Who needs H-1B, if we can go to K2-18b?

While everyone alternately scares and comforts themselves by muttering from AQI-high rooftops, 'There is no Planet B', every season, boffins in front of high-funda telescopes point excitedly at a distant ball of rock or gas, and headlines scream, 'We may have found a habitable planet!' This week, it's K2-18b in the constellation Leo, and the latest act in the ongoing space opera is buzzing, again, about its potential to harbour life.

Let's be honest. We've been here before. Kepler-22b, Proxima Centauri b, and even the romantic-sounding Gliese 581g (super dud) have all had their moment in the starlight. Every time we get hopeful, imagining extraterrestrial civilisations waving at us from a distant neighbourhood, only to later realise that 'potentially habitable' is code for 'technically not a raging inferno, but still wildly uninhabitable'.

K2-18b, however, offers new intrigue. There's talk of its atmosphere having key ingredients for life - no, not Wi-Fi and buried temples, but dimethyl sulfide and dimethyl disulfide. So, could K2-18b - whose 'good name' is EPIC 201912552 b - be the one? Could we finally pack our bags, say goodbye to traffic jams, prowling autocrats and debates about work-life balance, and settle into a fresh new cosmic real estate that even Trump is not interested in? It's 120 light years away. Watch this space.