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The challenge:

Control a TV or other IR device via a non-circuit based device powered by a candle for IR source. Batteries not allowed.

You can use a candle, paper, cardboard, plastic, lenses, aluminum cans etc. All hand made unpowered and rudimentary materials allowed.

You may obtain the ir message by any means including a detector, DAC, etc system. But once you have your code, those devices cannot be used.

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cross-posted from: https://rss.ponder.cat/post/189796

Footage captured in 2024 of a small rabbit hopping about in front of a camera trap had scientists baffled. The juvenile, with gray-brown fur and a black tail, didn’t resemble any known species in the Sierra Madre del Sur, in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero. Biologist Fernando Ruiz-Gutiérrez anxiously searched his records and consulted with colleagues to confirm his hypothesis. A few kilometers away, ecologist José Alberto Almazán-Catalán had the answer: having captured an adult specimen years earlier and conducted a series of studies, he now had irrefutable proof that the Omiltemi cottontail rabbit (Sylvilagus insonus), believed to be extinct for the past 120 years, was still alive. The last time scientists knowingly encountered the Omiltemi cottontail was in 1904, when U.S. naturalist Edward William Nelson described it for the first time. Habitat loss, poaching and subsistence hunting have been the biggest threats to the species throughout its existence, which is why it took more than a century to rediscover the elusive rabbit, hidden in the forest. “It was very exciting to pin down an animal that we not only believed to be extinct but that also has an almost mythical quality, because the furs we have in Mexico are not as precise as we would like since they were not taken by a mammalogist but donated by campesinos [small-scale farmers],” says Almazán-Catalán, president of the Institute for the Management and Conservation of Biodiversity (INMACOB), a Mexican NGO. “We really weren’t sure this rabbit existed. It could’ve been an…This article was originally published on Mongabay


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🐇🐇 full text which is cool! you should read it 🐇🐇

  • Lost to science for more than a century, the Omiltemi cottontail rabbit has been confirmed by scientists to be alive and hopping in southern Mexico.
  • The species was rediscovered via interviews with local communities and footage from camera traps intended to photograph jaguars.
  • Sierra Madre del Sur in the state of Guerrero is the only place in the world where the Omiltemi cottontail is known to exist.
  • Satellite data show continued forest loss within its known range, while hunting for food by local communities remains another threat to the species.

Footage captured in 2024 of a small rabbit hopping about in front of a camera trap had scientists baffled. The juvenile, with gray-brown fur and a black tail, didn’t resemble any known species in the Sierra Madre del Sur, in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero.

Biologist Fernando Ruiz-Gutiérrez anxiously searched his records and consulted with colleagues to confirm his hypothesis. A few kilometers away, ecologist José Alberto Almazán-Catalán had the answer: having captured an adult specimen years earlier and conducted a series of studies, he now had irrefutable proof that the Omiltemi cottontail rabbit (Sylvilagus insonus), believed to be extinct for the past 120 years, was still alive.

The last time scientists knowingly encountered the Omiltemi cottontail was in 1904, when U.S. naturalist Edward William Nelson described it for the first time. Habitat loss, poaching and subsistence hunting have been the biggest threats to the species throughout its existence, which is why it took more than a century to rediscover the elusive rabbit, hidden in the forest.

“It was very exciting to pin down an animal that we not only believed to be extinct but that also has an almost mythical quality, because the furs we have in Mexico are not as precise as we would like since they were not taken by a mammalogist but donated by campesinos [small-scale farmers],” says Almazán-Catalán, president of the Institute for the Management and Conservation of Biodiversity (INMACOB), a Mexican NGO.

“We really weren’t sure this rabbit existed. It could’ve been an anomaly. Finding it was alive and that there were healthy populations was a great relief,” says Almazán-Catalán, who led a five-year investigation to discover the continued existence of the species.

The Omiltemi cottontail rabbit is endemic to the state of Guerrero. Its previously known distribution was restricted to the area around the village of Omiltemi, in the municipality of Chilpancingo. An elusive species with nocturnal habits and low population densities, it’s classified as endangered by Semarnat, Mexico’s environment ministry, and very little is known about its distribution, ecology and biology.

Ruiz-Gutiérrez, who led a team that helped rediscover the Omiltemi cottontail, calls it the most endangered rabbit in the world, saying the species was even considered to be an example of modern-day extinction.

