Possibility of life discovered on Venus

The search for life on planets close to Earth has been a much studied topic and a source of curiosity in recent years, with a focus on the rocky red planet, Mars. However, scientists at Cardiff University announced a finding that could redirect the search to Venus.

Cardiff University

The Cardiff University science team, led by astronomer Jane Greaves, reported finding a spectral line of phosphine (also called phosphane) in the clouds of our other neighbor: Venus.

The study has made a big impact on the scientific community, since one possible explanation for the presence of this gas on a planet with such extreme conditions is nothing less than the existence of microorganisms in the air. That's right… life on Venus?

Telescopes

The researchers obtained those results from observations with the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) in Hawaii and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile. But the phosphine story doesn't end there. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a team led by scientists Bains and Petkowski tested multiple scenarios that could lead to the production of this chemical and concluded that no known non-biological process can explain its presence, which leaves open the possibility that it comes from a microorganism in the atmosphere.

"This phosphine signal is perfectly positioned where others have conjectured the area could be habitable," Petkowski said.

However, the detection has not been confirmed. Other teams that reanalyzed the data did not find the signal (Villanueva et al., Nature Astronomy, 2021), and one analysis of observations from the SOFIA airborne observatory in 2021 did not detect it either, setting an upper limit of 0.8 parts per billion at 75–110 km, above the clouds (Cordiner et al., 2022). By contrast, a reanalysis of those same data presented by Greaves and colleagues in 2022 and published in 2023 found a candidate phosphine signal, so the interpretation of the SOFIA observations is also disputed (Greaves et al., 2023). Greaves' team stands by its detection, and in 2024 Clements presented results from JCMT-Venus, a long-term monitoring program with the JCMT (Clements, 2024). There is no evidence of life on Venus: from the outset, the authors made clear that their finding did not constitute evidence of life.