Indian-British astrophysicist Dr. Nikku Madhusudhan and his team at Cambridge University have identified potential signs of alien life on a distant planet called K2-18b. With the help of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the team detected the presence of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and dimethyl disulfide (DMDS) gases, which are particularly noteworthy as these are produced by the marine algae present in the Ocean.
Who is Nikku Madhusudhan?
Born in 1980 in India, Dr Madhusudhan earned his B.Tech. degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, BHU, Varanasi. Later, he pursued his master’s as well as a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 2009, his PhD thesis was about studying the atmospheres of planets outside our solar system, called extrasolar planets.
After his PhD, he held several positions as a postdoctoral researcher at MIT, Princeton University, and Yale University, where he was a YCAA Prize Postdoctoral Fellow. In 2013, he joined the University of Cambridge and spent four years working as a university lecturer in astrophysics. He was promoted to Reader in Astrophysics and Exoplanetary Science in 2017. He currently serves as a professor of astrophysics and exoplanetary science.
He came up with the idea of hycean planets, which are thought to be the best class of planets to look for life. The atmosphere of the hycean planets is rich in hydrogen, and underneath it are oceans. His research includes studying their atmospheres, interiors and how they were formed. His work includes exploring Hycean worlds, Sub-Neptunes, and biosignatures. He also works on radiative transfer, planetary chemistry, and atmospheric retrieval methods for exoplanets with the help of HST, JWST, and large ground-based telescopes.
In 2012, he studied a planet called 55 Cancri e, which is bigger than Earth, and suggested it might have a carbon-rich interior. In 2014, he led a team that measured water levels in three hot Jupiters and found less water than expected. In 2017, he was a part of the team that detected titanium oxide in the atmosphere of the planet WASP-19b. In 2020, he studied K2-18b and found that water may exist on its surface.
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