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Scientists at Cardiff University (UK) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA) have discovered phosphine, which may be of biological origin, indicating a possible sign of life in the atmosphere of the planet Venus.
The Sputnik source said: “The discovery was made by the James Clerk Maxwell telescope in Hawaii and the Atacama Large Millimeter / Submillimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescopes in Chile. The concentration of phosphine particles was 20 per billion, ”he said.
Phosphine, a colorless and highly toxic gas, is produced by anaerobic microorganisms that do not need oxygen on Earth. Last year the search for phosphine in the atmospheres of extrasolar planets was proposed as a study that could point to a possible life.
At the same time, the source noted that the discovery of phosphine does not automatically mean that there could be life on Venus, because this gas may have formed as a result of unknown natural processes, and emphasized that scientists have not found a method for the formation of phosphine, which until now has no biological origin.
The source added that information about the new discovery will be released at an online press conference, followed by an article about the study published in the journal Nature.
NOT THE FIRST PREDICTION
Predictions have been made before that there is life on Venus. In January 2012, Leonid Xanfomaliti, Principal Investigator of the Institute for Space Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences, in the academic journal Astronomiçeskiy Vestnik published in Russia, published an article on the analysis of images taken by the Soviet lander of the ‘Venera-13’ station. He attracted attention, but many of his colleagues viewed him with suspicion.
Now, Russia and the United States are exploring the possibilities of jointly producing the spacecraft called Venera-D that could land on Venus in 2027 and search for traces of life on its surface and in its atmosphere.
