No, the James Webb Space Telescope hasn’t found life out there—at least not yet

Enlarge / An artist's impression of the planet K2-18b and its clouds. (credit: ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser)

The rumors have been out there for a while now, percolating through respectable corners of the astronomy and astrobiological community, that the James Webb Space Telescope has found a planet with strong evidence of life.

Some of this sentiment recently bubbled into the public view when the British news magazine The Spectator published an item titled "Have we just discovered aliens?" In accordance with Betteridge's law of headlines, the answer to the question posed in this headline is no.

But is it a hard no? That's a more difficult question. The Spectator featured comments by some serious British scientists, including astrophysicist Rebecca Smethurst, who said, "I think we are going to get a paper that has strong evidence for a biosignature on an exoplanet very, very soon."