A surprising study revealed biological activity on a distant planet. Weeks later, scientists say there’s more to the story

An artist's concept shows what K2-18b might look like. Thought to be covered entirely in liquid water with a hydrogen-rich atmosphere, the exoplanet may be a good place to look for biological activity. (NASA/CSA/ESA/J. Olmsted (STScI)/N. Madhusudhan (Cambridge University) via CNN Newsource)

A tiny sign revealed in April seemed like it might change the universe as we know it.

Astronomers had detected just a hint, a glimmer of two molecules swirling in the atmosphere of a distant planet called K2-18b — molecules that on Earth are produced only by living things. It was a tantalizing prospect: the most promising evidence yet of an extraterrestrial biosignature, or traces of life linked to biological activity.

But only weeks later, new findings suggest the search must continue.

“It was exciting, but it immediately raised several red flags because that claim of a potential biosignature would be historic, but also the significance or the strength of the statistical evidence seemed to be too high for the data,” said Dr. Luis Welbanks, a postdoctoral research scholar at Arizona State University’s School of Earth and Space Exploration.

While the molecules identified on K2-18b by the April study — dimethyl sulfide, or DMS, and dimethyl disulfide, or DMDS — are associated largely with microbial organisms on our planet, scientists point out that the compounds can also form without the presence of life. Now, three teams of astronomers not involved with the research, including Welbanks, have assessed the models and data used in the original biosignature discovery and got very different results, which they have submitted for peer review.

Meanwhile, the lead author of the April study, Nikku Madhusudhan, and his colleagues have conducted additional research that they say reinforces their previous finding about the planet. And it’s likely that additional observations and research from multiple groups of scientists are on the horizon.

The succession of research papers revolving around K2-18b offers a glimpse of the scientific process unfolding in real time. It’s a window into the complexities and nuances of how researchers search for evidence of life beyond Earth — and shows why the burden of proof is so high and difficult to reach.

Noisy data

Located 124 light-years from Earth, K2-18b is generally considered a worthy target to scour for signs of life. It is thought to be a Hycean world, a planet entirely covered in liquid water with a hydrogen-rich atmosphere, according to previous research led by Madhusudhan, a professor of astrophysics and exoplanetary science at the University of Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy. And as such, K2-18b has rapidly attracted attention as a potentially habitable place beyond our solar system.

Convinced of K2-18b’s promise, Madhusudhan and his Cambridge colleagues used observations of the planet by the largest space telescope in operation, the James Webb Space Telescope, to study the planet further. But two scientists at the University of Chicago — Dr. Rafael Luque, a postdoctoral scholar in the university’s department of astronomy and astrophysics, and Michael Zhang, a 51 Pegasi b / Burbidge postdoctoral fellow — spotted some problems with what they found.

After reviewing Madhusudhan and his team’s April paper, which followed up on their 2023 research, Luque and Zhang noticed that the Webb data looked “noisy,” Luque said.

Noise, caused by imperfections in the telescope and the rate at which different particles of light reach the telescope, is just one challenge astronomers face when they study distant exoplanets. Noise can distort observations and introduce uncertainties into the data, Zhang said.

Trying to detect specific gases in distant exoplanet atmospheres introduces even more uncertainty. The most noticeable features from a gas like dimethyl sulfide stem from a bond of hydrogen and carbon molecules — a connection that can stretch and bend and absorb light at different wavelengths, making it hard to definitively detect one kind of molecule, Zhang said.

“The problem is basically every organic molecule has a carbon-hydrogen bond,” Zhang said. “There’s hundreds of millions of those molecules, and so these features are not unique. If you have perfect data, you can probably distinguish between different molecules. But if you don’t have perfect data, a lot of molecules, especially organic molecules, look very similar, especially in the near-infrared.”

Ashley Strickland, CNN