The discovery of a rare molecule in the clouds of Venus raises the tantalising question of whether our closest planetary neighbour might host life.
Life in the clouds sounds romantic, except when those clouds are made of sulphuric acid.
"[The discovery] suggests either some exotic chemical process occurs we haven't got or thought of on Earth — or maybe that some kind of very robust organism survived the runaway greenhouse effect, and evolved up to live in the clouds," said Jane Greaves of Cardiff University.It was considered a possibility right up until the 1960s when spacecraft sent back the first details of our closest planetary neighbour.
"When Jane sent me the spectrum I sat in front of my computer blinking for about half an hour. I didn't believe she'd actually found it," said the telescope's deputy director, Jessica Dempsey. "[On these planets] there is abundant hydrogen to form it at high pressure, deep down, and then it wells up. [But] free hydrogen isn't present on Venus or Earth," she said.If life did exist in the clouds of Venus it would be very different to anything on Earth, Dr Dempsey said.
But he believes the signal is more likely to come from a geological or chemical process we don't understand. But, she said, the discovery of the gas — a difficult feat to have achieved — adds to our toolbox for looking for life on other planets.
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