For decades, the search for life beyond Earth was a game of educated guesses, piecing together faint signals from worlds trillions of miles away. Today, that search took a monumental step forward. An international team of astrophysicists published definitive spectrographic evidence confirming that exoplanet K2-18b possesses a dynamic atmosphere rich in water vapor, carbon dioxide, and methane, offering the clearest evidence yet of a potential ocean-covered world outside our solar system.
Located roughly 120 light-years from Earth in the constellation Leo, K2-18b is a “sub-Neptune” world—about two and a half times the radius of Earth and nearly nine times its mass. Orbiting within the habitable zone of a cool red dwarf star, where surface temperatures allow liquid water to exist, the planet has long been a prime target for space observatories. However, earlier observations
Leave a Reply