Category: 7. Science

Science is driven by our desire to understand things. In some cases, where it requires significant effort and investment to develop systems that can understand new things, science benefits from a game plan that the community of researchers focused on a particular niche can rally around, even if they don’t necessarily agree on the details. In astronomy and space science, those game plans typically take the form of Decadal Surveys, produced by the National Academies to define the path forward in a specialization or sub-field.

However, there are almost always follow-up reports that break down the suggestions from the Decadal Surveys into actionable plans that experts in the field then spend the next ten years executing on. One of those “tactical” plans was recently released on arXiv by the two lead scientists of NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration Program (ExEP), though it was listed as Rev H and released at least internally back in January 2025. In it, Drs. Karl Stapelfeldt and Eric Mamajek lay out 17 scientific goals that ExEP plans to work on over the next 3-5 years.

Many of those goals focus on “precursor science”, as the paper calls it, for the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO). HWO, a combination of LUVOIR and HabEx, two previously suggested large-scale space-based missions, was a key recommendation from the 2020 Decadal Survey, with a stated goal of characterizing 25 potentially habitable exoplanets during its lifetime. The Decadal Survey also suggested a “Technology Maturation Program” for great observatories that would work on de-risking technologies used in these massive telescopes to speed up their development cycle time.

Fraser discusses the future of exoplanet research.

But in order to understand the mission’s requirements for HWO to complete it’s goal of characterizing 25 potentially habitable exoplanets, some basic understanding of its targets must come first. Things like estimating the occurrence rates of temperate rocky planets (Gap #5) and understanding how many types of exoplanets different architectures will be able to detect (Gap #6). That yield estimation is also affected by other gaps in our knowledge, such as exozodiacal dust levels (Gap #11).

Understanding exoplanet atmospheres even before HWO begins its work is critical to its mission success, as three of the gaps show, though the first one (Spectroscopic observations of the atmospheres of small exoplanets) is specifically what HWO is designed to address. Modeling those atmospheres (Gap #2) and understanding the spectrographic properties of those atoms (Gap #13) will also play a key role in HWO’s success.

Interpreting the spectroscopic results and defining the formation patterns of both the planets and their host stars comprise many of the other goals. Whether that’s uncovering physical parameters of the planets (Gap #3) or determining the specific properties of their host stars (Gap #7), understanding what HWO is looking at before it even starts to look will be critical in correctly analyzing the data it produces.

HWO isn’t the only spacecraft tasks with searching for exoplanets, as Fraser explains.

Helpfully, the report lists out current mitigation strategies, and even links to different efforts to work on closing these gaps, such as the Exoplanet Opacity Database (Gap #2) and a challenge for data analysis of high-contrast ground-based imaging (Gap #3). If you’re interested in contributing to any of these efforts, this study provides multiple places to start.

Gaps in our knowledge are only one part of the bigger picture of space exploration. WIth a 47% cut to the Science Mission Directorate, such a drastic reduction in funds will obviously affect missions like the HWO. Though, it does seem like the paper’s two authors hadn’t joined the exodus of 4,000 NASA employees who opted to take the deferred resignation program in the last three months. As these budgeting and personnel changes play out, those who have a vested interest in the search for other habitable worlds will continue to keep a close eye on them, and hopefully use this paper as a guidebook to continue moving forward to finding their holy grail of a potentially habitable world.

Learn More:

K. Stapelfeldt & E Mamajek – NASA Exoplanet Exploration Program (ExEP) Science Gap List

UT – Is the Habitable Worlds Observatory a Good Idea?

UT – Research Work Begins on the Habitable Worlds Observatory

UT – HWO Could Find Irrefutable Signs Of Life On Exoplanets

Skygazers have had a lot to look at recently. A couple of dueling meteor showers graced the skies earlier this week, but if you missed that then you can still catch perhaps the most popular meteor shower of the year: the Perseids meteor shower.

Perseids are known for their bright fireballs and plentiful meteors. The show started on July 17, and will run through Aug. 23. 

The reason the Perseids meteor shower is so popular is twofold. First, it takes place in the summer, so going outside and watching it is less uncomfortable than other large meteor showers like Quadrantids, which takes place in wintery January. 

