In a landmark discovery, scientists have found new but tentative signs of possible life beyond our solar system.

BBC News reported that data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope guided a Cambridge team, studying the atmosphere of a planet called K2-18b, to detect signs of molecules which on Earth are only produced by simple organisms.

The lead researcher, Professor Nikku Madhusudhan, said he was surprised by how much gas was detected, adding it was thousands of times higher than what is on Earth, and if so then the planet will be teeming with life.

The planet is reportedly two-and-a-half times the size of Earth and is 700 trillion miles, or 124 light years, away from us – a distance far beyond what any human could travel in a lifetime.