Members of a research team walk through a pine-oak forest, one of the habitats in which they carried out monitoring activities. Image courtesy of Wild Felids Conservation México.

Like other rabbits, Omiltemi cottontails live in warrens, and primarily inhabit coniferous forests, but can also be found in some deciduous forests, at elevations ranging from 7,000-10,000 feet (about 2,100-3,000 meters).

“They are rich and generally very diverse territories, with a wide variety of plants and animals. This mountainous region is well preserved, with forests that haven’t been disturbed for many years, which still have primary forest cover and haven’t been greatly impacted by human activity,” Ruiz-Gutiérrez says.

“We’ve found areas with beautiful, pristine rivers, with an impressive quantity of crystal-clear water, with areas of very dense forest which are difficult to access and other areas where there is human intervention, but not very often. It’s in these places that we’ve had sightings of the Omiltemi rabbit,” Ruiz-Gutiérrez says.

The mountains of Guerrero are made up of rugged and varied landscapes that support a rich diversity of species. Image courtesy of Wild Felids Conservation México.

The Omiltemi cottontail is reddish-brown in color, and its body and ears are smaller than those of other rabbits that inhabit the area. But Almazán-Catalán says that the most obvious feature that distinguishes the species from the closely related Mexican cottontail (S. cunicularius), which inhabits the same area, is its small black tail.

“It’s difficult to see it in a camera trap, but with a good photo you might be able to recognize that it’s a different rabbit,” Almazán-Catalán says. “The first clear photo of the Omiltemi cottontail rabbit is from 2009, taken by photographer Stephen John Davies, from the United Kingdom, who came to Puerto del Gallo and created a controversy [about the rabbit’s continued existence] on the iNaturalistMX website, which is where the first debate about what animal it was took place.”

Photograph of an Omiltemi cottontail rabbit taken in 2009 by photographer Stephen John Davies, in Guerrero. Image courtesy of Stephen John Davies/iNaturalistMX.

Field crew members install and test a camera trap. Image courtesy of Wild Felids Conservation México.

The rediscovery of the Omiltemi cottontail after more than a century was accidental. Ruiz-Gutiérrez and his team had been setting up camera traps along wildlife trails to monitor jaguars (Panthera onca) in the central portion of the Sierra Madre del Sur as part of the National Jaguar Census (Cenjaguar).

“We use the camera trap to identify the presence of jaguars, but also any associated fauna, that is, its potential prey and other felines with which they cohabit,” Ruiz-Gutiérrez says. “From this we can generate estimates of species richness and biodiversity in general, and, in particular, population aspects of the jaguar in this region, which are then extrapolated to a state and national level, giving us the data we use for Cenjaguar.”

And then, one day in May 2024, a mysterious young rabbit appeared in front of a camera trap set up in the forest near the village of Jaleaca de Catalán.

“It really caught our attention because, when you compare it to other animals in footage from the same camera, the rabbit is tiny. We got a photo of a squirrel just opposite the place where the rabbit was and, when we put them next to each other, they were the same size,” Ruiz-Gutiérrez says. “So we began to talk about it seriously with Dr. Gerardo Ceballos, director of Cenjaguar; I sent him all the evidence and with it we were able to ascertain that it really was the mythical Omiltemi cottontail rabbit, and we began to get excited about this important discovery.”

A composite image showing a squirrel and the Omiltemi cottontail rabbit. Image courtesy of Wild Felids Conservation México.

When Ruiz-Gutiérrez and his team went over archive camera-trap footage from the past 11 years, they found additional photos and videos of Omiltemi cottontails captured in the municipalities of Atoyac, Chilpancingo and Técpan de Galeana. This footage indicates the distribution of the species extends 111 kilometers (69 miles) beyond what was previously known, from Omiltemi to the Técpan de Galeana mountains.

“We were delighted to be able to rediscover the presence of this species, to confirm that it’s still alive and continues to have small populations in the Guerrero mountains,” Ruiz-Gutiérrez says. “We need to redouble our efforts to conserve it in the medium and long term, working with communities on conservation strategies that will help us to protect it so that it won’t yet disappear from the face of the Earth.”

By analyzing their camera-trap footage more closely, Ruiz-Gutiérrez and his team were able to glean information about the behavior of the Omiltemi cottontail. For example, 68% of sightings were at night, indicating the species may be largely nocturnal.

Most images captured were of single individuals, suggesting the species is mostly solitary. There were sightings of juvenile individuals, or kits, in May and December, which indicates breeding activity may take place twice a year.

