Alien life might be a question you've never thought to ask about yourself. Every atom of oxygen you breathe had to pass through a supernova to exist. Stars exploded to build you. That's not poetic license, that's physics, and once you understand it, the question of whether life exists elsewhere gets a lot harder to answer with a simple no.

Astronomers identified that molecule by measuring how it absorbs light, a technique rooted in quantum mechanics where every atom has a unique spectral fingerprint. It sounds precise, but the data is noisy enough that a similar detection from last year remains genuinely disputed, with researchers divided over whether the signal was real at all. The CHNOPS elements, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur, are what life on Earth runs on. Finding sulfur-bearing molecules in space is evidence the same recipe is available. What nobody can say yet is whether anything used it.

The headline version of this story is designed for clicks. The actual science is slower, more uncertain, and more interesting. Next time one of these announcements lands, the question worth asking isn't "did we find aliens" but "what exactly did they detect, and do other scientists agree."

Topics: alien life search, extraterrestrial life, stellar nucleosynthesis, CHNOPS elements, astrobiology

GUEST: Dr. Sarah Rugheimer

Originally aired on 2026-02-18