Has life elsewhere in the universe just been found?

A planet 120 light years away may harbor space algae.

From the New York Times science news section:

Astronomers Detect a Possible Signature of Life on a Distant Planet

Further studies are needed to determine whether K2-18b, which orbits a star 120 light-years away, is inhabited, or even habitable.

By Carl Zimmer

April 16, 2025

… Now a team of researchers is offering what it contends is the strongest indication yet of extraterrestrial life, not in our solar system but on a massive planet, known as K2-18b, that orbits a star 120 light-years from Earth.

120 light years is really far.

Heinlein’s 1955 novel Time for the Stars gives the best case scenario for slower-than-light travel to habitable star systems: Humans have invented a “mass conversion” engine that extracts all the energy in any fuel, such as water, according to Einstein’s E=MC Squared formula. If a starship accelerates at one g of gravity for a year, it begins to approach the speed of light at which point the relativistic time-dilation effects kick in: passengers don’t experience the 120 years that goes by on earth as the ship travels 120 light years, but as merely a few weeks.

Discouragingly, the ship has to carry just as much fuel to decelerate, which takes just as along as to accelerate, or about two years one-way, earth to alien world. Unfortunately, by the time they arrive at the new world, everybody they know back on earth is at least 120 years old, and sending a message home, like, “Looks good, send more ships” takes another 120 years to arrive.

A repeated analysis of the exoplanet’s atmosphere suggests an abundance of a molecule that on Earth has only one known source: living organisms such as marine algae.

“It is in no one’s interest to claim prematurely that we have detected life,” said Nikku Madhusudhan, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge and an author of the new study, at a news conference on Tuesday. Still, he said, the best explanation for his group’s observations is that K2-18b is covered with a warm ocean, brimming with life.

“This is a revolutionary moment,” Dr. Madhusudhan said. “It’s the first time humanity has seen potential biosignatures on a habitable planet.”

The study was published Wednesday in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. …

In 2021, Dr. Madhusudhan and his colleagues proposed that sub-Neptunes were covered with warm oceans of water and wrapped in atmospheres containing hydrogen, methane and other carbon compounds.

Doesn’t sound too promising of a future abode for human life.

Personally, I’d only move to an exoplanet with the potential for hosting a golf course playable without a breathing apparatus or extreme cosmic ray protection:

To describe these strange planets, they coined a new term, “Hycean,” from a combination of the words “hydrogen” and “ocean.”

The launch of the James Webb Space Telescope in December 2021 allowed astronomers a closer look at sub-Neptunes and other distant planets.

… In 2023, they reported they had also detected faint hints of another molecule, and one of huge potential importance: dimethyl sulfide, which is made of sulfur, carbon, and hydrogen.

On Earth, the only known source of dimethyl sulfide is life. In the ocean, for instance, certain forms of algae produce the compound, which wafts into the air and adds to the sea’s distinctive odor. Long before the Webb telescope was launched, astrobiologists had wondered whether dimethyl sulfide might serve as a sign of life on other planets.

… This would suggest that its Hycean seas are brimming with life. …

The Trump administration is reportedly planning to cut NASA’s science budget in half, eliminating future space telescope and other astrobiology projects. If that happens, Dr. Krissansen-Totton said, “the search for life elsewhere would basically stop.”

Or other countries could pick up the slack, if they so choose. But searching for aliens seems like one of the more fun things my U.S. tax dollars are spent upon.