While I agree there is a very high probability of life out there, we truly do not know until we can prove it. This evidence JWT found may have another explanation that our scientists are unaware of yet.
I’m so excited to discover a totally different take on life because it will help us truly define what life is.
Then again if we find a similar take on life (carbon based, compatible chemistry to life on earth) then that’s pretty interesting too, implying either panspermia or that there’s something special about this configuration. It also likely means we have more potential for useful discoveries from that life system, as well as threats.
Convergent evolution happens all the time with life on earth. The fact the other life has developed in a similar way will not be surprising. It likely wouldn't be identical, but if they use a similar basis for a DNA type thing, or something like that, it won't imply panspermia.
Sigma is basically a representation of certainty that your result isn’t a statistical fluke. It comes from standard deviation in statistics but 1 sigma is 68% certain. 2 sigma is 95%. 3 sigma is 99.7%.
By convention, astronomy uses 3 sigma for “significance,” meaning you almost definitely found something. Particle physics, since it’s usually done in controlled experiments, usually requires 5 sigma (99.99994%).
It’s similar to margin of error in political polls.
It’s a number that statistically represents how strong the result is in the data basically. As far as I understand it, with astronomy the typical sigma value expected is 3
By saying 1 sigma, they are basically saying tgat are 68% confident in the results. As you increase the sigma, your confidence in the results increases. Here is a site that goes into more in depth explanation:
https://news.mit.edu/2012/explained-sigma-0209#
A chemical only produced by life on earth. But can it be produced by abiotic conditions on other planets? I’m not sure that has been ruled out at this point.
Yeah, this headline is bullshit. It's indication of possible life, but it isn't what the headline makes it sound. There's always other possible methods, even if we aren't aware of them yet. It's interesting, but doesn't confirm anything yet.
Even if Webb were to basically spot earth 2 5 light years away, I’d caution about getting excited for a radio chat.
Remember that life has existed on earth for something like 3 billion years, but multicellular life has only been around for 500 million or so years, humans in various forms have been around for about a million years, and we’ve only had radio for about a hundred years.
The vast majority of life that has ever existed on our planet has been single called organisms. Finding evidence of any life on another planet is huge news, but we should temper our expectations.
It’s way, way more likely for alien planets to have oceans full of plankton analogues as the dominant life. Considering the rest of this planet’s atmosphere is composed mostly of hydrogen, even their plankton would be weird by our standards.
It's a planet 8x the mass of the earth with a heavy hydrogen atmosphere and is considered very hot, the water is in a super critical state. I think if we found anything it would just be bacterial life.
My bet is on "previously unknown chemistry" creating the chemicals we found. It's never aliens :(
God made humans, in his image, because God is a jealous God and wouldn't want humans to be better looking than himself. He filled the world with animals for the humans to hug and eat. On the seventh day He rested.
On the either day, he started on some new planets, then on the ninth day He populated them with more life so that humans might expand to fill the universe he created, and find the life he scattered around for the humans to hug and eat. On the tenth day, he created intelligent life on other planets, because he is all knowing and therefore knows humans won't feel true camaraderie without attacking and wiping out other sentient life forms. On the eleventh day, He declared a public holiday, because He felt like resting but he already decided the Sabbath is every 7 days.
The bible was written by a bunch of religious scholars, and assembled into a series of books. There's no reason they can't "discover" some more books.
I had a Christian relative tell me “Hey I’m interested in science too. Like why did God make the universe so big? I mean… obviously to show his power, but why this big, exactly?”
I told her that she was starting with all the answers already defined and that this is not science.
I am pretty sure we don't know everything about the universe and statements of fact like this should be stated "as far as we know" which really isn't much.