00:00From UFOs to possible alien abductions, we're fascinated by the idea of extraterrestrial life.
00:06Now, scientists have found the strongest evidence yet that a planet 124 light-years away could be home to life.
00:14Researchers detected molecules in the atmosphere on the K218b, which on Earth are produced by marine organisms.
00:22More data is needed to confirm the findings, as our science correspondent Pallav Ghosh reports.
00:26Could this faraway world be home to life?
00:3118 months ago, scientists detected tiny hints of gas molecules in the atmosphere of planet K218b that might have been produced by life.
00:42Now, the scientists leading the search told me that the evidence has grown.
00:47It is certainly the strongest sign we have seen yet, right? That can't be denied.
00:53So, I can realistically say that we could confirm this signal within one or two years.
01:01If you do, what would this say about the prospect of life on other worlds?
01:07I think if we confirm that there is life on K218b, that would basically imply that life should be very common in the galaxy.
01:23K218b is two and a half times the size of Earth, and it's 700 trillion miles away.
01:31The James Webb Space Telescope is so powerful, it can analyse the chemical composition of the atmosphere from the light that passes through it from the small red star it orbits.
01:42Its chemical signature seems to suggest that it contains molecules, which on Earth can only be produced by living organisms.
01:50And it's such a strong signal that if it is home to life, it's plentiful.
01:55Everything that's being spoken here is confidential.
01:58Professor Madhusuddin and his team put the final touches on the scientific paper outlining their findings.
02:05Although the evidence for the molecules is increasing, they still don't have enough to say that they're definitely there.
02:13More data will give us more light from this planet, which will give us more certainty that this particular chemical is there.
02:22But even with perfect data, you still won't be able to say this is definitely of a biological origin because, you know, loads of strange things happen in the universe and we don't know what other geophysical activity could be happening on this planet.
02:37These latest results from K218b are tentative, but astronomers believe that they're getting ever closer to answering one of the biggest questions in science.
02:48Are we alone in the universe?
02:52K218b is thought to be a gigantic water world.
03:20So it's about two and a half times the size of Earth.
03:24It's got a hydrogen atmosphere and a giant ocean underneath that atmosphere.
03:30So if there is life there, it will be swimming around in that ocean.
03:35Now, it is incredibly exciting that the discovery of life on another world would be the biggest discovery of all time.
03:44But we're not there yet.
03:46As Catherine Heyman said in my report, we don't know for sure that the gas is still there.
03:53We don't know for sure if it just because it's produced by plankton on Earth, it could be produced by other things on another world.
04:01However, this is, as Professor Madhusuddin said, the strongest evidence yet that there might be life on another planet.
04:10But there's more work to do. When might they be able to give us a certain answer?
04:14Well, they say they're going to have a certain answer for the presence of these molecules within two years.
04:21But then the bickering starts because is the gas produced by life or is it produced by some weird volcano or some natural means?
04:31So it'll be a gradual process where they'll get evidence perhaps from other worlds, other planets.
04:37Chemists will try and reproduce the gas artificially.
04:40And then eventually scientists will agree that it probably is from life.
04:45But a better chance of finding life is maybe in our own backyard on one of the icy moons of Jupiter or Saturn.
04:52And there are lots of spacecraft and probes trying to find just that.
04:56So, you know, it's a question that we've been asking for thousands of years.
05:01And now we've got amazing tools and resources to possibly answer that big question.
05:07I mean, there have to be amazing resources, don't they? Because this planet, K2 18b, is so far away.
05:15It's so 124 light years. No one really knows what that means.
05:19That's 700 trillion miles. No one really knows what that is.
05:24It's just a long, long way away. And if you just think about it,
05:28we're able to analyse the atmosphere of that world from a tiny amount of starlight coming to us.
05:34So that's amazing. And this will be the first of many planets that will be studied in this way.
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