The other reason is that it’s one of the most active meteor showers of the year. During its peak, the meteor shower is known to spit as many as 100 meteors on average, according to the American Meteor Society. These not only include your typical shooting stars, but also a higher chance for fireballs, which are meteors that explode as they enter orbit. Per NASA, fireballs tend to last longer than standard shooting stars and can come in a variety of different colors. 

Perseids come to Earth courtesy of the 109P/Swift-Tuttle comet. Earth’s orbit around the sun brings it through Swift-Tuttle’s tail every year. The comet itself takes 133 years to orbit the sun. Its last perihelion — the point at which it’s the closest to the sun — was in 1992. It won’t be back until the year 2125. Until then, it leaves behind an excellent tail of dust and debris to feed us yearly meteor showers. 

How to catch the Perseids meteor shower

The best time to view the Perseids is during its peak, which occurs on the evenings of Aug. 12 and 13. During this time, the shower will produce anywhere from 25 to 100 meteors per hour on average. However, since the shower officially lasts for over a month, you have a chance to see a shooting star on any given evening, provided that you’re far enough away from light pollution.

Thus, if you’re planning on watching this year’s Perseids during their peak, you’ll want to get out of the city and suburbs as far as possible. According to Bill Cooke, lead of NASA’s Meteoroid Environments Office, folks in the city might see one or two meteors from the meteor shower per hour, which is pocket change compared to what those outside city limits might see. 

Regardless, once you’ve arrived at wherever you want to watch the meteors, you’ll want to direct your attention to the radiant, or the point at which the meteors will appear to originate. Like all meteors, Perseids are named after the constellation from which they appear. In this case, it’s Perseus.

Per Stellarium’s free sky map, Perseus will rise from the northeastern horizon across the continental US on the evenings of Aug. 12 and 13. It’ll then rise into the eastern sky, where it’ll remain until after sunrise. So, in short, point yourself due east and you should be OK. Binoculars may help, but we recommend against telescopes since they’ll restrict your view of the sky to a very small portion, which may hinder your meteor-sighting efforts. 

The American Meteor Society also notes that the moon may give viewers some difficulty. Perseids’ peak occurs just three days after August’s full moon, so the moon will still be mostly full. Thus, it is highly probable that light pollution from the moon may reduce the number of visible meteors by a hefty margin, depending on how things go.

Cancer cells mount an instant, energy‑rich response to being physically squeezed, according to a study published in the journal Nature Communications. The surge of energy is the first reported instance of a defensive mechanism which helps the cells repair DNA damage and survive the crowded environments of the human body.

The findings help explain how cancer cells survive complex mechanical gauntlets like crawling through a tumour microenvironment, sliding into porous blood vessels or enduring the battering of the bloodstream. The discovery of the mechanism can lead to new strategies which pin cancer cells down before they spread.

Researchers at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona made the discovery using a specialized microscope that can compress living cells to just three microns wide, about one-thirtieth the diameter of a human hair. They observed that, that, within seconds of being squeezed, mitochondria in HeLA cells race to the surface of the nucleus and pump in extra ATP, the molecular energy source of cells.

It forces us to rethink the role of mitochondria in the human body. They aren’t these static batteries powering our cells, but more like agile first responders that can be summoned in emergency situations when cells are literally pressed to the limit.”

Dr. Sara Sdelci, co-corresponding author of the study

The mitochondria formed a halo so tight that the nucleus dimpled inward. The phenomenon was observed in 84 percent of confined HeLa cancer cells, compared with virtually none in floating, uncompressed cells. The researchers refer to the structures “NAMs,” for nucleus-associated mitochondria.

To find out what NAMs did, the researchers deployed a fluorescent sensor that lights up when ATP enters the nucleus. The signal soared by around 60 percent within three seconds of the cells being squeezed. “It’s a clear sign the cells are adapting to the strain and rewiring their metabolism,” says Dr. Fabio Pezzano, co-first author of the study.

Subsequent experiments revealed why the power surge matters. Mechanical squeezing puts DNA under stress, snapping strands and tangling the human genome. Cells rely on ATP-hungry repair crews to loosen DNA and reach broken sites to mend the damage. Squeezed cells that received the extra boost of ATP repaired DNA within hours, while those without stopped dividing properly.

