The Planet That Might Have Life

The Planet That Might Have Life In 2015, astronomers spotted a barely noticeable dip in a star's brightness curve — the discovery of exoplanet K2-18b, 124 light-years away. It turned out to be a planet of an intermediate size that doesn't exist in our own Solar System, and the Hubble Space Telescope later detected water vapor in its atmosphere. In 2023, the James Webb Space Telescope went further: methane, carbon dioxide — and a faint, disputed hint of dimethyl sulfide, a substance that on Earth is produced only by marine microorganisms. This video is the story of how a random dot in a catalog turned into one of the most serious scientific debates about life beyond our Solar System. 🔭 Based on real scientific publications and data from the Kepler, Hubble, and James Webb telescopes.