What is Venus?
Venus is the planet that sits between Mercury and Earth and is the second planet from the Sun in our solar system. Venus is the name of the Roman Goddess of love and beauty, and that is where this planet gets its name from. Venus is visible in the night sky from earth. Venus is similar to the world in terms of size, mass, composition, etc.
As it is one of the brightest objects in the night sky, Venus has long ties with human culture and mythology for a long time. It has a very dense atmosphere of about 96% CO2, and the planet has the hottest surface of any planets in our solar system. The earth is shrouded in clouds of Sulfuric acid, and despite there being some evidence of water having existed on its surface once upon a time, there is currently no water on it.
Despite all these factors that make our sister planet seem not just inhabitable, but outright hostile to life as we know it, scientists have found indicators of life on the hot earth.
Why life?
In a report published in Nature Astronomy on 14th September 2020, the astronomers have reported that they found phosphine gas in the planet's atmosphere in concentrations tens of thousands of times higher than that is found in other worlds that produce Phosphine but have no life; it is an encouraging sign of life.
Phosphine is a colorless, flammable, and a very toxic gas compound, it has the formula PH3.
The gas has been detected at 20 parts per notation in the temperate zone of Venus' atmosphere. The Venusian atmosphere is not conducive to Phosphine's existence, nor does Venus have the heat and pressure to generate the gas. The paper states, " The presence of even a few parts per billion of PH3 is entirely unexpected for an oxidizing atmosphere (where oxygen-containing compounds much dominate over hydrogen-containing ones). "
Conclusion
No direct evidence has been found for Venus's existence, despite what many catchy news articles may claim. The astronomers have discovered a surprising amount of the gas Phosphine in the atmosphere of the planet, and one of the explanations why there is so much Phosphine would be that there exists life on Venus. The other possibilities are, as of yet, unknown photochemical processes or geochemical processes. The paper suggests that the case of alien life but wants to emphasize that it could be many other things.
Even if alien life were to be discovered on the hot planet, it would most definitely be microbial life and not at all what some of us expect when we think of aliens in our life. While this would be of great importance to scientists worldwide, it would not make much of a difference in our day-to-day lives. Regardless, after all the false alarms the media raised about life on other planets, this report seems to give the most confidence, and I hope the scientists will find more conclusive evidence for life on Venus.
Below is linked the report from Nature Astronomy:
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