To confirm relevance for disease, the researchers also examined breast‑tumour biopsies from 17 patients. The NAM halos appeared in 5.4 percent of nuclei at invasive tumour fronts versus 1.8 percent in the dense tumour core, a three‑fold difference. “Seeing this signature in patient biopsies convinced us of the relevance beyond the lab bench,” explains Dr. Ritobrata (Rito) Ghose, co-first author of the study.

The researchers were also able to study the cellular engineering which makes the mitochondrial rush possible. Actin filaments, the same protein cables that let muscles flex, compound around the nucleus, while the endoplasmic reticulum throws a mesh-like net. The combined scaffold, the study shows, physically traps the NAMs in place, forming the halo-like structure. When the researchers treated cells with latrunculin A, a drug that dismantles actin, NAM formation collapsed and the ATP tide receded.

If metastatic cells depend on NAM-driven ATP surges, drugs that block the scaffold could make tumours less invasive without broadly poisoning mitochondria and sparing healthy tissues. “Mechanical stress responses are an underexplored vulnerability of cancer cells that can open new therapeutic avenues,” says Dr. Verena Ruprecht, co-corresponding author of the study.

While the study looked at cancer cells, the authors of the study stress the phenomenon is likely a universal phenomenon in biology. Immune cells squeezing through lymph nodes, neurons extending branches, and embryonic cells during morphogenesis all experience similar physical forces.

“Wherever cells are under pressure, a nuclear energy boost is likely safeguarding the integrity of the genome,” concludes Dr. Sdelci. “It’s a completely new layer of regulation in cell biology, marking a fundamental shift in our understanding of how cells survive intense periods of physical stress.”

A toddler’s neck bone discovered with clear cut-marks dating to about 850,000 years ago may be evidence that an ancient hominin species, Homo antecessor, cannibalized a child, according to archaeologists in Spain.

The researchers say the finding, announced July 24, is further indication of Paleolithic cannibalism at Gran Dolina cave in Spain’s Sierra de Atapuerca, where signs of ancient humans butchering one another have been found for decades.

“This is direct evidence that the child was processed like any other prey,” says Palmira Saladié, an archaeologist with the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES-CERCA) and one of the leaders of the excavations where the neck bone was unearthed.

Decapitation did not always mean meat from the dead individual was consumed, she says. But in the case of this child, who was between two and four years old, she believes it was almost certain the individual was also eaten.

The toddler’s vertebra was found along with bones from nine other individuals, in a layer of sediment within the cave dated to about 850,000 years ago. Many of the bones also had cut marks, as well as fractures the researchers say seem to have been made to reach the marrow inside. But not everyone agrees with the team’s conclusions.

Homo antecessor’s cave

Gran Dolina and the Atapuerca site near the northern Spanish city of Burgos were uncovered in the 1890s, when a route for a new railway was cut through nearby mountains. Excavations since the 1960s have revealed broadly accepted evidence of cannibalism among the Homo antecessor group that lived there from about 900,000 years ago until their species went extinct, possibly a little more than 100,000 years later.

Scientists disagree on whether Homo antecessor was a direct ancestor of anatomically modern humans—Homo sapiens—or if it was a related species that died out.

Regardless, evidence from prehistoric archaeological sites—including the Mesolithic Gough’s Cave in the west of England and the Neolithic Herxheim site in Germany—indicates that early Homo sapiens, too, were sometimes cannibals. Signs of cannibalism among earlier human species, such as Neanderthals, have been found at archaeological sites all over the world, including some of the earliest evidence from Kenya.

In a few cases, what was once thought to be evidence of hominin cannibalism might actually be something else: stripping flesh from bones for a “reburial” perhaps, which has been suggested for Neolithic remains in France.

Cannibal controversy

Some experts disagree if the newfound cut-marks are evidence the child was cannibalized.

“Cannibalism is very rare,” says Michael Pante a paleoanthropologist from Colorado State University, who was not involved in the discovery. “It’s just not a common thing that we see.”

He says that although scientists claim to have found evidence of cannibalism from remains at several archaeological sites, and especially at Atapuerca, direct evidence of it is uncommon.

“This decapitation doesn’t mean they consumed that individual,” says Pante. “They were obviously cutting up a child for some reason, but there are a number of reasons they may have done that.” A funeral ritual is one possibility.

