00:00We just found a possible signature of life on another planet.
00:03What exactly does that mean?
00:05It's on this distant planet, near a star 124 light years away.
00:08We know that the planet's there because we see a tiny dip in the light from the star
00:12as the planet crosses in front of it.
00:14And to figure out what's in its atmosphere,
00:16we can actually analyze the light that passes through the atmosphere before it gets to us.
00:21And what they seem to have found is two molecules that on Earth only come from life,
00:26like marine algae, thousands of times more than in our own atmosphere.
00:29Which is huge, if these molecules behave the way that they do on Earth.
00:33But they could behave differently.
00:34Some think that this planet could have a molten ocean of rock and no life at all.
00:38On top of that, this is what's called a 3 sigma result, meaning 99.7% accuracy,
00:43which is up from 68% around a year and a half ago,
00:46but they still need a 5 sigma result, which is 99.99999% accuracy.
00:50Either way, we learned something new.
00:51I'm hoping for aliens.
00:52If you need more optimistic science and tech stories, subscribe.
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