Even so, scientists have considered the possibility that life might exist in the Venusian cloud deck for nearly 60 years, perhaps thriving where conditions are a bit friendlier. In September, Venus made headlines after scientists discovered large swathes of phosphine in the planet's atmosphere. But phosphine is also made naturally by some species of anaerobic bacteria—organisms that live in the oxygen-starved environments of landfills, marshlands, and even animal guts. The team identified phosphine using two instruments that observe radio waves. Basically, if it does turn out to be life producing the phosphine, conditions within certain parts of Venus’ atmosphere are conducive to such a process. Watch our summary of the discovery. Although Venus is a roasting world today, observations suggest that it once had a liquid water ocean. “Whether it’s life or not, it has to be a really exotic mechanism,” Sousa-Silva says. He didn’t find any evidence of phosphine in the planet’s spectrum. “It’s tremendously exciting, and we have a sort of obligatory response of first questioning whether the result is real,” says David Grinspoon of the Planetary Science Institute. “On Venus, that puddle never dries up,” Grinspoon says. Among the signatures they spotted was that of phosphine gas, a pyramidal molecule comprising three hydrogen atoms joined to a single phosphorus atom. With time, the researchers are confident they will get to the bottom of the phosphine mystery. “You can always improve the fit to a dataset by adding more variables, but you need to define a metric that tells you when to stop," says Meredith MacGregor, an astronomer at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Sousa-Silva points to several possible explanations for the lack of phosphine in the infrared observations. Humans make it too, in meth labs and as part of the semiconductor industry.). In the outer solar system, phosphine is made deep in the interiors of Jupiter and Saturn. In 2019, Greaves, Sousa-Silva, and their colleagues followed up on the initial phosphine observation using ALMA, an array of telescopes on a high Chilean plateau. But it’s too early to conclude that life exists beyond Earth’s shores. “They’ve shown that this fitting process can be really problematic,” Nixon says. Doubts about the existence of phosphine gas on Venus—a possible sign of … In September, it was announced that in the journal Nature that phosphine had been discovered in the atmosphere of Venus, sparking a debate about the possibility of life on the planet. The study team set out to determine whether phosphine could be made on Venus in the absence of biology. With our current knowledge of phosphine, and Venus, and geochemistry, we cannot explain the presence of phosphine in the clouds of Venus. “Something weird is happening.”. Other scientists are re-analyzing the results. Find out about the volcanoes that dot Venus's surface, the storms that rage in its atmosphere, and the surprising feature that makes Venus outshine every planet or star in the night sky. Venus, the second world from the sun, has long been considered Earth’s twin. Any life there now is “much more likely to be a relic of a more dominating early biosphere,” says Penelope Boston, a NASA astrobiologist who specializes in studying microbes in weird places on Earth. Used as a chemical weapon during World War I, phosphine … What is the altitude that we’re looking at? “It is intriguing that it may point to something strange going on in the atmosphere of Venus, but is it exotic chemistry, or is it life?” he says. Even so, Sanjay Limaye, a planetary scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says the discovery is exciting enough to continue searching, and preferably from a much closer vantage point. “The lesson is to push for more analyses and more data.”. They were looking for rare gases or molecules that might be biological in origin. Its surface can reach a sweltering 900 degrees Fahrenheit. At the time of the announcement, the team was still seeking confirmation of the detection in the form of spectral lines that could be observed with infrared telescopes—observations that were delayed by the ongoing pandemic. “It’s shirt-sleeve weather, with all these tasty things to eat,” says Martha Gilmore, a Wesleyan University planetary scientist and leader of a proposed mission to Venus, referring to molecules in the planet’s air that microbes could metabolize. And near the middle of the cloud layer, temperatures and pressures are rather Earthlike. And does this mean that we're probing deep enough, and there's no phosphine because it was never there? I presumed it was a mistake, but I very much wanted it to not be a mistake,” says study co-author Clara Sousa-Silva, a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who initially identified phosphine as a potential biosignature. But it seems the hunt for extraterrestrial life is far from over, as new research is already calling that discovery into question. Neither of the new, independent analyses of that data could find reliable traces of the gas. They have yet to determine the unexplained chemical formation of … The study has been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics. Phosphine … Or does it mean we didn't probe as deep as we thought?”. In other words, if the observation of phosphine on Venus is right, something must be continually replenishing the molecule in the planet’s atmosphere. The signal is faint, and the team needed to perform an extensive amount of processing to pull it from the data returned by the telescopes. Similarly, that team reported that high-order polynomial fitting could create multiple spurious spectral lines. It’s just a matter of going,” Gilmore says. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/10/venus-might-not-have-much-phosphine-dampening-hopes-for-life.html, is currently considering sending a spacecraft, used archival observations to search for signs of the gas in the planet’s clouds, reprocessed the discovery team’s original data, Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, new reanalysis of data from the Pioneer-Venus probe, that their procedure may have generated spurious signals, do not indicate a strong signal from phosphine, failed to find evidence for phosphine in both the JCMT and ALMA data. The detection of phosphine gas in Venus’s atmosphere, announced last month, ignited a firestorm of speculation about whether the gas could be produced by alien microbes on the planet, where NASA is currently considering sending a spacecraft. Schulze-Makuch says it’s completely within the realm of possibility to do an atmospheric sample-return mission, sending a spacecraft to swoop through the clouds and gather gas and particles to bring back to Earth. “When I first started talking about it, there was a lot of resistance, mostly because it’s such a harshly acidic environment,” says Grinspoon, who has pushed the idea of