BULLETIN
Chemical linked to life found on Venus
The clouds above the planet contain phosphine, which is produced by bacteria on Earth
Could life be hiding in the clouds above Venus? Possibly, according to astronomers who announced on 14 September that they’d found a rare molecule, phosphine, present in the atmosphere of our neighbouring planet.
“The reason for the excitement is that phosphine gas on Earth is made by microorganisms that live in oxygen -free environments,” says Jane Greaves from Cardiff University, who led the observations to track down the molecule. “There is a chance that we have detected some kind of living organisms in the clouds of Venus.”
Greaves first tracked down the molecule in 2017 using the JCMT (James Clerk Maxwell Telescope) in Hawaii, before reconfirming the discovery with the much more powerful ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter /Submillimeter Array) telescope three years later.
“Given that we did this with two independent observatories, we can say with very high confidence we have detected phosphine molecules on Venus,” says Greaves. “The phosphine is there, but it is very scarce - about 20 molecules for every billion other molecules.”
The discovery took
