Possible Marker of Life Spotted on Venus

[fred8615]

An international team of astronomers today announced the discovery of a rare molecule — phosphine — in the clouds of Venus. On Earth, this gas is only made industrially or by microbes that thrive in oxygen-free environments. Astronomers have speculated for decades that high clouds on Venus could offer a home for microbes — floating free of the scorching surface but needing to tolerate very high acidity. The detection of phosphine could point to such extra-terrestrial “aerial” life.

“When we got the first hints of phosphine in Venus’s spectrum, it was a shock!”, says team leader Jane Greaves of Cardiff University in the UK, who first spotted signs of phosphine in observations from the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT), operated by the East Asian Observatory, in Hawaiʻi. Confirming their discovery required using 45 antennas of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, a more sensitive telescope in which the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is a partner. Both facilities observed Venus at a wavelength of about 1 millimetre, much longer than the human eye can see — only telescopes at high altitude can detect it effectively.

Read more: https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2015/

[Christopher K.]

The latest commentary on this intriguing development will be included near the conclusion of the HRPO Remote Discussion "How to View Mars" this Friday the 25th at 6:30pm. As with all evocative pronouncements, measured excitement should join a respectful call for confirmation.

More information:
http://hrpo.lsu.edu/programs/special.html

[fred8615]

Astronomers Challenge Recent Findings About Venus. “No Statistically Significant Detection of Phosphine”

In September, a team of scientists reported finding phosphine in the upper atmosphere of Venus. Phosphine can be a biomarker and is here on Earth. But it’s also present on Jupiter, where it’s produced abiotically. The discovery led to conjecture about what kind of life might survive in Venus’ atmosphere, continually producing the easily-degraded phosphine.

The authors of that study were circumspect about their own results, saying that they hope someone can determine a source for the phosphine, other than life.

Now a new study says that the original phosphine detection is not statistically significant.

The new study is a re-production and re-evaluation of the original ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array) data that the initial detection of phosphine was based on. It comes from a team of five researchers from the Netherlands.

Read more: https://www.universetoday.com/148486/as ... phosphine/

[fred8615]

What Looked Like Phosphine On Venus Might Actually Just Be Sulfur Dioxide

There’s nothing like a good old fashioned science fight. When the discovery being challenged is one of the most public and intriguing of the last year, it’s bound to be even more interesting. A team of scientists, led by Andrew Lincowski and Victoria Meadows at the University of Washington (UW), and involving members from a variety of NASA labs and other universities, has challenged the discovery of phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus that was first announced last year. Their explanation is much simpler: it was most likely sulfur dioxide, one of the most abundant materials already known to be in Venus’ atmosphere.

Their model takes into account two important correction factors to the original study. First was a correction as to the location in Venus’ atmosphere the signal showing phosphine was actually observed. Second was a correction of the total amount of sulfur dioxide present in Venus’ atmosphere at the time the observations were made.

Read more: https://www.universetoday.com/149993/wh ... r-dioxide/