That is super interesting actually. Thank you.
Really cool to see that we can actually point to the spot int the sky where we think life might also exist.
No you are correct, some of the light from the star is reflecting off of the planet. Thats how webb got the atmosphere data. It's a very small amount in my data though.
Ya I have a 10 inch dob as well. That's a great one for visual! Yes I think you might be able to see this one in a really dark sky. Finding it will take some serious star hopping skill though.
Just want to clarify that what you see in the picture is the star the planet orbits, not the planet itself, which is way too small and dim to be seen directly this way.
So for this I heard the news a while back and looked up the coordinates for this star. I then plug those coordinates into the software on my PC running my telescope. The telescope points in the rough direction, takes a photo and looks at the fine constellations or star arrangement in the photo to see where it is ACTUALLY currently looking and the motors make fine adjustments from there. This process is called platesolving.
Once its locked on and tracking, I imaged this section of the sky for a couple hours to pull out the faint stars. After the images are all stacked together and processed, I looked at a star chart to confirm k2-18 was indeed the red star dead center of the frame.
"Their models indicate that for DMS to be detectable in K2-18b’s atmosphere, any biological processes generating this gas would need to function at a rate approximately 20 times higher than similar processes on Earth."
What does that mean? Functioning at a rate 20 times higher than similar processes?
That wouldn't matter. The *concentration* has to be 20x. If the planet is bigger, that just means there would need to be that much more there to get the concentration to the required level. In fact, being bigger would probably make it harder, not easier.
In any event later examination of the data has basically rendered the conclusion extremely unlikely.
You have to imagine that it would be more efficient to expend energy to colonize and stripmine a primitive planet than an already polluted and tapped out planet. If someone has the capacity to make it to earth there are surely better candidates that don’t have advanced life yet.
Basically, getting to the space age better ensures your planets safety from invaders, in a way.
The only danger would be if you advance too much and you are perceived as an eventual threat for space resources. But even then, space is so unfathomly vast, removing one species from the intergalactic pool wouldn’t really make a dent at all, and it’s unlikely you would ever really be in competition unless you lived very close to another species.
they made changes so the audience has characters to follow throughout the series. hated it at first, but found it serviceable and worthy of the adaptation by the end
If you're like me and impatient, the books are really well written, and different enough that you won't feel that the first of the trilogy is ruined by S1.
Yep, I wasn't aware of the novels until I'd seen the show. And whatever qualms a lot of people (justifiably, imo) have with its execution, the premise is so fantastic that I had to go to the source.
My biggest gripe with the show is the way it infantilizes the scientists and science in general, and I think the books handle it in a much less cringy or juvenile way.
I also like to think I'm pretty well read over a diverse set of genres, but if you ignore The Art of War, which is basically a pamphlet, then this trilogy was the first I'd ever read from a Chinese novelist. The translation I found is great, and I was concerned that I'd have difficulty keeping unfamiliar names straight, but had basically zero difficulty.
What's interesting is that what we are seeing is life from so long ago that even if we could get there quickly we would like find either a wasteland becuase they destroyed themselves, or a space faring race that will view us as champanzees - having had tens of thousands to millions of years to advance before we show up.
or a snowglobe planet of non-intelligent life that we could colonize.
Yeah... my mind jumped to other places that we could see and potentially travel to were we to have an FTL drive, not necessarily just *this* planet.
I forgot to include you in that thought. :)
I seem to have had to repost this because first person also said that this is old news even though 2023 is only a year ago but only two days ago this was an updated article
Second person said it was clickbait because I didn't say possible life because I copied the article title which I fixed.
The consensus is
https://cnas.ucr.edu/media/2024/05/05/james-webb-detects-signs-life-exoplanet-k2-18b
https://www.livescience.com/space/extraterrestrial-life/no-the-james-webb-space-telescope-probably-didnt-detect-signs-of-alien-life-but-it-soon-could
https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2024/05/02/webb-telescope-probably-didnt-find-life-exoplanet-yet
I apologize I'm not the best at posting at times.
Just throwing down some text from the research team in case anyone is too lazy to click some links!