An Omiltemi cottontail rabbit foraging with its back to the camera trap. Image courtesy of Wild Felids Conservation México.

While camera-trap footage indicate the distribution of the Omiltemi cottontail is broader than previously expected, the threats facing the species — habitat loss driven by fires and agricultural clearing — still persist, and little is known about the impact of hunting by local communities, according to the research team.

Portions of the rabbit’s range fall within several protected areas, including the new Sierra Tecuani Biosphere Reserve. However, satellite data from Global Forest Watch show ongoing forest loss in the reserve, and there were “no special conservation measures to protect the species” as of January 2025, according to conservation NGO Re:wild.

Community technician Pascual Ramírez and Wild Felids Conservation México biologist Gricell Villegas install a camera trap. Image courtesy of Wild Felids Conservation México.

“It’s a huge opportunity for us to be able to contribute to the conservation of such an enigmatic species,” Ruiz-Gutiérrez says. “All this work has been thanks to conservation of the jaguar, which was the flagship species that opened the door to us beginning to study and protect it, but most of the conservation work we can do must be done together with the ejidos [community-managed farmland] and communities.”

The Omiltemi cottontail is the 13th species rediscovered as part of Re:wild’s “Search for Lost Species,” a project aiming to find and protect plant, animal and fungi species that have been lost to science for years but not yet been declared extinct.

When Almazán-Catalán and his team began searching for the rabbit in 2019 in the forests of Chilpancingo, they didn’t find any sign of the species. So from 2020-2022, they refocused their search to high-altitude coniferous forests. There, in the Filo Mayor region, they consulted with local communities where they suspected the Omiltemi cottontail and another rabbit species were hunted for food by community members.

“The campesinos had three specimens of S. insonus in their possession and gave them to us for scientific purposes when we explained why we wanted the fur and their tissues,” Almazán-Catalán says. “They had the animals for personal consumption and donated them to the investigation. The community weren’t to blame; they simply didn’t know it was Sylvilagus insonus.”

  • The Wild Felids Conservation México technical team and the Jaleaca de Catalán community team, who participated in the fieldwork that led to the rediscovery of the Omiltemi cottontail rabbit. Image courtesy of Wild Felids Conservation México.

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When the research team compared the communities’ rabbits with the furs available in collections and descriptions in the scientific literature, their morphological characteristics matched those of the Omiltemi cottontail rabbit first described by Nelson in 1904.

“This finding suggests that we still have a lot of fieldwork to do because although we think we have all the species documented, this really isn’t the case. We need to get more people involved, more specialists in this area,” Almazán-Catalán says. “It was a joy to behold this small animal and to discover that it’s there, alive, that it’s still hopping about, and we hope that there will be many more sightings and that it will continue to inhabit this region of the Guerrero mountains.”

Banner image: Omiltemi cottontail rabbit foraging in front of a camera trap. Image courtesy of Wild Felids Conservation México.

This story was first published here in Spanish on April 5, 2025.


This story was first published here in Spanish on April 5, 2025.

ETA full text and link to Spanish-language, above

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spoilerA potential dwarf planet has been discovered in the outer reaches of our solar system, orbiting beyond Neptune. Its presence there challenges the existence of a hypothetical body known as Planet 9 or Planet X.

Sihao Cheng at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and his colleagues first detected the object, known as 2017 OF201, as a bright spot in an astronomical image database from the Victor M. Blanco Telescope in Chile.

2017 OF201 is about 700 kilometres across – big enough to qualify as a dwarf planet like Pluto, which has a diameter about three times as big. The object is currently about 90.5 astronomical units (AU) away from us, or roughly 90 times as far from Earth as the sun is.

Because 2017 OF201’s average orbit around the sun is greater than that of Neptune, it is what’s known as a trans-Neptunian object (TNO). It passes through the Kuiper belt, a disc of icy objects in the outer solar system beyond the orbit of Neptune.

The researchers looked back over 19 observations, taken over seven years by the Canada France Hawaii Telescope, to determine that the closest 2017 OF201 gets to the sun – its perihelion – is 44.5 AU, which is similar to Pluto’s orbit. The furthest it gets from the sun is 1600 AU, way outside the solar system.

This far-flung orbit may be the result of an encounter with a giant planet, which ejected the candidate dwarf planet out of the solar system, say the researchers.

