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We were looking for the “Martians”, instead, powerful telescopes, placed in CiIe and the Hawaiian Islands, would have found the “Venusians”. Of course we are talking about very elementary life forms and, therefore, make no mistake: in our Solar System there are no beings similar to us. However, what was noted in Venere, or rather in the upper parts of its atmosphere, it is really a big shot or, to put it with the researchers’ emphasis, an exceptional discovery.
Scientists have discovered that phosphine is present in these upper layers, a gas that suggests that Venus has the potential to host unknown photochemical or geochemical processes. In short, an almost certain chemical trail of microbial life. But we will have to wait for confirmations.
The team that conducted the study, however, goes with the initiative and, even if they think the discovery is significant, admit that “confirming the presence of” life “requires more work. Although the high-altitude clouds of Venus reach a comfortable 30 degrees Celsius, they are incredibly acidic – around 90% is sulfuric acid – posing big problems for all the microbes trying to survive inside. ‘
Venus, 38 years ago the first recorded sound of “another world”
The president of the Italian Society of Astrobiology
Raffaele Saladino, president of the Italian Astrobiology Society, is cautious: “As we know, phosphine can be produced in different ways and, in any case, the exceptionality of the discovery is that there is a source of phosphorus up there. In any case – he continues – I think further investigation is necessary. But since there are microbial forms on our planet capable of producing this type of gas, I really hope that soon there will be elements that support this hypothesis and that the same process will occur on Venus.
(Professor Raffaele Saladino, co-president of the Italian Society of Astrobiology based in Viterbo)
The research team
The study was conducted by a team of researchers from the University of Manchester, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Cardiff University who are trying to understand the source of the gas. Among the various hypotheses, the one that takes the most consistency is that the gas derives from microbial life forms, a phenomenon that also occurs on our planet. The team of scientists is made up of researchers from the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Japan.
Read also: Not only Mars and Saturn, to understand the evolution of the Earth it will be necessary to study Venus
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“It was a real shock to see the first signs of phosphine in the Venus spectrum!” Exclaimed Jane Greaves of Cardiff University in the UK, head of the team that first identified the phosphine fingerprint. (also called hydrogen phosphide) in observations from the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT), operated by the East Asia Observatory, in Hawaii. Confirmation of the discovery required the use of 45 antennas from the Atacama Large Millimeter / submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, a more sensitive telescope of which the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is a partner.
John Brucato dell’Inaf
“In the work just published in Nature Astronomy – said John Robert Brucato, exobiologist at the National Institute of Astrophysics – the researchers observed the presence of phosphine molecules in the atmosphere of Venus. Phosphine is composed of one phosphorus and three hydrogen atoms. This molecule has its own value in the search for life in space: in fact, it could be the “fingerprint” of the presence of some microorganism that produces phosphine as waste in the atmosphere of Venus. In the atmosphere of Earth, the Phosphine is all produced by microorganisms that use phosphate minerals and produce it through redox processes.
(John Robert Brucato dell’Inaf)
This molecule, in fact, on Venus should rapidly degrade and disappear due to the extreme conditions present on the planet, such as very high atmospheric pressure and temperatures of more than 450 degrees near the ground. Finding it suggests that there may be continued phosphine production. Where could it come from? By microorganisms or by abiotic processes, is that geological or geophysical?
“To date – answers Brucato – there are no known abiotic processes from which phosphine can originate, so the discovery is interesting: it is a kind of alarm bell that may suggest the presence of some form of life in the Venusian atmosphere, where the temperature is significantly lower than that of the ground. In addition, phosphorus is present on Earth and other planets as phosphate, making it difficult to use as a chemical element that is later incorporated into biological processes. Phosphine converts phosphorus in a more reactive form and allows that, once it is solubilized in the water droplets present in the upper atmosphere of Venus, it is used in biological processes. So also from this point of view the discovery is very interesting “.
The prophetic words of Luciano Iess
The rest Luciano Iess, the engineer and professor at La Sapienza University of Rome, who had coordinated the study on Saturn’s rings, had said it clearly not even two years ago: “The red planet is of extraordinary interest, especially because it is linked to the Certain presence of water in the past. But instead it is Venus, in many respects Earth’s twin planet. I have always been fascinated by the causes that have caused two such similar planets to evolve so differently. We still know very little about the interior of Venus. If we want to better understand the formation and evolution of the Earth, we must look at Venus, not at Mars. What makes the Solar System interesting is the diversity of its environments, a bit like on Earth. And from this point of view, every planet deserves to be studied in depth.
Here is the study published in Nature astronomy
Last updated: 19:11
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