Yes, you heard that right, there is a possibility of life on planet Venus. Scientists revealed on September 14 that they have detected traces of gas in the Venusian atmosphere called Phosphine gas. Phosphine is colorless and has a ginger-like smell and is produced by microbes that don’t need oxygen.
The scientists studied Venus with the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii. They confirmed their observations with the ALMA radio telescope in Chile. However, the researchers and other experts of the study are not claiming that the presence of phosphine is proof of life on Venus.
“We are claiming the confident detection of phosphine gas whose existence is a mystery”, “this is an astonishing and ‘out of the blue’ finding,” said Sara Seager, a fellow planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT). Jim Brandestine, the administrator of NASA said, “it’s time to prioritize Venus.”
Can Venus support life?
Venus is one of the most beautiful objects in the Earth’s sky. But with a closer glance, the less lovely it becomes. It has roughly the same mass as Earth, often called Earth’s twin. Many scientists say that Venus was once covered in water and possessed an atmosphere where life was flourished. It is thought that much earlier Venus’ surface was cooler and much wetter and life possibly could have originated.
The temperature of Venus is too high and its atmosphere is highly acidic. “The surface conditions there today are really hostile, the temperature is enough to melt our landers,” said Jane Greaves, professor and astronomer at Cardiff University and also the leader of the team who made the discovery.
The planet is the victim of a runaway greenhouse effect in which thick clouds in a mostly carbon dioxide atmosphere trap sunlight, producing temperatures at the surface that rise to nearly 900 degrees. The surface of Venus is like a blast furnace and has a pressure similar to that at ground level on Earth. Many planetary scientists, including Carl Sagan and Harold Morowitz who proposed the idea 53 years ago have contemplated life may exist there.
Varun Bhalerao of IIT Bombay said that it will be too early to consider this evidence for extraterrestrial life. “If you look at the paper they have published, the scientists themselves say something like, look we have found phosphine, but we don’t know whether it means life. It is very interesting, and extra-terrestrial life is certainly plausible, but based on this finding, I don’t think I would hold my breath for microbes on Venus, just yet. Plenty of weird molecules have earlier been found in weird places in space, where they were not expected,” he said.
Although many scientists ignored Venus to be a significant part of this type of discovery and thought of it as a dead planet but after the latest research, Venus is proving to be an exciting place for scientists to make discoveries. In fact, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is also planning a mission to Venus tentatively called Shukrayaan, in the near future.
