Jess Battison
‘Game over, man!’ The aliens are coming.
Ok, so that’s a bit dramatic I guess, but signs of life may have been detected on Venus as a groundbreaking discovery was made by astronomers.
And you know, for anyone who believes in the existence of aliens (which is a pretty fair belief to have), that’s a pretty major space find.
New research found two gases in the planet’s atmosphere, phosphine and ammonia, which are apparently a significant indication that there could be life present all the way out there.
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Plus, further investigations discovered that the phosphine gas was found in various other parts of Venus that were not previously known about.
This unexpected presence of the gas apparently continues to ‘perplex scientists’ but the idea of life in the planet’s clouds goes on to be a possibility.
As far as scientists have reckoned, there isn’t any life on the planet but phosphine truly throws this off.
Obviously, this is all a bit science-y and might go over many of our heads, but Imperial College London’s Dr Dave Clements explained to IFLScience: “We haven't properly sorted out the atmospheric modelling for this yet, but there are some broad lines at the level that suggest parts per million level of phosphine at around 55, 56, 57-kilometer altitude, consistent with the pioneer Venus probe data.”
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These new observations came from the JCMT-Venus project where the James Clerck Maxwell Telescope was used to detect and monitor the phosphine as well as other molecules.
Clement’s PhD student Wai Tang looked at the variation of water in Venus’ atmosphere. “There are a number of weirdnesses in Venus's atmosphere. Phosphine is just a new one that's come along," Dr Clements said.
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"Amongst the other strange things is the way that the amount of water and the amount of SO2 in the atmosphere vary over time. It's not known why. The variations haven't been monitored to a great extent, but it's known that there are variations on time scales from at least days to years."
The team’s report of ammonia is the first tentative detection of it up in the clouds and its presence on a rocky planet like this is considered ‘a good biosignature.
That’s because there’s no significant known source of ammonia in terrestrial worlds that doesn’t come from life.
Professor Jane Greaves, from the University of Cardiff added: “There are other models coming along all the time, other explanations saying ‘Oh, you could get ammonia and phosphine and all sorts of other unexpected chemicals this way unrelated to life’ so we're trying not to overstate, but yeah, it's really exciting.”
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Ok, so, no confirmation of life just yet but an awful lot on how complex Venus is and well, no ruling out of life either.