There’s more potentially exciting news for all of you science geeks out there this week, coming to us from NASA. And the latest revelations were once again brought to us by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), as it peers deeper into the universe with greater clarity than we’ve ever had before. This time they have locked in on a cool dwarf star (that’s “cool” as in lower temperature than our sun, though it’s the other kind of “cool” also) in the constellation Leo roughly 120 light years from Earth with the unsexy name K2-18. Orbiting that star is a planet with the even less sexy name K2-18 b. But it may prove to be exciting indeed because K2-18 b is in the Goldilocks zone of its star and it has liquid water on it. And now they have discovered carbon dioxide and methane in its atmosphere. So what does that prove? Well… nothing, at least not yet. But it could definitely be a signature of life.

A new investigation with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope into K2-18 b, an exoplanet 8.6 times as massive as Earth, has revealed the presence of carbon-bearing molecules including methane and carbon dioxide. Webb’s discovery adds to recent studies suggesting that K2-18 b could be a Hycean exoplanet, one which has the potential to possess a hydrogen-rich atmosphere and a water ocean-covered surface.

The first insight into the atmospheric properties of this habitable-zone exoplanet came from observations with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, which prompted further studies that have since changed our understanding of the system.

K2-18 b orbits the cool dwarf star K2-18 in the habitable zone and lies 120 light-years from Earth in the constellation Leo. Exoplanets such as K2-18 b, which have sizes between those of Earth and Neptune, are unlike anything in our solar system.

Before any of our billionaire space tourists get any ideas about rushing off to start snapping up all of the real estate on K2-18 b, you’ll probably want to know a bit more about it. First of all, there probably isn’t any “real estate” in our typical sense of the phrase. It is most likely a Hycean exoplanet, meaning that, unlike our world, the entire thing is composed of water and it’s surrounded by a (mostly) hydrogen atmosphere. The core is ice instead of molten metal or stone, so there likely is no solid surface to stand on. And even if there was, the planet is more than two and a half times the size of Earth and eight times the mass, so you would weigh more than twice what you do at home.

As to the unexpected gases in the atmosphere, it is possible that planets can form atmospheres containing carbon dioxide and even methane without life being present through other, natural geologic and atmospheric processes. But that’s not all NASA found. More measurements will be required, but they also reported finding traces of dimethyl sulfide (DMS). At least here on Earth, we only know of one source of DMS, and it’s created by tiny marine plants (phytoplankton.) In other words, life. And if you’ve got water with living plant life in it, who knows where things go from there?

So the odds are that K2-18 b is not going to turn out to be Earth two or a future place where we might live. But if it can be established that there’s life there, at least we’ll have checked another box on the list of things we want to learn about the universe. Personally (and I’m not a scientist), I still think the universe has to be teeming with life. Frankly, I’ll be shocked if we don’t find some sort of microbial life elsewhere in our own solar system sooner or later. Heck, we’ve already found an animal that can survive in the frozen vacuum of space and then wake up and go about its business when it returns to Earth. Why might they not have hitched a ride at some point and landed elsewhere? And if you have a hospitable planet with water that’s similar to ours, you probably only need one of those critters to start. Come back in a billion years and who knows what you might find?