The Washington Post reports, “A distant planet’s atmosphere shows signs of molecules that on Earth are associated only with biological activity, a possible signal of life on what is suspected to be a watery world, according to a report published Wednesday that analyzed observations by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. The peer-reviewed report in the Astrophysical Journal Letters presents more questions than answers, acknowledges numerous uncertainties and does not declare the discovery of life beyond Earth, something never conclusively detected. But the authors do claim to have found the best evidence to date of a possible “biosignature” on a planet far from our solar system.”
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Tag: Distant Planet
James Webb Space Telescope Discovers Water Vapor in Distant Planet’s Atmosphere
SPACE reports, “NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has found water vapor swirling in the air of a distant, boiling-hot alien planet, a new study reports. That exotic world is TOI-421 b, a boiling-hot “sub-Neptune” orbiting a star about 244 light-years from Earth whose atmosphere JWST recently probed in detail.”
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James Webb Space Telescope Detects Alien Planetary System’s Icy Edge
SPACE reports, “At long last, particles of water–ice have been discovered in the frozen Kuiper Belt of another star. The discovery, made by the James Webb Space Telescope, is a major step forward in filling in gaps in our understanding of how exoplanets develop.”
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