5 ms·
A lot of science papers are like “we found a hint of this thing, we need to do more research” and it’s reported as “ALIENS??!?” I understand why this is the ca
by teamonkey 1y ago
A lot of science papers are like “we found a hint of this thing, we need to do more research” and it’s reported as “ALIENS??!?”
I understand why this is the case but I think it can lead to a loss in trust in science when the reporting jumps to conclusions that aren’t supported by the research itself.
In this case the abstract is far more grounded. In particular,
> The observations also provided a tentative hint of dimethyl sulfide (DMS), a possible biosignature gas, but the inference was of low statistical significance.
> We find that the spectrum cannot be explained by most molecules predicted for K2-18 b, with the exception of DMS and dimethyl disulfide (DMDS), also a potential biosignature gas.
> More observations are needed to increase the robustness of the findings and resolve the degeneracy between DMS and DMDS. The results also highlight the need for additional experimental and theoretical work to determine accurate cross sections of important biosignature gases and identify potential abiotic sources.
- scrivna 1y agoThe scientists are also saying ALIENS! but they're covering their backs, they want their research to make headlines too
- netsharc 1y agoUgh, "alien life" is a reasonable title, IMO. I think the sensationalism is happening in your head, that you're imagining the Borg or little green men.
- weard_beard 1y agoI'm imagining some new kind of volcanism and one less way to detect life. Or, as my wife put it, "Ah, rock babies again."
- kulahan 1y agoYes, this is what scientists are assuming as well. The first real step is to work with chemists to try and find a way this could be created in such large amounts so consistently, as well as additional observations to remove noise from the data.
- teamonkey 1y agoI don’t think it’s an unreasonable title, but it’s also not accurate. The paper states quite clearly that they’ve found reasonable evidence of a known biomarker. They don’t know enough to say whether it’s from a biological or some abiotic process (but speculate a little about what that might mean and what evidence they would need to take that further). That’s quite a different tone from the article, and I think the comments here and elsewhere online reflect that.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- rkagerer 1y agoMore like big green algae?
- x-yl 1y agoI think you have misread the abstract. The 'low statistical significance' was a [prior work](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/acf577 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/acf577). This paper has increased the significance to 3-sigmas which is on the lower end but still quite significant.
- teamonkey 1y agoYes you’re right, thanks.