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The discovery was made by a group of experts who have used telescopes in Hawaii and in the Atacama Desert in Chile to study our neighboring planet in space. The international team includes researchers from the United Kingdom, the United States and Japan.
Astronomers have been speculating for decades whether high clouds on Venus may be habitable for microbes, where they can rise above the hot, scorching surface, but must withstand a highly acidic environment, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) writes in a statement from press.
This “airborne” extraterrestrial lifestyle may, sensationally, be an explanation for the discovery.
– Unexpectedly
The researchers, who present the discovery in the journals Nature Astronomy and Astrobiology, emphasize that phosphine alone cannot prove the existence of life on Venus. But the results are still considered very interesting.
“This is an amazing, unexpected discovery,” space scientist Sara Seager of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology told the New York Times.
For years, scientists have been searching for life in other parts of the solar system, such as on Mars and on large ice-covered moons such as Europa and Enceladus. Our neighbor Venus has not been the object of much interest.
Part of the explanation is that conditions on Venus are extreme compared to Earth. The temperature during the day is high enough to melt lead, and the atmosphere is made up mostly of carbon dioxide.
Various possibilities considered
The clouds that cover the surface of Venus are also extremely acidic and will break down gas quickly. Therefore, the finding suggests that something forms phosphine continuously.
On Earth, this gas is only produced industrially or by microbes that thrive in oxygen-free environments. The amount discovered on Venus is small, calculated in number of molecules, corresponding to about 20 per billion, ESO writes.
To find a possible explanation for the phenomenon, the researchers carried out a series of model studies. Among other things, they considered the possibility that phosphine is formed by sunlight, minerals rising from the surface, volcanoes or lightning. However, none of these sources seems to be able to explain more than one ten thousandth of the observed quantity.
Unknown chemistry
The bottom line is that the research is evidence of what experts call “unknown and anomalous chemistry” on Venus.
“This is one of the most exciting signs of extraterrestrial life that I have seen,” said Alan Duffy, an astronomer at Swinburne University and a senior fellow at the Royal Institution of Australia.
However, he cautions that while it is tempting to believe that phosphine is made up of living organisms, it is necessary to exclude all other possible non-biological explanations.