Pante also disagrees with a suggestion made by the researchers that early humans at Atapuerca hunted rival humans as a food resource.

“There is not a lot of evidence of that,” he says. Cannibalism among humans—even very early humans like these—was unusual for nutritional purposes and may have only occurred in rituals, he adds.

Other researchers are more convinced, however.

James Cole, an archaeologist and expert in early human cannibalism who was also not involved in the work, says the first evidence for cannibalism at Atapuerca was found almost 30 years ago.

“The new find in this respect is perhaps unsurprising,” he says, “but it is absolutely fascinating and hints at the rich story about our evolutionary past that the site still has to tell.”

• L 98-59 is a red dwarf star with several small planets orbiting it. It is only 35 light-years from Earth. Previously, astronomers knew of four planets in the system.
• Now, astronomers have discovered a fifth planet, in the habitable zone of the star. They found it by re-analyzing older data from both ground and space-based telescopes.
• The planets of L 98-59 are remarkably diverse. The two closest to the star might be highly volcanic, like Jupiter’s moon Io. Meanwhile, the third and least dense planet might be a water world.

A 5th planet for L 98-59

L 98-59 is a fascinating planetary system only 35 light-years from Earth. Astronomers previously found four small exoplanets orbiting the red dwarf star. And now a research team led by the Trottier Institute for Research on Exoplanets (IREx) at the University of Montreal in Canada has confirmed a fifth planet. The researchers said on July 22, 2025, that the planet – L 98-59 f – is orbiting in the star’s habitable zone, where water could potentially exist. In addition, the research team has determined the sizes and masses of all the planets with unprecedented precision.

They used an archive of data from NASA’s TESS space telescope, the European Southern Observatory’s HARPS and ESPRESSO spectrographs in Chile, and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

Previously, NASA’s TESS space telescope discovered the first three planets in 2019, and the fourth planet was found in 2021. This is now the fifth known planet orbiting L 98-59.

The researchers have submitted their new peer-reviewed paper to The Astronomical Journal. Meanwhile, a preprint version is currently available on arXiv, submitted on July 12, 2025.

5th planet is in the habitable zone

The astronomers found the fifth planet – called L 98-59 f – using the radial velocity method. Basically, it’s when the gravity of a planet slightly tugs on its host star as it orbits. Consequently, astronomers can then detect those very slight variations in the motion of the star. The team used data from the HARPS (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher) spectrograph on the ESO 3.6-meter telescope and the ESPRESSO spectrograph at the Very Large Telescope (VLT), both in Chile.

Although this planet, like the others, orbits close to its star, it is within the star’s habitable zone. This is the region where temperatures could allow liquid water. This is possible because the star is smaller and cooler than our sun. Its habitable zone, therefore, is closer to the star than our sun’s habitable zone. In fact, L 98-59 f receives about the same amount of stellar energy as Earth does from the sun. Lead author Charles Cadieux at the University of Montreal said:

Finding a temperate planet in such a compact system makes this discovery particularly exciting. It highlights the remarkable diversity of exoplanetary systems and strengthens the case for studying potentially habitable worlds around low-mass stars.

A diverse system of rocky worlds

The new discovery adds to the intrigue of this planetary system. Indeed, astronomers already knew the first four planets were a diverse and fascinating collection of worlds. Now, the new observations have helped the researchers determine their sizes and masses with even greater accuracy. Cadieux said:

These new results paint the most complete picture we’ve ever had of the fascinating L 98-59 system. It’s a powerful demonstration of what we can achieve by combining data from space telescopes and high-precision instruments on Earth, and it gives us key targets for future atmospheric studies with the James Webb Space Telescope.

At least four of the planets are rocky, like Earth. Scientists call those terrestrial planets. The third planet from the star, L 98-59 d, has a lower density than the others, however. It might be a water world, a rocky planet completely covered in water, or even a planet composed mostly of water without a solid surface. Previously, another study in 2024 suggested it might be a volcanic world with a sulfur-rich atmosphere.

In addition, the two closest planets to the star might experience significant volcanic activity, due to tidal heating from the star. This is similar to how Jupiter’s gravity heats the interior of its moon Io. Io is the most volcanically active body in our solar system. The closest planet to the star, L 98-59 b, is 84% the size of Earth and only half of Earth’s mass.