“It’s a really cool discovery,” says Kevin Napier at the University of Michigan. The object would go so far outside the solar system that it could be interacting with other stars in the galaxy just as strongly as it interacts with some of the planets in our solar system, he says.

The orbits of many extreme TNOs seem to cluster in a specific orientation. This has been interpreted as evidence that the solar system contains a ninth planet hidden in the Oort cloud, a vast cloud of icy rocks encircling the solar system. The idea is that Planet 9’s gravity pushes the TNOs into their specific orbits.

But the orbit of 2017 OF201 doesn’t fit this pattern. “This object is definitely an outlier to the observed clustering,” says team member Eritas Yang at Princeton University.

Cheng and his colleagues also modelled simulations of the object’s orbit, and how it might interact with Planet 9. “In the one with Planet X, the object gets ejected after a couple of hundred million years, and without Planet X, it stays,” says Napier. “Certainly, this is not evidence in favour of Planet 9.”

But until there is more data, the case isn’t closed, says Cheng. “I hope Planet 9 still exists, because that’ll be more interesting.”

The candidate dwarf planet takes roughly 25,000 years to complete an orbit, which means it spends only about 1 per cent of its time close enough to Earth for us to detect it. “These things are really hard to find because they’re faint, and their orbits are so long and skinny that you can only see them when they’re really close to the sun, and then they immediately head right back out and they’re invisible to us again,” says Napier.

That means there might be hundreds of such objects out there. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, due to go online later this year, will look deeper into space and will potentially detect many more objects like this, which should tell us more about them – and whether Planet 9 actually exists.

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In academia, that imperative manifests itself in visible ways: publish or perish, funding or famine.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_482

Kosmos 482 (Russian: "Космос 482" meaning Cosmos 482), launched 31 March 1972, at 04:02:33 UTC, was an attempted Soviet Venus probe which failed to escape low Earth orbit. It is expected to crash back to Earth sometime around early 9 to 10 May 2025.[1][2] Its landing module, which weighs 495 kilograms (1,091 lb),[3] is highly likely to reach the surface of Earth in one piece as it was designed to withstand 300 g of acceleration and 100 atmospheres of pressure.

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spoiler

Living within one mile of a golf course doubles the risk of developing Parkinson’s, a new study suggests.

US researchers believe pesticides used to keep greens and fairways in immaculate condition could be triggering the condition by leaching into water supplies or becoming airborne.

In new research, a team from the Barrow Neurological Institute, Arizona analysed health data from people living near 139 golf courses in southern Minnesota and western Wisconsin.

They discovered that living within one mile of a golf course was associated with a 126 per cent higher risk of developing Parkinson’s compared with individuals living more than six miles away.

The study also found a linear relationship between the chance of developing Parkinson’s and distance from the greens, with each mile away reducing the chances of diagnosis by 13 per cent.

Writing in the journal Jama Network Open, Dr Brittany Krzyzanowski said: “These findings suggest that pesticides applied to golf courses may play a role in the incidence of Parkinson’s disease for nearby residents.

“Public health policies to reduce the risk of groundwater contamination and airborne exposure from pesticides on golf courses may help reduce risk of Parkinson’s disease in nearby neighbourhoods.”

The overall chance of developing Parkinson’s is small, with about 0.005 per cent of people in their 30s diagnosed, rising to about 1.7 per cent of people in their 80s.

Previous studies have suggested that exposure to pesticides such as organophosphates raise the risk of the condition, and in 2011 the US National Institutes of Health warned that rotenone and paraquat in particular multiply the risk of Parkinson’s by 2.5.

That study found the pesticides can inhibit the function of the mitochondria, the structure responsible for making energy in the cell, as well as causing oxidative stress that can harm cellular structures. Seven pesticides in groundwater

There is also evidence that pesticides from golf courses can pollute groundwater. A study of water courses surrounding four different golf courses in Cape Cod, Massachusetts discovered that they were contaminated with seven different pesticides including those linked to Parkinson’s.

But although there has been anecdotal evidence that living near golf courses may increase the chance of Parkinson’s and cancer, there have been no major studies until now.

The latest research looked at nearly 4,500 people who lived in the vicinity of golf courses, including 418 Parkinson’s patients.

It found a clear link for those living within three miles of a golf course, with the risk decreasing as people moved farther away. The effects were strongest in residential areas that shared their groundwater with a golf course.

Britain has traditionally used fewer pesticides on golf courses than the US, and recently banned the most harmful chemicals.

