Researchers have presented new evidence that the atmosphere of Venus contains two gases that are closely related to life on Earth.
As Parents ReportsScientists at the UK’s National Astronomy Congress announced they had tentatively detected ammonia, a gas that results primarily from biological activity on Earth, in clouds high above the planet’s hellish surface.
Another team announced in 2020 that they had found new evidence of phosphine, which could be another sign of life. Heated debate Since First Published.
While the latest findings are far from conclusive proof that life exists on Venus, a planet known for its scorching heat and extremely dense atmosphere, they do provide an intriguing new data point in our efforts to search the planet’s nearby regions for signs of current or ancient life.
One possibility that intrigues scientists is that life may have thrived on this planet in the distant past.
“It’s possible that Venus experienced a warmer, wetter period in the past, followed by runaway global warming, played a role.” [life] They would have evolved to survive in the clouds, which is the only niche left,” Dave Clements, a lecturer in astrophysics at Imperial College London, told an audience at a conference this week. Parents.
Although the surface of Venus is currently hot enough to melt lead, the clouds swirling 30 miles above the surface experience much milder temperatures and pressure levels not much different from conditions on Earth.
While phosphine gas can technically be produced by volcanic activity, it’s produced in much greater quantities by bacteria in oxygen-starved environments, which is why scientists call it a “biosignature” gas.
But whether the colorless, smelly gas actually exists in Venus’ clouds remains a topic of debate. In September 2020, a research team led by Jane Greaves of Cardiff University in the UK shocked the scientific community by announcing that they had found a significant source of this material.
However, the findings were quickly questioned by other scientists. A few weeks later, the researchers Submitted Criticisms that pour cold water on the findings of Greaves and his colleagues, Discuss “We found no statistical evidence for the presence of phosphine in the Venus atmosphere,” they said.
But Greaves and her team have since tried to confirm their findings by using the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii to track the gas’s signature over time.
“Our results suggest that phosphine is destroyed when the atmosphere is exposed to sunlight,” she told scientists at a conference this week. “All we can say is that it’s there. We don’t know what’s producing it. It could be a chemical reaction that we don’t understand, or it could be life.”
And the astronomers didn’t stop there: in another talk, they presented new observations that hint at the presence of ammonia.
But much more research needs to be done before we can conclude that life may exist, or may have once existed, in Venus’ clouds.
“Even if we confirm both of these [findings]”But that’s not proof that we’ve found these magical microbes that are currently living there,” Greaves acknowledged.
Fortunately, scientists are hopeful of direct observations that might finally provide some answers. Earlier this year, the European Space Agency Announced The country has approved a mission called “Envision,” designed to study the planet’s interior and exterior atmosphere.
More about Venus and life: Scientists convert radio signals from Venus into sound
