[ad_1]
HOT: Venus is the closest planet to Earth, but there are big differences in the climate of the two planets. Photo: NASA / REUTERS
The surface of the earth’s closest neighbor is hot enough to melt lead. But there may be life in the clouds.
The surprising discovery was published in the journal Nature Astronomy on Monday. Scientists have found the rare phosphine gas in the atmosphere of Venus. It can be a sign of life:
“The findings suggest that there is a chemical process that we do not have on Earth or that some very robust organism has survived the runaway greenhouse effect and evolved to live in the clouds,” Jane Greaves of Cardiff University told ABC News.
According to NASA, the so-called “runaway greenhouse effect” is a strong greenhouse effect that occurs when there are such high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that all the water on the planet evaporates. Today, the surface of Venus is hot enough to melt lead, NASA writes.
Venus has the densest atmosphere of all the rocky planets in the solar system, and the atmosphere is made up of more than 95 percent CO₂. The temperature on the arid and desert surface of Venus exceeds 450 degrees, and the brutal forces of the wind sweep at 400 kilometers per hour.
Phosphine, the toxic gas that scientists have found in the atmosphere of Venus, is produced on Earth by microbes that thrive in the absence of oxygen or in industrial processes, ABC writes.
In 2006, the “Venus Express” space probe was sent to Venus, Earth’s closest neighbor, to investigate the planet’s surface. The overall goal was to discover how a planet so similar to Earth could have been so different. After eight years in orbit, attempts were made to dive deep into the atmosphere in the summer of 2014, and contact with the space probe was finally broken in November 2014.
