Far out, man
The discovery of what might be plankton on a distant world shows that there is no Plan(et) B
There’s a song by a band named Dreadzone that starts like this: “It’s a mathematical certainty that somewhere among the millions of stars, there is another planet that speaks English.”
Mathematical certainty that there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe is all very well. As the researchers gazing upon exoplanet K2-18b through the James Webb Space Telescope have discovered, the first question is to define “life”. The researchers have identified tentative traces of dimethyl sulphide and dimethyl disulphide — gases that on Earth are produced only by marine micro-organisms such as phytoplankton. ..
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