Exofarts?

Good old Cambridge. Researchers there have really got their finger on the pulse. Theyve been looking at hycean planets ...

<glossary>

HYCEAN is a porte-manteau of hydrogen and ocean. Wikipedia calls them
"a hypothetical type of planet that features a liquid water ocean underneath a hydrogen-rich atmosphere", but the 'hypothetical' is based on a 2023 paper. I admit I haven't been keeping up with the literature....: 

</glossary>

...::

Astronomers have detected the most promising signs yet of a possible biosignature outside the solar system, although they remain cautious.

Using data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the astronomers, led by the University of Cambridge, have detected the chemical fingerprints of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and/or dimethyl disulfide (DMDS), in the atmosphere of the exoplanet K2-18b, which orbits its star in the habitable zone.

On Earth, DMS and DMDS are only produced by life, primarily microbial life such as marine phytoplankton. While an unknown chemical process may be the source of these molecules in K2-18b’s atmosphere, the results are the strongest evidence yet that life may exist on a planet outside our solar system.

Original paper 

The article goes on:

The observations have reached the ‘three-sigma’ level of statistical significance – meaning there is a 0.3% probability that they occurred by chance. To reach the accepted classification for scientific discovery, the observations would have to cross the five-sigma threshold, meaning there would be below a 0.00006% probability they occurred by chance.

Well I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and turn a blind eye to that < .001% chance that they've got it wrong. But K2-18b is 124 light years away. In other words, a few years after my great grandfather Donald celebrated the birth of his son Archibald, the light that we see today from K2 (which I thought was a mountain anyway) had just set off.

Given that K2-18b is an exoplanet (a planet orbiting a star other than the sun) and the chemicals mentioned ("dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and/or dimethyl disulfide (DMDS)") are on Earth produced only by life, the exact provenance of these exofarts doesn't really bother me anyway.

And finally

I've noticed of late that something's been happening to "it's your fault", especially during the 21st century. I suppose it's down to the growing unfashionability of the idea of "fault": all this judgmental stuff isn't really politically correct. 

This Ngram from Google Books shows that in the year 2000 "it's your fault" was more than 12 times more common than "it's on you" and "it's down to you" combined, but by 2021 it was less than 7 times more common than combined sightings of the millennial arrivistes – still a good deal more common, but not nearly as much. 

That's all she wrote.

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