Life in clouds of Venus? Why murky clue tantalizes scientists.
Venus seems like the last place where any creature would make its home.
A thick, extremely acidic cloud layer enshrouds that rocky planet, trapping so much heat that the surface is roughly 900 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s more than hot enough to melt lead. As such, our neighboring planet has earned nicknames like “hellscape” and “Earth’s evil twin.”
But this week, sweltering Venus became a surprising hot topic in humanity’s quest to find extraterrestrial life. On Monday, a team of researchers revealed in a paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy that they had spotted something that just might indicate that some sort of life resides in those toxic Venusian clouds.
Did they actually find aliens?
Not exactly. What they spotted was the fingerprints of a gas that, according to everything we know – was actively producing it. And on Earth, that gas, known as phosphine, is produced by microorganisms.
Whittling down the possibilitiesWhat would Venusian life even look like?A case study for exoplanets