Experts at the charity Parkinson’s UK also pointed out the disease starts in the brain 10 to 15 years before diagnosis, so the seeds may have been planted long before people moved near a golf course.

Dr Katherine Fletcher, the research lead at Parkinson’s UK, said: “Parkinson’s is complex. The causes of the condition are unclear and are likely to involve both genetic and environmental factors.

“Many studies have investigated whether pesticides increase the risk of developing Parkinson’s in different populations around the world. The results have been varied, but overall suggest that exposure to pesticides may increase the risk of the condition.

However, the evidence is not strong enough to show that pesticide exposure directly causes Parkinson’s. In Europe and the UK, the use of pesticides is strictly controlled, and some – like paraquat – are banned, due to concerns about their wider health and environmental impacts.

“So, the risk of exposure to these for most people is extremely low.”

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this is a chance for the Soviet Union to do one last really cool thing inshallah

better article here

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cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/4763750

How do you know you’re a person who has lived your life, rather than a just-formed brain full of artificial memories, momentarily hallucinating a reality that doesn’t actually exist? That may sound absurd, but it’s kept several generations of top cosmologists up at night. They call it: the Boltzmann brain paradox. Fabio Pacucci explores this mind-numbing thought experiment.

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Linked from sci-hub.se when I searched for an unavailable DOI

Sci-Net will ask for a minimum amount of 1000 Sci-Hub tokens to register. The tokens will appear on your account after registration and will be used to reward uploaders. That is the most controversial part: some people argue that Sci-Net introduces paywall similar to publisher.

Even though both might appear similar at a first glance, the differences are profound. Compared to insane publisher paywalls, the entry tax on Sci-Net is symbolic and is not higher than an equivalent of a cup of coffee in most countries. The next difference is that in traditional approach, profits are made by publisher, and ordinary researcher has no control on how the money are used. On Sci-Net, you're using tokens directly to reward uploaders. Payments go to fellow researchers, not to the platform.

But the most important is that publishers will charge for access to the same paper again and again. Sci-Net will only do that once when paper is uploaded and after that, it will remain free forever and for everyone -- even users who are not registered on the platform will be able to access it. That is, all Sci-Net transactions contribute directly to public domain, and the number of knowledge accessible to everyone grows with Sci-Net usage.

The more people use Sci-Hub token, the more valuable it becomes. That way Sci-Net indirectly contributes to maintenance and further development of Sci-Hub.

The only downside is that obtaining Sci-Hub tokens on the Solana network can be a non-trivial puzzle for a user who are new to crypto. But that only makes the process more interesting.

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A much needed addendum to the previous post on this subject from 8 days ago: https://hexbear.net/post/4615155

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On a wave-battered rock in the northern Pacific Ocean, a fish called the sculpin grips the surface firmly to maintain stability in its harsh environment. Unlike sea urchins, which use their glue-secreting tube feet to adhere to their surroundings, sculpins manage to grip without a specialized adhesive organ like tube feet or the suction cups of octopuses.

So, why is this significant, and why are scientists so keen to understand it? Marine organisms thriving in high-energy environments serve as excellent natural models for designing more efficient and effective human-engineered devices, such as robots, grippers and adhesives. Improved adhesives could have wide-ranging impacts, from enhancing medical devices to creating tires with better road grip.

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Yeah, I've been spreading woke with my secret glowing armpits. What are you going to do about it, Sexbear?

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spoilerScientists have found new but tentative evidence that a faraway world orbiting another star may be home to life.

A Cambridge team studying the atmosphere of a planet called K2-18b has detected signs of molecules which on Earth are only produced by simple organisms.

This is the second, and more promising, time chemicals associated with life have been detected in the planet's atmosphere by Nasa's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

But the team and independent astronomers stress that more data is needed to confirm these results.

The lead researcher, Prof Nikku Madhusudhan, told me at his lab at Cambridge University's Institute of Astronomy that he hopes to obtain the clinching evidence soon.

"This is the strongest evidence yet there is possibly life out there. I can realistically say that we can confirm this signal within one to two years."

K2-18b is two-and-a-half times the size of Earth and is 700 trillion miles, or 124 light years, away from us - a distance far beyond what any human could travel in a lifetime.

JWST is so powerful that it can analyse the chemical composition of the planet's atmosphere from the light that passes through from the small red Sun it orbits.

