Dimethyl sulfide is only known to be produced by living things on Earth, but the signature requires further investigation.
on astronomy and astrophysics, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine stressed the importance of finding habitable worlds. Webb is a crucial part of that search. But that mission won’t launch for at least a decade, leaving Webb to do plenty of exoplanetary legwork.back in 2019 and found signs that the planet’s atmosphere contained water vapor. The Webb observations go a step further.
Webb discerned the presence of carbon-bearing molecules like methane and carbon dioxide, but little ammonia, on the planet. That chemical composition suggests that K2-18 b may contain a water ocean beneath its hydrogen atmosphere.
Webb also detected what looked like dimethyl sulfide in the planet’s atmosphere. On Earth, dimethyl sulfide is produced by living things, and most of our planet’s atmospheric DMS is produced by marine phytoplankton. “Upcoming Webb observations should be able to confirm if DMS is indeed present in the atmosphere of K2-18 b at significant levels,” Madhusudhan added.
Follow-up observations of the Hycean candidate will be conducted using Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument, or MIRI. While the detection of dimethyl sulfide is very tentative, K2-18 b is increasingly showing signs it is a water world with potential—if not for astrobiological reasons, for better understanding the types of habitable worlds in our nearby universe.
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