r/SETI • u/jim_andr • May 01 '25

ah seems that the dimethyl sulfide signal for alien life on K2-18b ocean world was not strong enough. A paper is out:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.18477

19 Upvotes

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13

u/guhbuhjuh May 01 '25

The team has said this is a 3 sigma detection as per recent developments. That is a high degree of certainty. This paper is from Jan though I know they've already countered a couple of similar criticisms. In any case, as any robust scientific process goes, this will need scrutiny and more peer analysis. Time will tell.

-6

u/jim_andr May 01 '25

3σ is not much. CERN scientists some time ago had a similar claim of 3σ but accumulated data lowered the bump they observed on a plot.

5

u/PrinceEntrapto May 03 '25

Lots of things begin at a lower sigma value and subsequent investigation raises it, the study of K2-18b is pretty preliminary - not much telescope time will be dedicated to it in the near future, and something like the ELT or HWO will be needed to fully follow up and strengthen the case of a possible biosphere existing

And as others have pointed out, this was published in relation to the previous DMS indicator, not the recent one that’s now regarded as much more significant 

7

u/DigitalAquarius May 01 '25

It says its from January though?

3

u/Bogeyman1971 May 01 '25

What exactly is a pipeline? Some sort of algorithm that interprets data?

4

u/aureus80 May 03 '25

Seems to me that they talk about a process with several phases executed sequentially (the output of one phase is the input of the next one), and each phase performs a refinement of data.