Uploaded July 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
The James Webb Space Telescope recently spotted dimethyl sulfide (DMS) in the atmosphere of exoplanet K2-18b. On Earth, DMS is only made by living things, mostly marine plankton. So naturally, headlines screamed: “Aliens!”
But hang on. The detection was tentative at best. Initially, there was a 5% chance it was just cosmic noise. A later study upped the confidence to 99.7%, but only if you assume K2-18b is an ocean world with a hydrogen-rich atmosphere. Which it might not be.
Other models suggest it could be a molten hellscape or a mini Neptune with no surface. One Oxford physicist re-analysed the data and found... nothing. No DMS at all.
Even if DMS is there, we now know it can form without life. Scientists found it in a comet’s tail—an icy rock with as much life as your Wi-Fi router. So much for the “smoking gun”.
In short, this is not first contact—it’s a maybe, at best. But K2-18b is still worth watching. Its short orbit gives us plenty of data. If nothing else, we’re getting better at looking.
So no, we probably didn’t find aliens. But we did find a reason to keep looking. And that, dear reader, is at least half the fun.
The James Webb Space Telescope recently spotted dimethyl sulfide (DMS) in the atmosphere of exoplanet K2-18b. On Earth, DMS is only made by living things, mostly marine plankton. So naturally, headlines screamed: “Aliens!”
But hang on. The detection was tentative at best. Initially, there was a 5% chance it was just cosmic noise. A later study upped the confidence to 99.7%, but only if you assume K2-18b is an ocean world with a hydrogen-rich atmosphere. Which it might not be.
Other models suggest it could be a molten hellscape or a mini Neptune with no surface. One Oxford physicist re-analysed the data and found... nothing. No DMS at all.
Even if DMS is there, we now know it can form without life. Scientists found it in a comet’s tail—an icy rock with as much life as your Wi-Fi router. So much for the “smoking gun”.
In short, this is not first contact—it’s a maybe, at best. But K2-18b is still worth watching. Its short orbit gives us plenty of data. If nothing else, we’re getting better at looking.
So no, we probably didn’t find aliens. But we did find a reason to keep looking. And that, dear reader, is at least half the fun.
