Naturally, organic simply means carbon is present in the (non-metal) structure. Generally carbon-carbon, carbon-hydrogen, and a few other bond-types are considered organic. Many articles prey on people’s misunderstanding of this in order to craft a good headline, since “carbon-based material” doesn’t sound as exciting as “organic material”.

And when they say it “be created by processes not related to life as we know it” they should also probably mention that it can be created in the absence of any life at all; since if that weren’t true then it would in fact be direct evidence of life.

Thank you. This is exactly why I tended to go right to the comments in Reddit, because inevitably an “expert” would comment on why the article headline was bullshit (an “expert” can be somebody with experience, a PhD, or just somebody who actually read the article). It’s so annoying how the news gets framed in order to increase the number of clicks on a page.

Funny how that’s the most important part and it’s not in the headline.

Almost like they know what they’re doing and don’t care because it makes them more money.