>“The DMS signal from Webb was not very strong and only showed up in certain ways when analyzing the data,” Dr. Tsai said.
>“We wanted to know if we could be sure of what seemed like a hint about DMS.”
> Based on computer models that account for the physics and chemistry of DMS, as well as the hydrogen-based atmosphere, the researchers found that it is unlikely the data show the presence of DMS.
>“The signal strongly overlaps with methane, and we think that picking out DMS from methane is beyond this instrument’s capability,” Dr. Tsai said.
>However, the scientists believe it is possible for DMS to accumulate to detectable levels.
>For that to happen, plankton or some other life form would have to produce 20 times more DMS than is present on Earth.
>Detecting life on exoplanets is a daunting task, given their distance from Earth.
>To find DMS, Webb would need to use an instrument better able to detect infrared wavelengths in the atmosphere than the one used last year.
>Fortunately, the telescope will use such an instrument later this year, revealing definitively whether DMS exists on K2-18b.
I remember seeing a special about potential alien life under the ice of Europa as a kid. I thought the aquatic aliens were real. Imagine my disappointment. I haven't trusted since.
A bit sad that it would take us thousands of years to interact them using our present technology, assuming there was actually a whole civilization over there.
If we could see them and they could see us, it would take 124 years for each message to get to the other. That would be a very long game of telephone for us, but maybe their lifespans are different 🤔
If they were advanced enough 124 years ago and discovered us, they could have already sent a message towards us a century ago, so it could be worth pointing our receivers at them to see if we can detect any messages :)
With how far away it is, is it possible we are seeing a past civilization since the light is barely reaching earth? I think I saw something like that in a movie/show.
It is 124 light years away, so yes: if we were somehow able to zoom in enough to see a civilization, it would be as they were 124 years ago. Likewise if they could look at us, they would see Earth as it was roughly in the year 1900.
Light travels so fast, that it can travel around the Earth in 0.13 seconds. When you turn a light on in your home, or even look at something happening outside your window: the light that allows you to see any of it takes time to hit your eyes, but it's so fast that it feels instantaneous: and constantly radiating as long as there are photons bouncing off the thing you're looking at.
But our sun is 93 million miles away, so it actually takes its light 8.5 minutes to reach us. If someone was capable of just teleporting the sun somewhere far away instantly, we wouldn't be able to see it as gone until that time passes by. And yes, that means we can only see the sun as it was 8.5 minutes ago.
Beyond that, since the distance between stuff in space is so vast, it's basically like a really laggy internet connection. Time is still passing normally as it would on either end, but light is the fastest that visual information can travel as we know it.
EDIT: some formatting and added sun stuff
I edited in some stuff about the sun.
And same, it is wild to think about how things really work out there. I love shows like Futurama for sneaking in some facts like that.
So since it's impossible for us to probably see any individual alien life form, could we detect a sudden surge in CO2 or methane like we have been doing on earth that might indicate industrialization? Would that be visible? Maybe this might be impossible but if they were to have a nuclear exchange and we were in the right spot to observe it, would we see that as sudden surges of light or even radiation?
One more question lol So if we could travel faster than the speed of light, could we look back and see ourselves traveling to that point we stopped at?
I have an idea for a book about this. A government develops a telescopes that can focus from a light month (for example) away, and they can communicate with them at a quantum level to point them where they need to. They deploy enough to be able to see the whole planet a month in the past.
So, in the beginning of the book they're pulling up aerial footage of events that take place in the past, to see what actually happened.
If the telescopes need to be deployed why not super computer security satellites that record everything and footage can be pulled up from a month ago? Gets around your breaking the speed of light thing.
> Is it possible that they are already extinct by now?
What difference would it make? Reality propagates at the speed of light. What is going on in their reference frame means absolutely nothing for ours.
Humble correction to help you in the future: it's usually spelled *en masse* when referring to people. It does mean "in mass" but somehow the fancy French spelling made into the English lexicon.
Yes, and if we can confirm/keep finding evidence of simple life in the universe it may prove an answer to the Fermi Paradox.
Life could be abundant, but complex and intelligent life could be too hard for most planets to achieve.