cloud-borne life on Venus since the mid-1990s. This summer, before the phosphine announcement, she and her co-authors published a speculative, hypothetical sketch of what life on Venus could look like. Life on Venus is on the ropes. And it’s another Earth. A final determination regarding the presence of phosphine on Venus will have to wait for the new analyses to be peer-reviewed and published—and then scrutinized themselves—and perhaps for additional observations of the planet. “I was really fascinated by the macabre nature of phosphine on Earth,” she says. A gas found on Earth that signifies life has been detected in the clouds on Venus. Additionally, astronomers generally look for multiple spectral lines produced by the same molecule to confirm its presence—observations the team didn’t have. Early observations of the planet revealed that parts of its atmosphere absorb more ultraviolet light than expected, an anomaly that scientists hypothesized could be the work of aerial microbes. While the phenomenon is more likely due to the presence of sulfur-containing compounds, a handful of scientists have since elaborated on the possibility of airborne Venusians, laying out scenarios in which microbes might metabolize sulfur compounds, stay afloat among the ever-present clouds, and even develop life cycles enabled by periods of dormancy at varying altitudes. Traces of a rare molecule known as phosphine have been found in the hellish, heavily acidic atmosphere of Venus, astronomers announced Monday — … Earlier this year, researchers surmised that finding the chemical on other terrestrial planets could indicate the presence of alien metabolisms, and they suggested aiming the sharpest telescopes of the future at faraway exoplanets to probe their atmospheres for signs of the gas. In principle, this type of analysis allows astronomers to predict which parts of the observations are noise and which are real signals. Either some kind of metabolism or an unknown chemical process would be required to explain the high amounts of phosphine gas in the Venusian atmosphere. Named after the ancient Roman goddess of beauty, Venus is known for its exceptional brightness. ‘Dr. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Phosphine gas found in Venus’ atmosphere may be ‘a possible sign of life’ Astronomers detected signs of a smelly, toxic gas that microbes can make in the planet’s clouds Venus… First, in 2017, Cardiff University’s Jane Greaves and colleagues found what could be phosphine with the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) in Hawaii. Another analysis of the ALMA data, led by Leiden Observatory’s Ignas Snellen and colleagues, also failed to find any sign of phosphine. On rocky worlds like Venus and Earth, conditions aren’t thought to be extreme enough to make phosphine molecules in the absence of life. Based on the team’s calculations, none of those events could produce the molecule in such abundance. Phosphine is a gas made up of one phosphorus atom and three hydrogen atoms. It has been colorized to a bluish hue to emphasize subtle contrasts in the cloud markings. Not long after, Greaves got in touch with Sousa-Silva, who spent her years in graduate school working out whether phosphine could be a viable extraterrestrial biosignature. “I’m so relieved that people are finally looking at this data and it’s not just us.”, The initial detection, published in the journal Nature Astronomy in September, found that more than a thousand times the amount of phosphine gas in Earth’s atmosphere is floating through the thick, sulfuric clouds of Venus. Once the team smoothed out the spectrum to remove excess noise, astronomers concluded that the phosphine signal was significant enough to call it a detection. Among the scenarios the scientists investigated were volcanic outgassing, intense lightning strikes, tectonic plates rubbing together, bismuth rain, and cosmic dust. Butler downloaded the ALMA data and started from scratch, redid some of the initial calibrations, and then processed the data as he normally would. All rights reserved. Yet some scientists were dubious. This detection could point to extra-terrestrial “aerial” life in the Venusian atmosphere. “We need to go explore and find out.”. The news leaked from the British Royal Astronomical Society. Even now, the team doesn’t necessarily agree on what altitude the infrared observations measure. The vision is beautiful: a … In the ALMA data, the team found a faint signal at the frequency where phosphine molecules in the Venusian atmosphere would absorb energy, known as a spectral line. (On Earth, various microbes make phosphine. By … “This data is messy, and noisy, and delicate,” Sousa-Silva says. If phosphine really is on Venus in the large quantities seen, the team argued, its presence would be tough to explain if it were not biologically produced. “They’re saying they don’t see the phosphine. the clouds carry the basic ingredients for life as we know it: absorb more ultraviolet light than expected. Scientists are excited they have found evidence that hints at signs of life in the clouds of Venus. The first group, comprising more than two dozen researchers, failed to find evidence for phosphine in both the JCMT and ALMA data. Why it matters: The announcement that researchers may have spotted a signal of the gas phosphine in Venus' atmosphere was met with excitement by the public and scientists alike, heralded as a possible sign that microbes could live in the planet's clouds. Does it mean there’s no phosphine because it’s variable? And if it is, is it life?”. But if phosphine really is floating through the Venusian cloud deck, its presence suggests one of two intriguing possibilities: that alien life-forms are deftly linking together phosphorus and hydrogen atoms, or that some completely unanticipated chemistry is crafting phosphine in the absence of life. “I think it’s a blasted hellhole now, so how much of that ancient signal could have held up?”. It’s about the same size as our home planet, with similar gravity and composition. elaborated on the possibility of airborne Venusians, life cycles enabled by periods of dormancy, pushed the idea of cloud-borne life on Venus since the mid-1990s, found organisms flying more than six miles above the Caribbean, Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, the last time NASA sent a probe to the planet was in 1989. Scientists are trying to parse out whether a possible sign of life seen in Venus' clouds is truly there. Based on the signal’s strength, the team calculated that phosphine’s abundance is roughly 20 parts per billion, or at least a thousand times more than we find on Earth. © 1996-2015 National Geographic Society, © 2015- Something deadly might be wafting through the clouds shrouding Venus—a smelly, flammable gas called phosphine that annihilates life-forms reliant on oxygen for survival. 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