Researchers Have Found Potential Signs Of Life On Venus

Update: September 15, 10am: On Monday, scientists made an announcement that has gotten people all excited and apprehensive. Reportedly a gas called phosphine that indicates microbes may inhabit Earth¡¯s inhospitable neighbour have been detected in the harshly acidic clouds of Venus - it is being considered a sign of potential life beyond Earth.

No actual life forms have been discovered, but researchers noted that on 'Earth phosphine is produced by bacteria thriving in oxygen-starved environments. The international scientific team first spotted the phosphine using the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii and confirmed it using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescope in Chile', according to Reuters report.

¡°I was very surprised - stunned, in fact,¡± astronomer Jane Greaves of Cardiff University in Wales, lead author of the research published in the journal Nature Astronomy said.

NASA

¡°With what we currently know of Venus, the most plausible explanation for phosphine, as fantastical as it might sound, is life,¡± Reuters quoted Massachusetts Institute of Technology molecular astrophysicist and study co-author Clara Sousa-Silva as saying.

¡°I should emphasize that life, as an explanation for our discovery, should be, as always, the last resort,¡± Sousa-Silva said. ¡°This is important because, if it is phosphine, and if it is life, it means that we are not alone. It also means that life itself must be very common, and there must be many other inhabited planets throughout our galaxy.¡±

Until now Mars has been the focus of research for potential life.

For a long time now scientists have been searching for signs of life outside earth. Plans to colonise Mars are already underway but now scientists are looking at a planet closer to us even than Mars: Venus.

Venus¡¯ atmosphere has not been thought fit for life before. But recent research suggests that microbial life can survive for eons aloft in Venusian vapours. Temperatures on Venus can go up to around 800 degrees Fahrenheit but there are few layers of its atmosphere that are not the same.

NASA

NASA has even proposed an idea of creating a kind of cloud city by sending an instrument that can hang at an altitude of around 30 miles. The conditions in that layer here are considered to be similar to those on Earth's surface. It has also been previously suggested that after Earth only Venus¡¯ atmosphere is the most habitable place in the solar system due to the pressure and temperature that are in the range we are used to.

However, the problems are that Venus has no breathable air and lots of sulfuric acid in the atmosphere, which hampers the functioning of respiratory systems and other vitals. A few years ago, researchers suggested that strange patterns were observed when looking at Venus which could be explained by something like an algae or a bacteria in the atmosphere.

Also Read: Water Map Of Venus Hints At Possibility Of Life On It

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Now, a new research by leading astronomer Sara Seager at MIT visualizes what the life cycle above Venus might be.

Seager and her colleagues suggest that the ¡®microbes above Venus can only survive inside liquid droplets. However, these droplets do not stay still as they grow large enough for the gravity to take over¡¯. The paper summarises, ¡®We propose for the first time that the only way life can survive indefinitely is with a life cycle that involves microbial life drying out as liquid droplets evaporate during settling, with the small desiccated 'spores' halting at, and partially populating, the Venus atmosphere stagnant lower haze layer¡¯.

Also Read: Venus Has A Giant Cloud Stretching Thousands Of Km, Moving At Over 300 Kmph

NASA

On its end, NASA is considering a mission dubbed Veritas to study Venus and its clouds.