Venus: Life could be discovered by spacecraft says scientist
Last year, scientists believed they found evidence of large swathes of phosphine in Venus’ atmosphere. The detection was made in tandem by Chile’s Atacama (ALMA) array and Hawaii’s James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) to observe Venus at a wavelength of one millimetre, allowing them to see the chemical make-up.
By current understandings, phosphine is created through biological processes which suggested, albeit slightly, that there could be some form of microbial life on Venus.
Many started to jump conclusions Venus could be home to some form of simple alien life, especially in the clouds.
However, new research has put the evidence of phosphine in Venus’ atmosphere into doubt, which would also eradicate any lingering thoughts of life on Earth’s nearest planetary neighbour.
Scientists at the University of Washington (UW) created a “robust” model of the conditions on Venus to revisit the radio telescope observations which led to the initial discovery.
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The new research states previous studies did not find phosphine, but rather sulphur dioxide.
Sulphur dioxide forms from the burning of mineral ores – something which happens on the inside of a volcano, for example, and is not associated with life.
The UW team used a model known as a “radiative transfer mode” which takes data from decades worth of observations of Venus.
The researchers then used this data to compare signals given off from sulphur dioxide and phosphine.
They concluded the signals are more consistent with sulphur dioxide, according to the research published in the Astrophysical Journal.
Victoria Meadows, a UW professor of astronomy, said: “Instead of phosphine in the clouds of Venus, the data are consistent with an alternative hypothesis: They were detecting sulfur dioxide.
“Sulfur dioxide is the third-most-common chemical compound in Venus’ atmosphere, and it is not considered a sign of life.”
In addition, the new research states that the previous study focused on too high up in the Venusian atmosphere.
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At such a height, phosphine would not survive and would be destroyed almost instantly.
Prof Meadows said: “Phosphine in the mesosphere is even more fragile than phosphine in Venus’ clouds.
“If the JCMT signal were from phosphine in the mesosphere, then to account for the strength of the signal and the compound’s sub-second lifetime at that altitude, phosphine would have to be delivered to the mesosphere at about 100 times the rate that oxygen is pumped into Earth’s atmosphere by photosynthesis.
“When this new discovery was announced, the reported low sulphur dioxide abundance was at odds with what we already know about Venus and its clouds.
“Our new work provides a complete framework that shows how typical amounts of sulphur dioxide in the Venus mesosphere can explain both the signal detections, and non-detections, in the JCMT and ALMA data, without the need for phosphine.”
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