If you haven't noticed as of late, the conversation regarding the possibility or probability of "alien" life existing within our very own solar system has been a hot topic with various revelations and releases by governmental authorities as well as by the "scientific" community. When such things occur, we have to ask ourselves why "they" are making these efforts to insert such subjects into the national discourse/conversation. Read the article below or click on the link to read directly from the source.
Possible signs of life have been detected on Venus.
Researchers have spotted phosphine in the atmosphere of our neighboring planet, suggesting that it may be home to alien life.
The discovery is not a direct observation of life on another planet. But the sheer quantity of phosphine on Venus cannot be explained through any known process, leading researchers to suggest that it is a sign of alien life in our solar system.
On Earth, phosphine is one of the most foul-smelling and toxic gases there is, with the odor of rotting fish and found in places such as pond slime and penguin dung. While it is made through some industrial processes, it is also created by anaerobic organisms, such as bacteria and microbes.
As such, it is thought to be an excellent “biosignature”, or indication of life. Experts have in the past suggested that the discovery of phosphine in large quantities on other rocky planets would be a certain indicator of alien life – and now it has been found on Venus.
The surface of Venus is hot and acidic, and so the conditions on the ground would make any kind of life difficult. But the environment is in its upper cloud decks are thought to be more habitable – about 35 miles up, the conditions are more temperate.
That is where the gas is thought to be found. Those clouds are so acidic that they would destroy any phosphine quickly, meaning that something must be actively forming it, and the amount of the gas found is such that it cannot be easily explained in any other way.
An international team of researchers led by Jane Greaves from Cardiff University report the findings in an article, 'Phosphine gas in the cloud decks of Venus', published in Nature Astronomy today.
They caution that there is no way to know for sure what the findings mean, concluding in that paper that the detection is "is not robust evidence for life, only for anomalous and unexplained chemistry", and that further work will be required to know for certain. But they have ruled out all other explanations based on what we know about Venus.
"Either phosphine is produced by some sort of chemical or geological process that no-one knows about – or there could be a biological reason," said Emily Drabek-Maunder, an astrophysicist from the Royal Observatory Greenwich and an author on the paper.
"Our study isn't conclusive that this is evidence of life. However, what is exciting about it is that we've found this rare gas in the upper atmosphere of Venus.
"Our team can't explain the amount of phosphine that we've found, through our current understanding of the planet. When we try to model what's happening in the atmosphere – volcanic activity, sunlight, or even lightning – nothing recreates the amount of phosphine gas that we've seen."
