Tuesday, November 11, 2025

What a Missing Signal Tells Us About Alien Worlds

This artist’s concept shows what exoplanet K2-18 b could look like based on science data to date (Credit : NASA, CSA, ESA, J. Olmstead (STScI), N. Madhusudhan (Cambridge University))

When astronomers detected potential biosignatures in the atmosphere of exoplanet K2-18 b, it raised a critical question, ‘could this world's atmosphere even survive its host star's radiation?’ A new study using the Very Large Array searched for radio emissions from the K2-18 system and found something surprising, it was absolutely silent. That absence of radio signals reveals K2-18 is an unusually quiet star, suggesting the planet's atmosphere faces minimal erosion from stellar activity.



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