Venus is one of the most hostile places in the solar system. Its surface, which can reach 450 degrees, is hot enough to melt metal. Also, the second planet closest to the Sun is covered in a particularly toxic and overwhelming atmosphere. However, astronomers believe that life forms could navigate in the Venusian clouds, thanks to the presence of two gases in the atmosphere of Earth’s “sister planet”: as reported by The Guardian.
Results strengthen evidence of pungent gas on Venus, phosphinewere presented at the National Astronomy Meeting in Hull, UK, on Wednesday 17 July. Another study reports the detection on this planet of ammonia, which on Earth is mainly produced by biological activity and industrial processes.
In addition to the boiling temperatures, Venus’ atmospheric pressure is ninety times that of Earth’s surface, and there are clouds of sulfuric acid. But about 50 kilometers above the surface, the temperature and pressure are closer to Earth’s conditions, which could allow very hardy microbes to survive there.
A gas produced on Earth
“It could be that if Venus had a warm, humid phase in the past, life evolved to survive in the only niche left: the clouds.”explains Dave Clements, reader in astrophysics at Imperial College London, at the meeting. These debates about the presence of extraterrestrial life on Venus are not new, and are far from reaching a consensus.
The announcement of the discovery of phosphine on Venusin 2020, had caused controversy: further studies contested the find. But the latest observations by Dave Clements and his colleagues, with the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT), based in Hawaii, would strengthen the evidence for the presence of this gas on Venus.
“Our results suggest that phosphine is there, but we don’t know what produces it. It could be some chemistry we don’t understand. Or maybe it’s life.”the researcher says. On Earth, phosphine gas is produced by microbes in oxygen-free environments. Its presence is considered to be the existence of volcanic activity… or a marker of life.
At the same time, preliminary observations from the Green Bank telescope reveal the presence of ammonia on Venus, a gas produced on Earth either by industrial processes or by bacteria that convert nitrogen. Jane Greaves, an astronomer at Cardiff University (UK), is cautious about drawing conclusions about the presence of this gas: “This does not prove that we found these magic microbes and they are living there today.”
More data is therefore needed, both to confirm the presence of these two gases on Venus and to determine how they are produced. Nikku Madhusudhan, an astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge (UK), points out that if the presence of phosphine and ammonia is confirmed, this “increases the chances of a biological origin”.
Source: www.slate.fr
