2023.09.20 | Is there anybody out there?

On The Space Show for Wednesday, 20 September 2023:

Is there life on exoplanet Kepler K2-18b?

Nikku Madhusudhan of the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge University, reports the discovery of methane, carbon dioxide and the possible detection of the biomarker dimethyl sulphide on an exoplanet, using the James Webb Space Telescope. (Audio insert courtesy STScI)

OSIRIS-REx — Journey's End:

A summary of the OSIRIS-REx mission to collect a sample of asteroid Bennu, and plans for Sunday's landing in Utah. (Audio insert courtesy GSFC)

Hubble Tension:

The age of the Universe is estimated by two main methods: Locally (Parallax-Cepheids-Supernovae-Redshift) and Cosmic Microwave Background (COBE, Planck). The problem is they give two different measures for the Hubble Constant, and hence the age of the Universe. This feature looks back on COBE, and has a talk by Nobel Prize winner Adam Riess on his use of the James Webb Space Telescope to refine the measure of the Hubble Constant. (Audio inserts courtesy NASA, STScI)

Trolls, UAPs and NASA:

The internet trolls made NASA initially suppress the name of the director of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena research. (Audio insert courtesy NASA)