The potential discovery of life elsewhere is down to the unprecedented sensitivity of Nasa's James Webb Space Telescope. Launched in 2021, it has enabled researchers to analyse the atmospheres of far-away worlds with remarkable precision, pushing the boundaries of what was once thought possible.

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).