More recently, the scientific community has been abuzz with stunning information. They say that James Webb, the most powerful telescope today, has already discovered life on one of the exoplanets, but NASA is hiding information from the general public.
Moreover, this topic was raised not by conspiracy theorists of whom there are a dime a dozen on the Internet, but by quite respectable scientists. For example, astrophysicist Rebecca Smethurst, a fellow at the University of Oxford and winner of the Caroline Herschel Lecture Award, said in an interview that she is expecting an article in the near future that will publish convincing evidence of the presence of life on a planet found in deep space.
She is echoed by astronaut Timothy Peake, who spent 185 days in space as an ISS flight engineer. They say that the James Webb telescope may have already discovered alien life, but they do not want to publish these results yet, without several double-checks of the results obtained.
There are opinions that politicians are slowing down the publication, since society is not yet ready for the disclosure of this type of information. Let’s try to figure out what planet we are talking about and why NASA has not yet convened a sensational conference on this matter.
Most likely, we are talking about the planet K2-18b. This is a very interesting world, located 124 light years from Earth, which is not that far by cosmic standards. The planet’s sun is a small star – a red dwarf.
K2-18b circles around it in just 33 days. Thus, its hypothetical inhabitants were lucky. By earthly standards, they celebrate New Year almost every month. In size, the planet is slightly larger than Earth, but somewhat smaller than Neptune. This type of planet is called “Sub-Neptune” and there are a lot of them in the galaxy. K2-18b has quite a lot of hydrogen in its atmosphere. The most curious thing is that the planet is most likely completely covered by ocean.
Of course, it’s unlikely that Earth’s underwater inhabitants will be comfortable swimming in it, but who knows what forms life on other planets might take? The main question: why did scientists decide that this ocean planet is inhabited?
Apart from the fact that it is located in the zone of possible habitability, that is, it is close enough to its star to receive heat, but not far enough away from which it would turn into a kingdom of cold. Molecules of methane and carbon dioxide, as well as the presence of dimethyl sulfide, were found on it.
On Earth, dimethyl sulfide molecules are found only in living organisms, so the likelihood of alien life on K2-18b is quite high. This does not mean at all that this life is intelligent and that a high-tech civilization is hiding in the ocean. Maybe it’s just small algae. Nevertheless, the significance of the discovery of another form of life in Space is difficult to overestimate. If this is so, then we are not alone in the Universe and among billions of stars we will sooner or later meet intelligent aliens.
There may be many reasons why they are in no hurry to make this sensational information public. Perhaps the politicians asked to hold back the information, saying that society is not quite ready yet. NASA employees are playing it safe, afraid of getting into trouble. Or the conspiracy theorists are right and governments have known about aliens for a long time, but are in no hurry to share information.
Let’s hope that if a planet with the presence of life is discovered, we will soon witness this discovery being the published. Indeed, in the age of the Internet, it is becoming more and more difficult to hide the truth.