A unique natural laboratory

Co-author René Doyon, the director of the Trottier Institute for Research on Exoplanets at the University of Montreal, added:

With its diversity of rocky worlds and range of planetary compositions, L 98-59 offers a unique laboratory to address some of the field’s most pressing questions: What are super-Earths and sub-Neptunes made of? Do planets form differently around small stars? Can rocky planets around red dwarfs retain atmospheres over time?

Confirmation Of A Non-transiting Planet In The Habitable Zone Of The Nearby M dwarf L 98-59astrobiology.com/2025/07/conf… #astrobiology #exoplanet

— Astrobiology (@astrobiology.bsky.social) 2025-07-11T15:57:49.542Z

Improving old data

Notably, the researchers didn’t find the new planet by conducting new observations of L 98-59. Instead, they searched in older data from NASA’s TESS space telescope, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and the HARPS spectrograph on the ESO 3.6-meter telescope and ESPRESSO spectrograph on the Very Large Telescope (VLT), both in Chile. They used an improved version of the radial velocity technique called line-by-line (LBL). IREx researchers first developed the improved technique back in 2022.

The team combined LBL with an improved technique to measure a star’s temperature. This allowed them to remove excess stellar “noise” from the star to reveal the planet.

Also, the new analysis of the data doubled the precision of the measurements of the sizes and masses of all the planets.

Co-author Étienne Artigau at the University of Montreal said:

We developed these techniques to unlock this kind of hidden potential in archival data. It also highlights how improving analysis tools allow us to improve upon previous discoveries with data that are just waiting to be revisited.

An exciting planetary system

The researchers have also now started additional observations of L 98-59 with the Webb space telescope. And truly, it is a fascinating planetary system of great interest to astronomers. Co-author Alexandrine L’Heureux at the University of Montreal said:

With these new results, L 98-59 joins the select group of nearby, compact planetary systems that we hope to understand in greater detail over the coming years. It’s exciting to see it stand alongside systems like TRAPPIST-1 in our quest to unlock the nature and formation of small planets orbiting red dwarf stars.

Bottom line: Astronomers have discovered a fifth planet in the L 98-59 planetary system, in the star’s habitable zone. The system features a diverse range of worlds.

Source (preprint): Detailed Architecture of the L 98-59 System and Confirmation of a Fifth Planet in the Habitable Zone

Via University of Montreal

Read more: Is this a volcanic exoplanet? Hints are in its atmosphere

Read more: An inner solar system much like ours, 35 light-years away

The Kumani Bank mud volcano, first identified in 1861, has erupted at least eight times, each event creating short-lived islands. The most powerful eruption, in 1950, produced an island roughly 2,300 feet (700 metres) wide and rising 20 feet (6 metres) above sea level. These islands, however, rarely last beyond a few months or years before sinking back beneath the waves.

Scientists exploring two oceanic trenches in the northwest Pacific have discovered thriving communities of marine life, including thousands of worms and mollusks nearly six miles beneath the surface, making it the deepest colony of creatures ever to be observed.

Dominated by tube worms and clams, the community is able to survive at depths through a process known as chemosynthesis, meaning that life here is nourished by the fluids ‘rich in hydrogen sulfide and methane’ seeping from the seafloor, which they then turn into energy.

The discovery was made by a team of scientists – led by researchers from China – piloting a deep-sea submersible able to reach these astounding depths (up to 10 kilometres below sea level) within the northwest Pacific’s Mariana Trench.

According to the team’s research paper now published in the scientific journal, Nature the discovery of life in Earth’s deepest underwater valley suggests there could be much more life thriving in hostile conditions at the bottom of the – largely unexplored – ocean.

Co-lead author on the study, Xiatong Peng, from China’s Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering at the Chinese Academy of Science, said: “Hadal trenches, some of the Earth’s least explored and understood environments have long been proposed to harbour chemosynthesis-based communities. Yet, despite increasing attention, actual documentation of such communities has been exceptionally rare.”

This paper begins to change that. Within it, the team documents the discovery of the “deepest and most extensive chemosynthesis-based communities known to exist on Earth” during an expedition to the Kuril-Kamchatka Trench and the western Aleutian Trench, using the manned submersible, Fendouzhe.

The discovered communities – dominated by the species siboglinid Polychaeta and Bivalvia – span a distance of 2,500km at depths from 5,800 metres to as much as 9,533 metres. 