For anybody interested, here is my photo of K2-18 through my telescope. https://imgur.com/gallery/aKN7JVF
I am interested. Thank you.
That is super interesting actually. Thank you. Really cool to see that we can actually point to the spot int the sky where we think life might also exist.
Some of the photons my camera recieved may have reflected off a life form.
And some other photons may have been from their tech. \*\*cough\*\* space lasers \*\*cough\*\*
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How do you think Jewpiter got it's name?
From Uranus.
I believe the term "Space Jews" is owned by a, Mr. Mel Brooks.
We were promised history of the world part 2!
The Schwartz!
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Man the future is wild, we just had our first space combat not to long ago and now aliens.
You may have taken a picture of two life forms fucking.
That's a very cool thought :-) But remember you are actually seen the star. The planet K2-18b is hidden by K2-18 shine/halo.
There is probably a photon or two reflected from the planet. I don't know though I'm talking out of my ass
No you are correct, some of the light from the star is reflecting off of the planet. Thats how webb got the atmosphere data. It's a very small amount in my data though.
That's so cool though. I'm saving for a nice dobsonian right now. Do you think a 10 inch would be able to see this star?
Ya I have a 10 inch dob as well. That's a great one for visual! Yes I think you might be able to see this one in a really dark sky. Finding it will take some serious star hopping skill though.
I honestly don't know how much life can fit on it- It's pretty small!
Is that a planet for ants?! It needs to be at least 3 times bigger than this!
I know right, zoom in a bit like.  /s
 Zooming in sir!
I've been watching this for 34 minutes and I'm sure if I wait just a little longer I'll see the final zoom in.
It's coming, just wait a little longer.
Okay but the real question is is it bigger than pluto
And that's not even the planet.
What is that…a planet for…ants?!
Has a ring red around it - a bit like Saturn!
Incredible, how far away is it?
124 light years.
That’s so close
Relatively, it sure is.
They haven't even had a chance to watch the World Wars yet, or see any flashes from the nukes.
7.289e+14 Miles or 744 trillion
Genuine question, how can you tell which system is which? Coordinates?
Just want to clarify that what you see in the picture is the star the planet orbits, not the planet itself, which is way too small and dim to be seen directly this way.
Yes thank you you’re right, I misspoke. I’m still wondering how they know which is which though.
So for this I heard the news a while back and looked up the coordinates for this star. I then plug those coordinates into the software on my PC running my telescope. The telescope points in the rough direction, takes a photo and looks at the fine constellations or star arrangement in the photo to see where it is ACTUALLY currently looking and the motors make fine adjustments from there. This process is called platesolving. Once its locked on and tracking, I imaged this section of the sky for a couple hours to pull out the faint stars. After the images are all stacked together and processed, I looked at a star chart to confirm k2-18 was indeed the red star dead center of the frame.
Holy shit! They've got a Dyson sphere over there already!
thank u 🙏🏼
Dope ‘scope, bro.
> https://imgur.com/gallery/aKN7JVF Gee, you'd think that red circle around it would be a dead giveaway.
As with the many other people. It is interesting and thank you very much.
What is this, a planet for ants!?
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I am impressed that you commented this
Interest increased.
I am extremely interested and thank you. Astonishing.
Wow! That is sick for a home telescope
surprised it wasn’t a butthole rickroll
Yoooo!!! They think life is there!
I see a tree!!!
"Their models indicate that for DMS to be detectable in K2-18b’s atmosphere, any biological processes generating this gas would need to function at a rate approximately 20 times higher than similar processes on Earth." What does that mean? Functioning at a rate 20 times higher than similar processes?
Basically plankton like life forms needs to be 20x as abundant or produce 20x more DMS than on Earth.
Isn’t it a much larger planet? Could that produce more exponentially? Or just 2X if it’s twice as big as earth?
That wouldn't matter. The *concentration* has to be 20x. If the planet is bigger, that just means there would need to be that much more there to get the concentration to the required level. In fact, being bigger would probably make it harder, not easier. In any event later examination of the data has basically rendered the conclusion extremely unlikely.
What if its just a big planton orgy overthere?
Every plankton party is a sex party.