The Cambridge group has found that the atmosphere seems to contain the chemical signature of at least one of two molecules that are associated with life: dimethyl sulphide (DMS) and dimethyl disulphide (DMDS). On Earth, these gases are produced by marine phytoplankton and bacteria.

Prof Madhusudhan said he was surprised by how much gas was apparently detected during a single observation window.

"The amount we estimate of this gas in the atmosphere is thousands of times higher than what we have on Earth," he said.

"So, if the association with life is real, then this planet will be teeming with life," he added.

Prof Madhusudhan went further: "If we confirm that there is life on K2-18b, it should basically confirm that life is very common in the galaxy."

He told BBC Radio 5Live on Thursday: "This is a very important moment in science, but also very important to us as a species.

"If there is one example, and the universe being infinite, there is a chance for life on many more planets."

Dr Subir Sarkar, a lecturer in astrophysics at Cardiff University and part of the research team, said the research suggests K2-18b could have an ocean which could be potentially full of life - though he cautioned scientists "don't know for sure".

He added that the research team's work will continue to focus on looking for life on other planets: "Keep watching this space."

There are lots of "ifs" and "buts" at this stage, as Prof Madhusudhan's team freely admits.

Firstly, this latest detection is not at the standard required to claim a discovery.

For that, the researchers need to be about 99.99999% sure that their results are correct and not a fluke reading. In scientific jargon, that is a five sigma result.

These latest results are only three sigma, or 99.7%. Which sounds like a lot, but it is not enough to convince the scientific community. However, it is much more than the one sigma result of 68% the team obtained 18 months ago, which was greeted with much scepticism at the time.

But even if the Cambridge team obtains a five sigma result, that won't be conclusive proof that life exists on the planet, according to Prof Catherine Heymans of Edinburgh University and Scotland's Astronomer Royal, who is independent of the research team.

"Even with that certainty, there is still the question of what is the origin of this gas," she told BBC News.

"On Earth it is produced by microorganisms in the ocean, but even with perfect data we can't say for sure that this is of a biological origin on an alien world because loads of strange things happen in the Universe and we don't know what other geological activity could be happening on this planet that might produce the molecules."

That view is one the Cambridge team agree with. They are working with other groups to see if DMS and DMDS can be produced by non-living means in the lab.

"There is still a 0.3% chance that it might be a statistical fluke," Prof Madhusudhan said.

Suggesting life may exist on another planet was "a big claim if true", he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme, adding: "So we want to be really, really thorough, and make more observations, and get the evidence to the level that there is less than a one-in-a-million chance of it being a fluke."

He said this should be possible in "maybe one or two years".

Other research groups have put forward alternative, lifeless, explanations for the data obtained from K2-18b. There is a strong scientific debate not only about whether DMS and DMDS are present but also the planet's composition.

The reason many researchers infer that the planet has a vast liquid ocean is the absence of the gas ammonia in K2-18b's atmosphere. Their theory is that the ammonia is absorbed by a vast body of water below.

But it could equally be explained by an ocean of molten rock, which would preclude life, according to Prof Oliver Shorttle of Cambridge University.

"Everything we know about planets orbiting other stars comes from the tiny amounts of light that glance off their atmospheres. So it is an incredibly tenuous signal that we are having to read, not only for signs of life, but everything else," he said.

"With K2-18b part of the scientific debate is still about the structure of the planet."

Dr Nicolas Wogan at Nasa's Ames Research Center has yet another interpretation of the data. He published research suggesting that K2-18b is a mini gas giant with no surface.

Both these alternative interpretations have also been challenged by other groups on the grounds that they are inconsistent with the data from JWST, compounding the strong scientific debate surrounding K2-18b.

Prof Chris Lintott, presenter of the BBC's The Sky at Night, said he had "great admiration" for Prof Madhusudhan's team, but was treating the research with caution.

"I think we've got to be very careful about claiming that this is 'a moment' on the search to life. We've [had] such moments before," he told Today.

He said the research should be seen instead as "part of a huge effort to try and understand what's out there in the cosmos".

Prof Madhusudhan acknowledges that there is still a scientific mountain to climb if he is to answer one of the biggest questions in science. But he believes he and his team are on the right track.

"Decades from now, we may look back at this point in time and recognise it was when the living universe came within reach," he said.

"This could be the tipping point, where suddenly the fundamental question of whether we're alone in the universe is one we're capable of answering."

The research has been published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

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