Is there life outside Earth? Fact Check

Observations from the ground and from space have confirmed thousands of planets beyond our solar system. Our galaxy likely holds at least 100 billion. But so far, we have no evidence of life beyond Earth. Is life in the cosmos easily begun, ...

How soon that can happen depends on two unknowns: the prevalence of life in the galaxy and how lucky we get as we take those first, tentative, exploratory steps. Data from our early planet-finding missions, such as NASA’s Kepler and its extended incarnation, K2, or the James Webb Space Telescope, could yield bare bones evidence of the potentially habitable worlds. James Webb, designed in part to investigate gas giants and super-Earths, might find an outsized version of our planet.

But NASA is looking for signs of life in our solar system and on some of the the thousands of planets we've discovered beyond it, on exoplanets. We can probe alien atmospheres for biosignatures, which could indicate life below.

Thanks to NASA’s Kepler mission’s ... the science fiction of finding life on other worlds, but to one day scientifically prove life exists beyond our solar system....

evidence. Can it be that the Earth · contains · the · only · form · of life in this vast · universe? In this · report, some · of · the · recent · findings · about · our · planetary · neighbors · are · reviewed · and the question · about life elsewhere ·

Measurements of the absorption spectra of light that arrives at the Earth after a long journey from a distant star have demonstrated that operators as complex as molecules exist everywhere in the universe. Such measurements offer evidence from outside the Earth for the general validity of the ...

But that extraterrestrial presence on regular display is, of course, a fiction. No life beyond Earth has ever been found; there is no evidence that alien life has ever visited our planet.

Did NASA discover evidence of life elsewhere in the cosmos? Not likely, argues a new study published this week in Astrophysical Journal Letters. It claims that there is no DMS around K2-18b and that the detection published last fall was incorrect.

Now that same team observed the planet again with a different instrument from the James Webb Space Telescope, the mid-infrared camera, they have found a stronger signal for the molecule, as well as a possible related molecule called dimethyl disulphide, which is also produced on Earth only by life.” · Why do we need to treat these results with caution? “It’s worth noting that other scientists are skeptical about the findings, cautioning that there have been false alarms out of K2-18b’s atmosphere before, and that these new observations do not offer convincing evidence that the two molecular signatures are present. Any claim of possible signature of life beyond Earth needs to be verified by other experts analyzing both the same data and hopefully better data sets in the future.