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LiveScience
LiveScience
Brandon Specktor

Will the James Webb telescope lead us to alien life? Scientists say we're getting closer than ever.

A photo illustration of JWST hovering over an alien planet.

Imagine a planet twice as wide as Earth, covered in an ocean that smells like sweet cabbage.

Every day, a faint red star warms this ocean world and the uncountable masses of hungry, plankton-like creatures that inhabit it. They rise to the surface by the billions, joining together in a living, floating continent larger than Australia — spewing out a pungent gas as they knit sunlight into food.

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