Cardiff (U.K): An international team of astronomers has spotted phosphine in the atmosphere of our neighbouring planet, Venus, suggesting that it may be home to alien life.
Phosphine, a colourless and smelly gas, is known to be made only by some species of bacteria that can survive in the absence of oxygen. It can also be produced in the industry. Any presence of phosphorus in the atmosphere is expected to be in oxidized forms.
In a paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy on Monday, a team of scientists have reported traces of phosphine in a concentration of approximately 20 parts per billion. Scientists have been careful to emphasise that, as of now, this is no confirmation of the presence of life on Venus. It could also be getting produced by natural processes that we are not aware of, they added.
In the absence of any definitive conclusions just yet, extraterrestrial life is one of the few explanations that make sense.
“If this signal is correct, there is a process on Venus we cannot explain that produces phosphine – and one of the hypotheses is that it’s life in the clouds of Venus,” Janusz Petkowski, an astrobiologist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology who worked on the research, was quoted as saying by NBC News.
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