Space expert Dr. David Whitehouse says findings on planet K2-18b mark the first step in the search for extraterrestrial life.
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00:00Dr. Whitehouse, let me start with you. Are you excited?
00:02I'm moderately excited. This is a very interesting hint,
00:05the first step on the ladder of finding out if there's life in space.
00:09This is a very different planet, as you've said, a much larger planet,
00:13a planet that could be gaseous like Uranus and Neptune,
00:16or perhaps even have an ocean,
00:19and it orbits a very different type of star, a red dwarf star,
00:23which is much fainter than the sun,
00:25but it orbits closer in than the Earth does of our star,
00:28and it receives about as much radiation and heat,
00:32and therefore you could have liquid water on the surface of this planet.
00:35And what James Webb has done,
00:37it's able to exquisitely look at the atmosphere of exoplanets,
00:43of these planets around nearby stars,
00:45and tell you something about their chemical structure.
00:47And there is a molecule, we think, in this atmosphere,
00:51which, on the Earth at least, is only produced by life,
00:55and therefore it is a hint, and the question now is,
00:58is it the case that this is only produced by life,
01:00or are there other ways to produce it,
01:03which could be a possibility, this could be what it's telling us,
01:06or is this indicative of perhaps an ecology of some sort
01:11down there on the surface of the planet,
01:12or down there in the ocean of the planet?
01:14This is very early days, it is only a hint,
01:17it may well go away,
01:19but we may have to wait for other observatories,
01:21like...
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