--- title: What to Know About Scientists Potentially Discovering Hints of Life On A Distant Planet | TIME description: A team of astronomers have found what they claim are the most promising—but also tentative—signs of possible life on a distant planet. canonical: https://time.com/video/S53VY1z8/ og:title: What to Know About Scientists Potentially Discovering Hints of Life On A Distant Planet og:description: A team of astronomers have found what they claim are the most promising—but also tentative—signs of possible life on a distant planet. og:url: https://time.com/video/S53VY1z8/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/S53VY1z8/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: What to Know About Scientists Potentially Discovering Hints of Life On A Distant Planet twitter:description: A team of astronomers have found what they claim are the most promising—but also tentative—signs of possible life on a distant planet. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/S53VY1z8/poster.jpg?width=720 --- * World # What to Know About Scientists Potentially Discovering Hints of Life On A Distant Planet > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: What to Know About Scientists Potentially Discovering Hints of Life On A Distant Planet [Watch (HLS stream): What to Know About Scientists Potentially Discovering Hints of Life On A Distant Planet](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/S53VY1z8.m3u8) (2:04)  _Published 2025-04-17. A team of astronomers have found what they claim are the most promising—but also tentative—signs of possible life on a distant planet._ --- Apr 17, 2025 6:20 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [](/video/2VgKcxuk/) ![This Telescope Will Search for Life on Distant Planets \[VERTICAL\]](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/2VgKcxuk/poster.jpg?width=720)02:00 ### This Telescope Will Search for Life on Distant Planets \[VERTICAL\] [There's New Evidence Of A Distant Ninth Planet In Our Solar System](/video/R5EPZe7o/) ### There's New Evidence Of A Distant Ninth Planet In Our Solar System [Astronomers Discover Blue Planet](/video/VkaXa2nf/) ### Astronomers Discover Blue Planet --- ## Transcript The confidence we have is at a 99.7%, which means there is still a 0.3% chance that this could be a statistical fluke. But in scientific discoveries, especially like a discovery like this, which is completely game changing for science and transforming our understanding of the universe, we want to be absolutely sure because it affects science and society in so many ways. So we want to go to a five sigma level, where we want to make sure that there is less than 1 in 1,000,000 chance of it being a statistical fluke. And then even if we detect the molecule, it's where it will be very good news that that molecule is there and it will be a very good sign of life. But we still want to do more experiments, theoretical work to make absolutely sure that that sign is uniquely from life as it is on Earth, and not from some other process that we may not even have thought of so far. Given the magnitude of result, any investment of time and effort we make, and this is totally justified because if it holds true, that will change our view of the universe forever. Right. So the sky that we look at today is a physical sky. Physical objects. Planets. Stars. Galaxies. But if you find that this is actually true, it is due to life, then what you'd be looking at is a living sky. And that's a major transformation to the to us as a species. So so we want to make sure we do everything we can to, to, to establish that, you know, we don't make an early claim of life without doing our due diligence. And that would also inform how life originated here on Earth, which is still an open question. So if we can observe many planets with different conditions when whether or not they have life, we could potentially piece together the puzzle of how actually and under what conditions life emerged here on Earth. So that's the scientific aspect. But more on a societal level, I think the fundamental transformation that has to happen and will happen amongst our species, humans, some sooner than others, is that for once, we'll realize that we are all representation of the same planet. We are. We are one entity. 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