“Given geological similarities with other hadal trenches, such chemosynthesis-based communities might be more widespread than previously anticipated,” said Xiatong Peng. “These findings challenge current models of life at extreme limits and carbon cycling in the deep ocean.”

Like a symphony building from a single note, that lone cell divides again and again until thousands of cells are dancing in harmony. They push, pull, and glide across one another, weaving the intricate choreography that shapes a growing embryo into something astonishing: life in motion.

The coordination of cell behavior is at the heart of morphogenesis, the process by which cells collectively reshape and reorganize to form tissues and organs. In epithelial tissues, when cells change shape, they generate mechanical forces that ripple through their neighbors.

These forces aren’t just passive; they can be sensed by surrounding cells, potentially triggering active responses that help guide the entire tissue’s transformation. Yet, while scientists have long suspected that cells use these mechanical cues to communicate, the exact molecular mechanisms behind this “cellular conversation” have remained a mystery, especially how they orchestrate large-scale coordination across developing tissues.

Scientists from the Göttingen Campus, the Max Planck Institute, and the University of Marburg have discovered a surprising way that embryonic cells work together. They found that these cells use the same molecular tools that our ears use for hearing. The researchers believe this shared use comes from a common evolutionary origin, showing how nature can repurpose the same proteins for very different jobs.

A biosensing technique to monitor cellular communication

By combining tools from genetics, brain science, hearing research, and physics, researchers made a surprising discovery about how cells communicate. In thin layers of skin, cells can sense the movements of their neighbors and adjust their tiny movements to match. This teamwork allows groups of cells to pull together more strongly.

Because they’re so sensitive, the cells can respond quickly and flexibly; these gentle forces are the fastest signals moving through embryonic tissue.

But when researchers turned off the cells’ ability to “listen” to each other, the tissue stopped working correctly, and development slowed down or failed.

The researchers built computer models of tissue that included how cells coordinate with each other. These models showed that the gentle “whispers” between neighboring cells create a connected, dance-like movement across the whole tissue and help protect it from outside pressure. The team confirmed these effects by watching real-time videos of embryos developing and running more experiments.

Cell chat: Attacking disease by learning the language of cells

With the help of AI and advanced computer analysis, they studied about 100 times more cell pairs than ever before. This big data approach gave them the precision needed to understand these subtle cell-to-cell interactions truly.

The same tiny force sensors that help us hear faint sounds are now being linked to how embryos develop. In our ears, special hair cells detect incredibly small movements, just a few atoms wide, and turn them into nerve signals. This extreme sensitivity comes from unique proteins that convert mechanical pressure into electrical signals.

Scientists already knew these proteins were key to hearing, but now they’ve discovered they also help cells in embryos sense and respond to each other’s movements. It turns out that this is possible because every cell in the body carries the complete set of genetic instructions and can use any protein it needs, even ones known initially for completely different jobs.

Professor Fred Wolf, Director of the CIDBN and co-author of the study, said, “The phenomenon could also provide insights into how the perception of force at a cellular level has evolved. The evolutionary origin of these force-sensitive ion channel proteins probably lies in our single-celled ancestors, which we share with fungi and which emerged long before the origin of animal life.”

“But it was only with the evolution of the first animals that the current diversity of this protein type emerged.”

Future research will explore whether these tiny cellular “nanomachines” originally evolved to sense internal forces within the body, like those between neighboring cells, before being adapted for external sensing, such as detecting sound in hearing. This could reveal that their first job wasn’t to help us hear the world but to help our cells talk to each other during development.

Journal Reference

1. Richa P., Häring M., Wang Q., Choudhury A. R., Göpfert M. C., Wolf F., Großhans J., Kong D. Synchronization in epithelial tissue morphogenesis. Current Biology 35, 1–14 (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2025.03.066

The saga surrounding Neptune-size “super-Earth” exoplanet K2-18 b just got a whole lot more interesting. For a quick recap, this is the world a team of scientists recently suggested could host life — to the dismay of other scientists in the community, who felt the announcement failed to include necessary caution.

While signs of life on the world have failed to conclusively present themselves to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the powerful space telescope has discovered that this planet is so rich in liquid water that it could be an ocean, or “Hycean” world.