Webb finds molecule only made by living things in another world::undefined
To me it’s not a matter of whether live exists anymore, but where it exists
While I agree there is a very high probability of life out there, we truly do not know until we can prove it. This evidence JWT found may have another explanation that our scientists are unaware of yet.
I’m so excited to discover a totally different take on life because it will help us truly define what life is.
Then again if we find a similar take on life (carbon based, compatible chemistry to life on earth) then that’s pretty interesting too, implying either panspermia or that there’s something special about this configuration. It also likely means we have more potential for useful discoveries from that life system, as well as threats.
Convergent evolution happens all the time with life on earth. The fact the other life has developed in a similar way will not be surprising. It likely wouldn’t be identical, but if they use a similar basis for a DNA type thing, or something like that, it won’t imply panspermia.
You will dig this if you haven’t seen it.
The aliens will not be silicon
You say that, but…
StarTrek is not a documentary.
LIAR!
implying either panspermia or that there’s something special about this configuration
Or that it’s just as inevitable a result of chemical reactions under certain conditions as mixing baking soda and vinegar.
In a hose, on a rose, up your nose. Everywhere where life can be is where life goes.
I’d be pretty happy to put $100 right now on life being found on almost every planet and moon throughout the galaxy where liquid water exists.
I would bet all the money in my savings that life exists somewhere in our galaxy, but I’m not sure I’d do it for every moon with water
I can only do $3
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I gave him a dollar
Im seriously excited to get to Europa
Enceladus for me.
¿Por que no los dos?
Only a 1 sigma confirmation at the moment so needs to be thoroughly reinvestigated
What does 1 sigma mean?
Sigma is basically a representation of certainty that your result isn’t a statistical fluke. It comes from standard deviation in statistics but 1 sigma is 68% certain. 2 sigma is 95%. 3 sigma is 99.7%.
By convention, astronomy uses 3 sigma for “significance,” meaning you almost definitely found something. Particle physics, since it’s usually done in controlled experiments, usually requires 5 sigma (99.99994%).
It’s similar to margin of error in political polls.
All of our homies like 3 sigma.
Oh that’s where 6 Sigma comes from. TIL
Why such different gaps in the metric? Nearly 30% difference between sigmas to less than 5% for the next one.
it comes from the shape of the normal distribution (the bell curve) it goes down slowly at first then rapidly and then slowly creeping towards 0 but never getting there.
Thanks
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By saying 1 sigma, they are basically saying tgat are 68% confident in the results. As you increase the sigma, your confidence in the results increases. Here is a site that goes into more in depth explanation: https://news.mit.edu/2012/explained-sigma-0209#
It’s a number that statistically represents how strong the result is in the data basically. As far as I understand it, with astronomy the typical sigma value expected is 3
Technically, this is astrochemistry, not astronomy. I don’t know what the expected sigma value there is.
Whats less than 0 sigma? I kid but only a little Astrochemistry is fantastically difficult, it involves large networks of reactions, many of which have multiple orders of magnitudes of uncertainty on their rates. Different groups can tey to model the same conditions and end up with over a factor of 1000 difference in the abundences of key tracer speices.
That’s why I’m positive but not excited yet. It’s a good sign. We need to see if detecting it can be replicated… although I’m not sure how to do that except with the Webb again.
it picked up hints of a substance only made by living things — at least, that is, on Earth.
What other process could theoretically produce it?
Given the vast differences in atmospheres (or the lack thereof) and their conditions, I wouldn’t be surprised if those were the culprits
There are plenty of places on earth where life exists in conditions that seem alien compared to the rest of the planet.
“life finds a way”.
if you have methanol, hydrogen sulfide and enough heat along with a specific rock, it will get formed. or probably methane, hydrogen sulfide and UV
there are many ways, and what i’m saying it’s likely a massive clickbait
t. organic chemist, currently working with sulfur compounds
“Specific rock” sounds like a video game crafting resource ;)
first step might look for example like this https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Reaction-mechanism-for-the-formation-of-methanethiol-with-Al-and-Mg-cations-and_fig4_339245530
Sadly they cannot be communicated with in a single human life time; assuming they are intelligent and possess the capability to respond.
Even if Webb were to basically spot earth 2 5 light years away, I’d caution about getting excited for a radio chat.
Remember that life has existed on earth for something like 3 billion years, but multicellular life has only been around for 500 million or so years, humans in various forms have been around for about a million years, and we’ve only had radio for about a hundred years.
The vast majority of life that has ever existed on our planet has been single called organisms. Finding evidence of any life on another planet is huge news, but we should temper our expectations.
It’s way, way more likely for alien planets to have oceans full of plankton analogues as the dominant life. Considering the rest of this planet’s atmosphere is composed mostly of hydrogen, even their plankton would be weird by our standards.
We could irradiate Earth2 with so much RF radiation the crearures of the other planet all develop immune to cancer!
It’s a planet 8x the mass of the earth with a heavy hydrogen atmosphere and is considered very hot, the water is in a super critical state. I think if we found anything it would just be bacterial life.
My bet is on “previously unknown chemistry” creating the chemicals we found. It’s never aliens :(
But the definition of a single human lifetime could very well change within one human lifetime from now.
Time for a new version of the Bible. The Adam and Eve thing is about to look pretty silly.
about to look pretty silly
Hate to break it to ya…
“starting”
You want to be the one that explains the concept of ‘metaphor’ to the entire Christian world?
Only some fundamentalists believe that Genesis is literal. And not just Christians.
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