ESO/ALMA: Possible Marker of Life Spotted on Venus

[bystander]

Possible Marker of Life Spotted on Venus
ESO Science Release | ALMA | 2020 Sep 14

This artistic impression depicts our Solar System neighbour Venus, where scientists have confirmed the detection of phosphine molecules, a representation of which is shown in the inset. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser/L. Calçada & NASA/JPL/Caltech

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An international team of astronomers today announced the discovery of a rare molecule -- phosphine -- in the clouds of Venus. On Earth, this gas is only made industrially or by microbes that thrive in oxygen-free environments. Astronomers have speculated for decades that high clouds on Venus could offer a home for microbes -- floating free of the scorching surface but needing to tolerate very high acidity. The detection of phosphine could point to such extra-terrestrial “aerial” life.

“When we got the first hints of phosphine in Venus’s spectrum, it was a shock!,” says team leader Jane Greaves of Cardiff University in the UK, who first spotted signs of phosphine in observations from the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT), operated by the East Asian Observatory, in Hawaii. Confirming their discovery required using 45 antennas of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, a more sensitive telescope. Both facilities observed Venus at a wavelength of about 1 millimetre, much longer than the human eye can see -- only telescopes at high altitude can detect it effectively.

The international team, which includes researchers from the UK, US and Japan, estimates that phosphine exists in Venus’s clouds at a small concentration, only about 20 molecules in every billion. Following their observations, they ran calculations to see whether these amounts could come from natural non-biological processes on the planet. Some ideas included sunlight, minerals blown upwards from the surface, volcanoes, or lightning, but none of these could make anywhere near enough of it. These non-biological sources were found to make at most one 10,000th of the amount of phosphine that the telescopes saw. ...

Hints of Life on Venus
Royal Astronomical Society | Cardiff University | 2020 Sep 14

Astronomers May Have Found a Signature of Life on Venus
Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 2020 Sep 14

Phosphine on Venus – A Step Forward to Understand Biomarker Molecule
National Astronomical Observatory of Japan | 2020 Sep 15

Phosphine Gas in the Cloud Decks of Venus ~ Jane S. Greaves et al

• Nature Astronomy (online 14 Sep 2020) DOI: 10.1038/s41550-020-1174-4 (pdf)
• arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:2009.06593 > 14 Sep 2020

The Venusian Lower Atmosphere Haze as a Depot for Desiccated Microbial Life:
A Proposed Life Cycle for Persistence of the Venusian Aerial Biosphere ~ Sara Seager et al

• Astrobiology (online 13 Aug 2020) DOI: 10.1089/ast.2020.2244

Phosphine as a Biosignature Gas in Exoplanet Atmospheres ~ Clara Sousa-Silva et al

• Astrobiology 20(2):235 (Feb 2020) DOI: 10.1089/ast.2018.1954
• arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1910.05224 > 11 Oct 2019 (v1), 28 Oct 2019 (v2)

[bystander]

Breakthrough Initiatives to Fund Study into
Search for Primitive Life in the Clouds of Venus
Breakthrough Initiatives | 2020 Sep 15

New evidence suggests presence of potential biosignature on closest planet to Earth.

Breakthrough Initiatives, the privately-funded space science programs founded by science and technology investor and philanthropist Yuri Milner, are funding a research study into the possibility of primitive life in the clouds of Venus. The study is inspired by the discovery, announced yesterday, of the gas phosphine, considered a potential biosignature, in the planet’s atmosphere.

The science team undertaking the research will comprise world-class physicists, astronomers, astrobiologists, chemists and engineers, led by Dr. Sara Seager, Professor of Planetary Science, Physics and Aerospace Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The group will investigate the scientific case for life and analyze the technical challenges of an exploratory mission in the event that such evidence proves compelling. ...