Incredible

Can this be believed?

[Kendo]

Using a telescope, scientists have discovered 2 life forming chemical compounds on a planet 124 light years away in the Leo constellation.

Which part of this do you find hard to believe?

[NickMNS]

I don't find it hard to believe at all. They found compounds that are associated with simple organisms (ie: bacteria or ameoba), very simple forms of life. It does not provide any proof of alien beings existing. Similar findings, I believe of different compounds, were found in the atmosphere of Venus a few years back. I believe that the Venus findings were less conclusive, but still...

I should be noted that if conditions are right for the basic building blocks of life, this does not prove alien life but it does make it more likely. So based on the Dark Forest hypothesis we need to destroy the planet asap. (Dark Forest hypothesis is the basis of the Netflix show Three Body Problem).
[en.wikipedia.org...]

Using a telescope

It should be made clear that we are not talking about a backyard telescope, these finding come from James Web Telescope, which is the most powerful space telescope ever launched.

Here are some related links:
Life on Venus:
[en.wikipedia.org...]

BBC K2-18b article:
[bbc.com...]

James Webb:
[science.nasa.gov...]

[tangor]

One should keep in mind that those substances discovered are routinely contained in terrestrial pharts (sic), which MIGHT be produced by a life form...

It's the 124 light years that boggles the mind as all this is PAST history ... kind of like watching Buster Keaton silents... :)

[Mark_A]

In the meantime complex life could have formed, developed nuclear weapons and obliterated itself a number of times over..

[engine]

>Which part of this do you find hard to believe?
I don't find it hard to believe in any respect. Technology has moved on to allow these discoveries.

>In the meantime complex life could have formed, developed nuclear weapons and obliterated itself a number of times over..

Or the dinosaur/meteor moment.

[Kendo]

They spotted a chemical compound from 844 trillion miles away?

That is 844,000,000,000,000 miles.

Good luck with spotting a crater, but a molecule?

[NickMNS]

Good luck with spotting a crater, but a molecule?

The telescope does not zoom in on molecules like one does with a microscope. Instead it uses spectography to analyze the light. Here is a article that describes the instrument used to collect the data on which the findings were based.
[science.nasa.gov...]

And also an article from a year and half ago about k2-18b, when the initial findings were made:
[nasa.gov...]

But you are not the only one to doubt these findings. See link below. But the doubt is not about the efficacy or ability of the telescope to make such discoveries but instead on the interpretation of data and its analysis.
[npr.org...]

[Martin Potter]

And now there is some contrary "evidence" about whether the original conclusion about life-related gases was valid.
Summary : [science.slashdot.org...]
Source : [arxiv.org...]

Seems like a good example of the old problem of statistical noise versus pattern recognition.

[ronin]

In the meantime complex life could have formed, developed nuclear weapons and obliterated itself a number of times over.

I doubt that.

I could see the (remote) possibility of that happening on this planet, only.

I struggle to imagine that in our galaxy, we're not literally the only planetary civilisation which concluded that living was some kind of weird competition instead of organic consciousness being the most incredibly precious phenomenon in existence.

[lucy24]

In the meantime complex life could have formed, developed nuclear weapons and obliterated itself a number of times over.

In 124 years? I think some part of your brain has converted light years into miles/kilometers, and then imagined what could happen in that vast number of years.

[Kendo]

Here's another angle...

If one is looking at something that is 844,000,000,000,000 miles away and the speed of light is 670,616,629 miles per hour (mph) does one have to wait for 1,258,543 hours before seeing the picture?

Or should we double that for the round trip?

[NickMNS]

More simply k2-18b is 120 light years away. So the light analyzed by JWST left k2-18b 120 years ago. There is no round trip in this case as you are simply capturing light emitted from the planet. But if we wanted to communicate then you have to emit the message, wait 120 years for it to get there, then they would respond and we would need to wait another 120 years. 240 years total or ~5 generations. Not very efficient!

[lucy24]

But it's an interesting thought experiment. What kinds of questions might you ask, whose answers would still be relevant 240 years in the future?

[Kendo]

So if we can see at the speed of light, what we can see in a telescope looking at a planet 124 light years away... is was what was there 144 years ago?

[Martin Potter]

Yup. (People in my world call it propagation delay.)
Similarly, as we hear at the speed of sound, it is like being at a large sports stadium and only hearing the starter's pistol go off a split second *after* the puff of smoke has already appeared.

[NickMNS]

is was what was there 144 years ago?

Yes exactly.
K2-12b is right next door. You can take your backyard telescope and look out at the Andromeda galaxy. That's a whopping 2.5 Million light years away. The light you are seeing would have left the galaxy just as the first humans began to walk the earth. (Side note: Andromeda may be hard to see from Australia)

[lucy24]

what we can see in a telescope looking at a planet 124 light years away... is was what was there 144 years ago

I really hope that was a typo.

Yes exactly.

Where “yes” means “sort of” and “exactly” means “not quite”. Unless the light had to stop for gas, adding another 20 years to the trip.

[NickMNS]

I really hope that was a typo.

"yes exactly" means "yes exactly assuming typo".