Astronomers have found a potential sign of life high in the atmosphere of neighbouring Venus: hints there may be bizarre microbes living in the sulfuric acid-laden clouds of the hothouse planet.
Two telescopes in Hawaii and Chile spotted in the thick Venutian clouds the chemical signature of phosphine, a noxious gas that on Earth is only associated with life, according to a study in Monday's journalScientists say they have found a potential sign of life high in the atmosphere above Venus.Several outside experts – and the study authors themselves – agreed this is tantalising but said it is far from the first proof of life on another planet.
On Earth, there are only two ways phosphine can be formed, study authors said. One is in an industrial process. The other way is as part of some kind of poorly understood function in animals and microbes. Some scientists consider it a waste product, others don't. Study co-author Sara Seager, an MIT planetary scientist, said researchers "exhaustively went through every possibility and ruled all of them out: volcanoes, lightning strikes, small meteorites falling into the atmosphere. ... Not a single process we looked at could produce phosphine in high enough quantities to explain our team's findings.
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