Space expert: First step toward finding alien life

Space expert Dr. David Whitehouse says findings on planet K2-18b mark the first step in the search for extraterrestrial life.

Transcript

00:00Dr. Whitehouse, let me start with you. Are you excited?

00:02I'm moderately excited. This is a very interesting hint,

00:05the first step on the ladder of finding out if there's life in space.

00:09This is a very different planet, as you've said, a much larger planet,

00:13a planet that could be gaseous like Uranus and Neptune,

00:16or perhaps even have an ocean,

00:19and it orbits a very different type of star, a red dwarf star,

00:23which is much fainter than the sun,

00:25but it orbits closer in than the Earth does of our star,

00:28and it receives about as much radiation and heat,

00:32and therefore you could have liquid water on the surface of this planet.

00:35And what James Webb has done,

00:37it's able to exquisitely look at the atmosphere of exoplanets,

00:43of these planets around nearby stars,

00:45and tell you something about their chemical structure.

00:47And there is a molecule, we think, in this atmosphere,

00:51which, on the Earth at least, is only produced by life,

00:55and therefore it is a hint, and the question now is,

00:58is it the case that this is only produced by life,

01:00or are there other ways to produce it,

01:03which could be a possibility, this could be what it's telling us,

01:06or is this indicative of perhaps an ecology of some sort

01:11down there on the surface of the planet,

01:12or down there in the ocean of the planet?

01:14This is very early days, it is only a hint,

01:17it may well go away,

01:19but we may have to wait for other observatories,

01:21like...

01:21...

01:22...

01:23...