IS THERE LIFE ON VENUS?

Could life be floating around in the clouds of Venus? Does Earth’s sister planet have habitable conditions above the hellscape that is its surface? Have astrobiologists just found another target in the Solar System they should be investigating? These are just some of the questions that have recently come to attention after research led by Professor Jane Greaves of Cardiff University found phosphine, a potential biosignature, in the atmosphere of Venus.

Phosphine – a molecule made up of one phosphorus atom and three hydrogen atoms – is a rare find. It can be created through chemical reactions on gas giant planets, as well as being produced industrially on Earth as a fumigant, in the semiconductor-manufacturing industry and as a by-product of the illegal production of methamphetamine. On Earth it can also be created biologically by microbes that live in oxygen-free environments. As this gas is a known by-product of biological processes, also known as a biosignature, it has fuelled intense speculation about what could be hiding on the second rock from the Sun.

Although the surface of Venus is extremely toxic and unforgiving, laced in a thick atmosphere of 96 per cent carbon dioxide and clouds consisting of sulphuric acid, there are more similarities to Earth than you may think. Venus is 80 per cent