On Monday, Scientists said that they have detected in harshly acidic clouds of Planet Venus, a gas called phosphine that indicated microbes may inhabit Earth’s inhospitable neighbour, a tantalising sign of potential life beyond Earth.
The researchers did not discover the actual life forms, but they noted that on Earth phosphine is produced by bacteria thriving in oxygen-starved environments. The scientific team on international level first spotted the phosphine using the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii and confirmed it using the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA) radio telescope in Chile.
“I was very surprised – stunned, in fact,” said astronomer Jane Greaves of Cardiff University in Wales, lead author of the research published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
“With what we currently know of Venus, the most plausible explanation for phosphine, as fantastical as it might sound, is life,” said Massachusetts Institute of Technology molecular astrophysicist and study co-author Clara Sousa-Silva.
“I should emphasize that life, as an explanation for our discovery, should be, as always, the last resort,” Sousa-Silva added.
“This is important because, if it is phosphine, and if it is life, it means that we are not alone. It also means that life itself must be very common, and there must be many other inhabited planets throughout our galaxy.”