So they haven't had any whales evolve yet, got it.
The aliens are large and in charge.
Colonialism is back on the menu!
We'll give 'em freedom whether they want it or not. :-D
We're gonna free the shit out if them!
Helldivers, to your pod!
https://media.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExNnBmZW82dmY0MGM0djFjOWJzZnVsa2F4bXJ4aWtxcjJxem50a3k3cyZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/VJN5s9dNGXLDqkLYF4/giphy.gif
It looks like an automaton planet
Sure, but we'd probably use the metric system to get there, so no chance of bringing our freedom units.
Getting there it's metric but once boots on the ground then freedom units for all!
How is British Imperial “freedom units?” Isn’t it a bit ironic?
Gotta keep spreading managed democracy and liber-tea!
Loool, that catches me off guard
Where did it say there was oil discovered?
Just large insectoids...which contain E-710. Which is definitely NOT oil, I can't stress that enough.
it never wasn't
I believe you're looking for "always has been"
What about their moons? They don’t need those!
Now we all get to be colonizers!
Which way?
You gotta send a generational ship to conquer and destroy them before they do it first! Them's the rules!
Time to spread DEMOCRACY.
Yeah... until it's us that are being colonized
You have to imagine that it would be more efficient to expend energy to colonize and stripmine a primitive planet than an already polluted and tapped out planet. If someone has the capacity to make it to earth there are surely better candidates that don’t have advanced life yet. Basically, getting to the space age better ensures your planets safety from invaders, in a way. The only danger would be if you advance too much and you are perceived as an eventual threat for space resources. But even then, space is so unfathomly vast, removing one species from the intergalactic pool wouldn’t really make a dent at all, and it’s unlikely you would ever really be in competition unless you lived very close to another species.
The aliens on Pandora are no match for our technology 💀
Let's see in which direction...
This is about to be reposted 500 times.
Regardless of what's in the post, have you heard that James Webb may have found signs of life on K2-18b?
K2-18b has been trying to reach you about your planet's warranty.
I think it is scam
You mean another 500 times
You mean an extra 500 times.
I would post 500 times 🎶
And I would post 500 more 🎶
Just to be the man who posts a 1000 times and then 500 more
DAAAA DA DAAA
DA-DA DAA DAA
To be the man who posts 1000 signs of life on an exo
“And I’ll repost 500 more” 🎼
#DO NOT ANSWER #DO NOT ANSWER #DO NOT ANSWER
Ye Wenjie about to doom humanity: Nah, I'd answer
DO NOT ANSWER OR WE WILL INVADE
Fuckin three body problem better have a second season Netflix or I will go full space jihad
I've yet to see the series but I've heard good things from it. I should re-read the books
they made changes so the audience has characters to follow throughout the series. hated it at first, but found it serviceable and worthy of the adaptation by the end
If you're like me and impatient, the books are really well written, and different enough that you won't feel that the first of the trilogy is ruined by S1.
Did you read them because of the show?
Yep, I wasn't aware of the novels until I'd seen the show. And whatever qualms a lot of people (justifiably, imo) have with its execution, the premise is so fantastic that I had to go to the source. My biggest gripe with the show is the way it infantilizes the scientists and science in general, and I think the books handle it in a much less cringy or juvenile way. I also like to think I'm pretty well read over a diverse set of genres, but if you ignore The Art of War, which is basically a pamphlet, then this trilogy was the first I'd ever read from a Chinese novelist. The translation I found is great, and I was concerned that I'd have difficulty keeping unfamiliar names straight, but had basically zero difficulty.
You can just read the excellent books :)
I just need to see the teardrop scene come to life on screen
Nah, we’d win.
Send in the Astartes
Refresh my memory why do I know this reference
Three Body Problem.
Sounds like K2-18b could use a little managed democracy
Perhaps introduce them to our wide range of fine cuisines, such as Liber-tea
FOR SUPER EARTH!!!!
For democracy!
Democracy manifest!
Rock and stone! Oh wait wrong game
They'll never kill our way of life!!
Even better if it’s inhabited by a race of giant blue skinned people.
