A team from Cambridge studying the distant planet K2-18b, 124 lightyears from Earth, have detected chemicals in its atmosphere which, on Earth, are only produced by living organisms.

While the team stress that further study is needed and that this isn't conclusive proof, it is the strongest evidence yet found for the existence of life beyond our own planet.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c39jj9vkr34o

Send my mother in-law there to investigate. Pretty please.

Yeah, sorry guys, thats just me, I was just tired of people.

K2-18b is sitting over there 124 light years away thinking the same thing about Earth or as they call it K5-1920 wondering if they will ever develop the technology to get here.

I saw this a few days ago. I dug into it a bit and there are ways for DMS to be produced without life, so the mere presence of DMS isn't conclusive on its own. It is without a doubt interesting and exciting, but I don't want people to jump the gun on this.

Corroborates the US governments claim that they were in possession of aliens then? lol

Some science fiction trivia:

The book Contact by Carl Sagan (made into a Jodie Foster film of the same name) had aliens detect the signals from Adolf Hitler speeches in 1936. It would be 2060 before those signals hit that planet.

Now, in the Star Trek universe, if the voyager Probe (as happened in Star Trek the Motion Picture) were to travel there and find machine lifeforms that enhanced it, the math goes as follows: launching in 1977, in 2025 it is now 0.00000042 light-years away from Earth. At its current velocity, it will take about 18000 years to travel 1 light year, or 2.2 million years if it were heading for that planet.

How does the Hitchhiker's guide quote go? Space is really really really really big, like really really big. To put it in perspective, if we made a to-scale model of our solar system, and earth was the size of a marble, Neptune would be over 5 kilometers away. If we added that new planet to the model, the distance would be ~1.4 million kilometers away if Earth was the size of a marble on that scale, The distance around the earth is just a hair above 40,000 km, so about 35 times that distance, or pulling a Forrest Gump and running from New York to LA about 360 times.

Maybe this is where the flying disks originated and they are life forms flattened by the gravity of this planet, not that they'd ever be able to propel themselves to orbit.

I would think that any species capable of getting to our planet would also have the ability to do so without being caught, or crushed.

Yeah but they aren't getting off that planet, have you seen the size of it. Remember, to install a space elevator they'd first have to launch themselves off of it, I am not a rocket scientist but it doesn't look like it would be happening unless the planet is made of cheese.