Is there life floating in the clouds of Venus?

It's an extraordinary possibility - the idea that living organisms are floating in the clouds of Planet Venus.

But this is what astronomers are now considering after detecting a gas in the atmosphere they can't explain.

That gas is phosphine - a molecule made up of one phosphorus atom and three hydrogen atoms.

On Earth, phosphine is associated with life, with microbes living in the guts of animals like penguins, or in oxygen-poor environments such as swamps.

For sure, you can make it industrially, but there are no factories on Venus; and there are certainly no penguins.

So why is this gas there, 50km up from the planet's surface? Prof Jane Greaves, from Cardiff University, UK and colleagues are asking just this question.

They've published a paper in the journal Nature Astronomy detailing their observations of phosphine at Venus, as well as the investigations they've made to try to show this molecule could have a natural, non-biological origin.

Given everything we know about Venus and the conditions that exist there, no-one has yet been able to describe an abiotic pathway to phosphine, not in the quantities that have been detected. This means a life source deserves consideration.

"Through my whole career I have been interested in the search for life elsewhere in the Universe, so I'm just blown away that this is even possible," Prof Greaves said. "But, yes, we are genuinely encouraging other people to tell us what we might have missed. Our paper and data are open access; this is how science works."

Ben Reilly wrote:Of course -- the universe is infinite in size, and must have an infinite number of planets with life. It's just logic.

On top of that, it's logically full of planets that once supported life but don't any more, and it will give birth to more planets that will give rise to life in the future.

I just wish we could find and contact one that has intelligent life. Preferably in my lifetime

eddie wrote:There’s other life out there. It’s just common sense.

Why would we be the only rock that hosts life?  
It’s just common sense.

Ben Reilly wrote:The one thing I can't get my head around is the theory that it's clouds of microbes floating in the atmosphere. On Earth, this gas is generated by microbes in swamps, so why do they have to float in the clouds on Venus?

Other than that, it's an intriguing idea and a possible explanation for how life got to Earth to evolve. Microbes can survive outer space, so anything that hit Venus hard enough to send chunks of her into the Earth could have done it.

Of course, it still doesn't explain how life originated in the first place ...

Ben wrote:The one thing I can't get my head around is the theory that it's clouds of microbes floating in the atmosphere. On Earth, this gas is generated by microbes in swamps, so why do they have to float in the clouds on Venus?