K2-18b Does Not Meet The Standards Of Evidence For Life
K2-18b, a temperate sub-Neptune, has garnered significant attention due to claims of possible biosignatures in its atmosphere. Low-confidence detections of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and/or dimethyl disulfide (DMDS) have sparked considerable debate, primarily around arguments that their absorption features are not uniquely identifiable.
Here, we consider a different question from the astrobiology standards of evidence framework: Have we detected an authentic signal? To answer this, we analyzed previously-published, publicly-available JWST observations of K2-18b using independent data reduction and spectral retrieval frameworks.
Our comprehensive set of reductions demonstrates that the MIRI transit spectrum is highly susceptible to unresolved instrumental systematics. Applying different wavelength binning schemes yields a potpourri of planet spectra that then lead to a wide assortment of atmospheric interpretations. Consequently, we offer recommendations to help minimize this previously-underappreciated instrument systematic in future MIRI reductions of any exoplanet.
While the MIRI binning scheme adopted by Madhusudhan et al. (2025) supports a tentative detection of DMS/DMDS in K2-18b, we find that 87.5% of retrievals using our favored MIRI binning scheme do not. When considering the full, 0.7 – 12 micron transit spectrum, we confirm the detection of CH4 and CO2, and find the presence of DMS and C2H4 to be interchangeable.
Moreover, we find that the tentative presence of large features in the MIRI transit spectrum is in tension with the more robust, yet smaller, features observed in the near IR. We conclude that red noise — rather than an astrophysical signal — plagues the mid-IR data and there is, as yet, no statistically significant evidence for biosignatures in the atmosphere of K2-18b.
Kevin B. Stevenson, Jacob Lustig-Yaeger, E. M. May, Ravi K. Kopparapu, Thomas J. Fauchez, Jacob Haqq-Misra, Mary Anne Limbach, Edward W. Schwieterman, Kristin S. Sotzen, Shang-Min Tsai
Comments: Submitted to AAS Journals
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
Cite as: arXiv:2508.05961 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2508.05961v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2508.05961
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Submission history
From: Kevin Stevenson
[v1] Fri, 8 Aug 2025 02:49:13 UTC (2,514 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.05961
Astrobiology,
