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There may be microscopic life on our neighboring planet Venus. Astronomers have found phosphine gas in clouds in the planet’s atmosphere, according to a study published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy. All phosphine in Earth’s atmosphere comes from living organisms or human activities.
All life produces waste, such as gases from substances that the body no longer needs. These gases around another planet are therefore a sign of life. Astronomers were looking for the substance phosphine, whose molecules consist of one phosphorus atom and three hydrogen atoms, because it is difficult to explain how it would arise with natural processes around rocky planets such as Earth, Venus and Mars.
The researchers studied first the atmosphere of Venus for five mornings in June 2017 with the James Clerk Maxwell telescope in Hawaii, and then did another study with the Alma telescope in Chile, which uses a different technology, in March 2019.The results show that there are around of 20 billionths of phosphine in the clouds of Venus. These levels cannot be explained by lightning, volcanic eruptions, phosphorus entering the atmosphere with meteorites, or chemical processes in clouds.
But the astronomers behind the study are careful to point out that the results should not be viewed as evidence of life on Venus. It is very difficult to imagine that living organisms could survive on the inhospitable and hot surface of the planet. Temperatures in the highest clouds in the atmosphere, at an altitude of around 60 kilometers, are more suitable for life, but the environment there, on the other hand, is extremely dry and very acidic. The phosphine levels only show that there must be chemical or geological processes on our neighboring planet that we do not yet know about. More research, such as space probes examining the planet closely, is needed to understand whether life or something else is producing the gas.
