The James Webb Space Telescope detected water vapor swirling around a planetary system 370 light-years away.
I’m waiting for the day that they detect free oxygen in the atmosphere of an exoplanet. That practically 100% confirms life there if free oxygen is in the atmosphere in large quantities. Could be bacterial life, but still, it would basically be confirmed that life exists outside of our planet.
@ShaunaTheDead Agreed on both counts. Discovery of any type of life would be a major discovery.
Wouldn’t this require a genetic component as well? All life on this planet shares a very large portion of the same DNA, with only minute variances between branches in life categories, even bacteria. Oxygen is a huge component of energy production for sure, but it doesn’t spontaneously illicit life.
Seeded with genetic material and given a few million years, you would probably be right - but it would require genetic/DNA ‘ruleset’ I would think.
Hey, every single planet with life that we know of has oxygen in the atmosphere!
Sample size of one though.
