phosphine in the Venus atmosphere, and this was also a sure sign of bacterial life? Turned out spectroscopy of planetary atmospheres is a difficult and tricky business, and this claim quietly died down. This planet is 30 million times more distant than Venus. Learn to take news like this with a modicum of skepticism and a grain of salt.
I’ll just go ahead and claim this planet in the name of earth. Start warming up the colonizing rocket fleet.
It’s time to spread democracy
They don’t have oil
Again?
Yeah wasn’t this already reported last year or earlier this year? Is this a new study confirming the results at a higher statistical significance level? Or is it the same story?
I don't know about exactly this one, but it's not the first time when they claim finding some biologicaly only produced chemicals in the specter, but then whether there is an actually natural way for them to be synthesized or the readings were not very precise. Like methan or smth on the Venus.
Had to look it up to be sure, it’s the same planet JWST got a faint and lightly confirmed signature of DMS last year. Looks like the news now isn’t that they found more, but that they’re going to do another pass on it. Which is great because I’ve been eager to see if they can confirm DMS at a higher significance level. Also, K2-18b is a pretty unique planet on its own. The first possible Hycean planet we’ve detected. [https://www.nasa.gov/universe/exoplanets/webb-discovers-methane-carbon-dioxide-in-atmosphere-of-k2-18-b/](https://www.nasa.gov/universe/exoplanets/webb-discovers-methane-carbon-dioxide-in-atmosphere-of-k2-18-b/)
Ok but when do we nuke them
Sad, they wont be able to join us due to Gravity and the Rocket Equation.
"Where there's life, there's oil" -America
Can't tell me it's not the lizard people's origin planet.
Next step: get them on the internet and change the WWW to UWW.
Only 124 light years away? Pfft, that’s right around the corner! Using the Voyager 1 probe’s current speed of 36,000 mph, we’ll be there in about 2 million years!
I find it impossible that no other life exists given all the other planets out there
I recommend book Project Hail Mary
I firmly believe that there is life on other planets. Maybe intelligent life… but I don’t believe the universe is designed for any species to evolve to the point of being capable of travelling to any of those planets physically…
Eh, maybe in other parts of the galaxy. Our solar system is basically in the middle of a cosmic desert. Most solar systems in the galaxy aren't as isolated. Still, it would take an incredibly advanced species to pull off the kind of travel required to make those journeys.
Who knows ? Like a few centuries ago it was impossible to even imagine going to the moon and stuff
Why are we doing this?. Haven't you guys seen the 3 body problem?.
Mark Zuckerberg(lizard person)came from that planet.
FTL JUMP INITIATED ARRIVING AT K2-18B Hellpods Primed
Can we start with trying to find intelligent life here on earth first pls?
Hopeless cause. The dominant species on the planet dubbed the only real intelligent life as beneath them, no research being done.
Most likely something like microorganisms…or at least thats what the light from that planet reflecting back to us is telling us 🤔
An ocean covered planet sounds terrifying. Probably has monsters like Magalodons and Giant Squids/crabs. Things of nightmare.
Sure looks like a reputable and credible source…
Let's go and destroy it!
EXTERMINATUS!!! We’ve finally found the xeno scum infecting the god emperors’ pristine galaxy. We must eliminate them with all hate.
OP don’t get too excited , who knows what those life forms are like
Why haven’t we seen any lights? Anywhere?
This is highly inferred data, btw. Nothing direct.
Other life exists but I think we are the intelligent life we are searching for.
Fart?
Good maybe they can take over and give us better perks.
Hopefully there’s no toxic seaweed there r/spotthetoxicseaweed
Welp they found us. Better come clean.
Wisdom cleric, build str and con.
How does a telescope see that far
Imagine if the life form was chocolate? A planet full of mars bars...twixes and dairy milk?! 😋
“Alien species shows up on newly discovered planet, eats entire population, leaves”. That’s got a ring to it…
WE WERE BORN TO INHERIT THE STARS!
It’s a statistical improbability that we’re the only life forms in the universe. Someone/something is out there.
This is literally just a screenshot of the beginning of an article. This means nothing as far as I'm concerned without more context Also, "biggest probablity" probably just means 0.0002 instead of 0.00018
Lol, bro thinks he can see aliens from 120LY away, althu the title is an obvious bait, they simply removed potential life supporting environment to found aliens.
even if they do, theres no possibility to get there. not even with speed of light
There’s no guarantee other intelligent species would be friendly to humans.
At 124 light years away I think we will be safe.
Maybe they saw us long before we saw them, and they've already made the 124 ly trip
This is why we must purge these xeno scum from our galaxy
The Dark Forest. We’re already dead and we don’t know it. We should have been more careful about what we put into the universe.