There’s growing evidence of possible life on other planets – here’s why you should still be sceptical
A team of researchers has recently claimed they have discovered a gas called dimethyl sulphide (DMS) in the atmosphere of K2-18b, a planet orbiting a distant star.
The University of Cambridge team’s claims are potentially very exciting because, on Earth at least, the compound is produced by marine bacteria. The presence of this gas may be a sign of life on K2-18b too – but we can’t rush to conclusions just yet.
K2-18b has a radius 2.6 times that of Earth, a mass nearly nine times greater and orbits a star that is 124 light years away. We can’t directly tell what kinds of large scale characteristics it has, although one possibility is a world with a global liquid water ocean under a hydrogen-rich atmosphere.
Such a world might well be hospitable to life, but different ideas exist about the properties of this planet – and what that might mean for a DMS signature.
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Claims for the detection of life on other planets go back decades.
In the 1970s, one of the scientists working on the Viking mission to Mars claimed that his experiment had indicated there could be microorganisms in the Martian soil. However, these conclusions were widely refuted by other researchers.
In 1996, a team said that microscopic features resembling bacteria had been found in the Martian meteorite ALH84001. However, subsequent studies cast significant doubt on the discovery.
Since the early 2000s there have also been repeated claims for the detection of methane gas in the atmosphere of Mars, both by remote sensing by satellites and by in-situ observations by rovers.
Methane can be produced by several mechanisms. One of these potential sources involves production by microorganisms. Such sources are described by scientists as being “biotic”. Other sources of methane, such as volcanoes and hydrothermal vents, don’t require life and are said to be “abiotic”.
Not all of the previous claims for evidence of extraterrestrial life involve the red planet. In 2020, Earth-based observations of Venus’s atmosphere implied the presence of low levels of phosphine gas.
Because phosphine gas can be produced by microbes, there was speculation that life might exist in Venus’s clouds. However, the detection of phosphine was later disputed by other scientists.
Proposed signs of life on other worlds are known as “biosignatures”. This is defined as “an object, substance, and/or pattern whose origin specifically requires a biological agent”. In other words, any detection requires all possible abiotic production pathways to be considered.
In addition to this, scientists face many challenges in the collection, interpretation, and planetary environmental context of possible biosignature gases. Understanding the composition of a planetary atmosphere from limited data, collected from light years away, is very difficult.
We also have to understand that these are often exotic environments, with conditions we do not experience on Earth. As such, exotic chemical processes may occur here too.
In order to characterise the atmospheres of exoplanets, we obtain what are called spectra. These are the fingerprints of molecules in the atmosphere that absorb light at specific wavelengths.
Once the data has been collected, it needs to be interpreted. Astronomers assess which chemicals, or combinations thereof, best fit the observations. It is an involved process and one that requires lots of computer based work. The process is especially challenging when dealing with exoplanets, where available data is at a premium.
Once these stages have been carried out, astronomers can then assign a confidence to the likelihood of a particular chemical signature being “real”. In the case of the recent discovery from K2-18b, the authors claim the detection of a feature that can only be explained by DMS with a likelihood of greater than 99.9%. In other words, there’s about a 1 in 1,500 chance that this feature is not actually there.
While the team behind the recent result favours a model of K2-18b as an ocean world, another team suggests it could actually have a magma (molten rock) ocean instead. It could also be a Neptune-like “gas dwarf” planet, with a small core shrouded in a thick layer of gas and ices. Both of these options would be much less favourable to the development of life – raising questions as to whether there are abiotic ways that DMS can form.
A higher bar?
But is the bar higher for claims of extraterrestrial life than for other areas of science? In a study claiming the detection of a biosignature, the usual level of scientific rigour expected for all research should apply to the collection and processing of the data, along with the interpretation of the results.
However, even when these standards have been met, claims that indicate the presence of life have in the past still been meet with high levels of scepticism. The reasons for this are probably best summed up by the phrase “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. This is attributed to the American planetary scientist, author and science communicator Carl Sagan.
While on Earth there are no known means of producing DMS without life, the chemical has been detected on a comet called 67/P, which was studied up close by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft. DMS has even been detected in the interstellar medium, the space between stars, suggesting that it can be produced by non-biological, or abiotic, mechanisms.
Given the uncertainties about the nature of K2-18b, we cannot be sure if the presence of this gas might simply be a sign of non-biological processes we don’t yet understand.
The claimed discovery of DMS on K2-18b is interesting, exciting, and reflects huge advances in astronomy, planetary science and astrobiology. However, its possible implications mean that we have to consider the results very cautiously. We must also entertain alternative explanations before supporting such a profound conclusion as the presence of extraterrestrial life.
Manoj Joshi receives funding from the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)
Maria di Paolo receives funding from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).
Andrew Rushby does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.