Reportedly, Astronomers have found a potential sign of life high in the neighboring planet Venus: hints there may be bizarre microbes living in the sulfuric acid-laden clouds of the hot-house planet.
Two telescopes in Hawaii and Chile spotted in the thick Venutian clouds the chemical signature of phosphine, a noxious gas that on Earth is only associated with life, according to a study in Monday’s journal Nature Astronomy.
Now the discovery raises the possibility of life. Venus was temperate and harboured an ocean.
“It’s completely startling to say life could survive surrounded by so much sulphuric acid,” Prof Jane Greaves, an astronomer at Cardiff University, leader of the team who made the discovery said .
“But all the geological and photochemical routes we can think of are far too underproductive to make the phosphine we see.” On Earth, phosphine gas is released by microbes in oxygen-starved environments, such as lake sediments and animals’ innards. Other production routes are so extreme – the bellies of Jupiter and Saturn – that on rocky planets, phosphine is considered a marker for life”, she added.
“There wasn’t anyone to talk to and I remember thinking the best way to celebrate was to make a curry, so I drove off to Sainsbury’s,” she said.