BY Anya GandavadiScientists, researchers, astronomers and physicists together have speculated about life outside of the blue planet for decades. Chances are we’re not alone...right? Many of may have recently heard about researchers’ discovery of signs of life on Venus. Temperatures on Venus average to be the highest in our solar system at around 880 degrees Fahrenheit. Generally, surface temperatures of planets decrease as the distance from the sun increases, however, Venus is an exception because it has a dense atmosphere of greenhouse gases that trap heat to the surface of the planet. The atmosphere is filled with formaldehyde dust and it rains acid. The pressure is approximately 90 times that of earth’s and would be bone-crushing to anything that lived here. By all logic, Venus should not be able to support life. So then how might there be life in Venus’s clouds? Before we get there, we must define what life looks like. Our idea of what life looks like requires water, oxygen, and a relatively temperate environment. But searching for life outside of our planet is forcing scientists to redefine what life may look like so that they can better understand where to find it. One way that scientists look for the possibility of life is through biosignatures or traces that indicate life, whether this be some form of change to the physical environment or a chemical presence. Examples of this are oxygen and methane, and in fact, “wisps of methane on Mars” once were thought to have been signs of life, but there are now geological explanations for the gas that have been proposed. Another biosignature is the phosphine, which is made up of a phosphorus atom bonded to three hydrogen atoms. The presence of this gas on earth is found exclusively as a result of life as so far, only life forms have been able to link these atoms together. This brings us to the actual discovery. "We have detected a rare gas called phosphine in the atmosphere of our neighbor planet Venus," said Jane Greaves, a professor at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom and lead author of a report published in Nature Astronomy. "And the reason for our excitement is that phosphine gas on Earth is made by microorganisms that live in oxygen-free environments. And so there is a chance that we have detected some kind of living organism in the clouds of Venus." ALMA, an array of telescopes on a high Chilean plateau, “observes the sky at radio frequencies, and it can detect the energy emitted and absorbed by any phosphine molecules spinning in the Venusian atmosphere.” These scientists aren’t claiming to have found life, they are only claiming to have detected phosphine whose only association thus far has been with life. Not only was it detected, but it was detected at a predicted concentration of up to 20 parts per billion, such a high concentration that the small possible amounts released by non-biological chemical reactions would produce nowhere near this amount at over 1000 times more than what is found on earth. There is still a lot in the path forward of confirming the presence of life or refuting it. If phosphine really is “floating through the Venusian cloud deck,” then no matter what scientists find, it will be nothing short of fascinating and groundbreaking. Either there is an unanticipated chemical process unknown to man that is occurring on Venus, creating this gas, or life forms in Venus’s clouds are responsible. The detection of phosphine is already fueling calls for a return to Venus, a return that is long overdue, given that “the last time NASA sent a probe to the planet was in 1989.” And still others say that the focus should be on the preservation of life on the planet we already have. The one thing we all know: knowledge is power. References:
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