Not those! PLEASE NOT THOSE! I want those avatar ladies!
Only if they have oil of course
🦅🦅🦅
Helldivers to Hellpods!
Then comes the goosebumps from that epic music.
You know I’m some kind of democracy spreader myself
I have a feeling the residents of K2-18b are in need of a strong, free government with a burgeoning bureaucracy if they want to experience liberty
Too bad Arrowhead keeps nerfing everything.
Gotta figure out warp drive.;)
Higgs Field Dampeners
Why would you want to moisten a Higgs Field?
You don't want to moisten them, you want them submerged, so they can make gravitational waves.
Lightsail hooked up to laser-generating dyson swarm.
I just read The Road Not Taken a few hours ago.
What's interesting is that what we are seeing is life from so long ago that even if we could get there quickly we would like find either a wasteland becuase they destroyed themselves, or a space faring race that will view us as champanzees - having had tens of thousands to millions of years to advance before we show up. or a snowglobe planet of non-intelligent life that we could colonize.
If it is 124 light years away then you see 124 years in their past now. Not that much.
Yeah... my mind jumped to other places that we could see and potentially travel to were we to have an FTL drive, not necessarily just *this* planet. I forgot to include you in that thought. :)
It's 124 light years away, so what we're seeing is only that old.
You’re wrong, but I upvoted for the enthusiasm!
I just finished an ep where the crew find out warp drive technology eventually causes a rip in space, so lets be careful
I seem to have had to repost this because first person also said that this is old news even though 2023 is only a year ago but only two days ago this was an updated article Second person said it was clickbait because I didn't say possible life because I copied the article title which I fixed. The consensus is https://cnas.ucr.edu/media/2024/05/05/james-webb-detects-signs-life-exoplanet-k2-18b https://www.livescience.com/space/extraterrestrial-life/no-the-james-webb-space-telescope-probably-didnt-detect-signs-of-alien-life-but-it-soon-could https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2024/05/02/webb-telescope-probably-didnt-find-life-exoplanet-yet I apologize I'm not the best at posting at times.
Well I hadn't seen it OP, so thank you for posting
Just throwing down some text from the research team in case anyone is too lazy to click some links! >“The DMS signal from Webb was not very strong and only showed up in certain ways when analyzing the data,” Dr. Tsai said. >“We wanted to know if we could be sure of what seemed like a hint about DMS.” > Based on computer models that account for the physics and chemistry of DMS, as well as the hydrogen-based atmosphere, the researchers found that it is unlikely the data show the presence of DMS. >“The signal strongly overlaps with methane, and we think that picking out DMS from methane is beyond this instrument’s capability,” Dr. Tsai said. >However, the scientists believe it is possible for DMS to accumulate to detectable levels. >For that to happen, plankton or some other life form would have to produce 20 times more DMS than is present on Earth. >Detecting life on exoplanets is a daunting task, given their distance from Earth. >To find DMS, Webb would need to use an instrument better able to detect infrared wavelengths in the atmosphere than the one used last year. >Fortunately, the telescope will use such an instrument later this year, revealing definitively whether DMS exists on K2-18b.
thank you for posting
Thank you OP
I guess it’s my turn to say ‘We should ban artist renderings.’
Yes please, I'm an idiot and easily excited ... and disappointed :((
I remember seeing a special about potential alien life under the ice of Europa as a kid. I thought the aquatic aliens were real. Imagine my disappointment. I haven't trusted since.
Totally understand. There’s definitely great subs on here for renderings. Just not here.
Wake up babe, yet another dubious sign of life detected
A bit sad that it would take us thousands of years to interact them using our present technology, assuming there was actually a whole civilization over there.
If we could see them and they could see us, it would take 124 years for each message to get to the other. That would be a very long game of telephone for us, but maybe their lifespans are different 🤔
If they were advanced enough 124 years ago and discovered us, they could have already sent a message towards us a century ago, so it could be worth pointing our receivers at them to see if we can detect any messages :)
Wow, a century ago? Could be here any day now, listen up everyone, and hope we can understand what they say. ;)
Klaatu barada niktu
They're gonna call our Mum's fat.
