Methane gas holds the key to finding alien life.
Methane could be the key to finding aliens in space
Scientists have been looking for water and oxygen when they search for extraterrestrials but the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope, which will begin observations this summer, is capable of detecting the fart-like gas that could be coming from a life form.
Dr. Joshua Krissanen-Totton, from California University, said: "If you detect a lot of methane on a rocky planet, you typically need a massive source to explain that. We know biological activity creates large amounts of methane on Earth, and probably did on the early Earth as well because making methane is a fairly easy to do metabolically."
Graduate student Maggie Thompson adds that it will take more than methane to determine the existence of aliens.
She said: "Methane is one piece of the puzzle, but to determine if there is life on a planet you have to consider its geo-chemistry, how it's interacting with its star, and the many processes that can affect a planet's atmosphere on geologic timescales."