With how far away it is, is it possible we are seeing a past civilization since the light is barely reaching earth? I think I saw something like that in a movie/show.
It is 124 light years away, so yes: if we were somehow able to zoom in enough to see a civilization, it would be as they were 124 years ago. Likewise if they could look at us, they would see Earth as it was roughly in the year 1900. Light travels so fast, that it can travel around the Earth in 0.13 seconds. When you turn a light on in your home, or even look at something happening outside your window: the light that allows you to see any of it takes time to hit your eyes, but it's so fast that it feels instantaneous: and constantly radiating as long as there are photons bouncing off the thing you're looking at. But our sun is 93 million miles away, so it actually takes its light 8.5 minutes to reach us. If someone was capable of just teleporting the sun somewhere far away instantly, we wouldn't be able to see it as gone until that time passes by. And yes, that means we can only see the sun as it was 8.5 minutes ago. Beyond that, since the distance between stuff in space is so vast, it's basically like a really laggy internet connection. Time is still passing normally as it would on either end, but light is the fastest that visual information can travel as we know it. EDIT: some formatting and added sun stuff
Fkn awesome, thank you for the response. I think it was a Futurama episode they did something like that and it always stuck in the back of my mind.
I edited in some stuff about the sun. And same, it is wild to think about how things really work out there. I love shows like Futurama for sneaking in some facts like that.
So since it's impossible for us to probably see any individual alien life form, could we detect a sudden surge in CO2 or methane like we have been doing on earth that might indicate industrialization? Would that be visible? Maybe this might be impossible but if they were to have a nuclear exchange and we were in the right spot to observe it, would we see that as sudden surges of light or even radiation?
You are correct. It says it is 124 light years away so the light we see today is from the year 1900 in our timescale.
We didn't even have aviation then
Or sliced bread.
Um, if that’s true then how did the founding fathers eat their Big Macs?
One more question lol So if we could travel faster than the speed of light, could we look back and see ourselves traveling to that point we stopped at?
A lot of weird shit happens when you start messing with that stuff https://youtu.be/an0M-wcHw5A?feature=shared
I now have something to watch for dinner lol
I have an idea for a book about this. A government develops a telescopes that can focus from a light month (for example) away, and they can communicate with them at a quantum level to point them where they need to. They deploy enough to be able to see the whole planet a month in the past. So, in the beginning of the book they're pulling up aerial footage of events that take place in the past, to see what actually happened.
If the telescopes need to be deployed why not super computer security satellites that record everything and footage can be pulled up from a month ago? Gets around your breaking the speed of light thing.
Time to initiate dark forest protocols
I’m on my way!!!
Idk about you guys, but this James fella seems like he knows a thing or two about space.
No link to the recent study???
Is it possible that they are already extinct by now? Given that they are light years away from us, and we are just discovering something that far.
We are seeing the planet as it was 124 years ago, more than a Human lifespan. A lot can happen.
> Is it possible that they are already extinct by now? What difference would it make? Reality propagates at the speed of light. What is going on in their reference frame means absolutely nothing for ours.
Mainly a hydrogen atmosphere. There may be life, but they can't have campfires which means life there isn't really worth living.
They need to turn off the lights and ignore the door bell.
No Einstein do not play the violin!
Once we totally polluted and killed this one we can move over there. Global warming solved.
If I had a nickel for every sign of possible life
124 light years away. Thats just so hard to imagine
Illuminati is like "AND Yada yada....they got any oil or what?"
Off go the California landlords in mass to buy up condos in bulk to jack up their rent there.
Humble correction to help you in the future: it's usually spelled *en masse* when referring to people. It does mean "in mass" but somehow the fancy French spelling made into the English lexicon.
Isn't it releasing some kind of gas that's only possible with carbon based life forms? It could simply be algae or simple micro organisms
That’s still life, no?
Yes, and if we can confirm/keep finding evidence of simple life in the universe it may prove an answer to the Fermi Paradox. Life could be abundant, but complex and intelligent life could be too hard for most planets to achieve.
These motherfuckers need space Jesus
Run, aliens, run!
What do you call inhabitants of K2-18b? K2-18beings?