Yesterday's announcement of the detection of phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus suggests that there may be life there. The late Carl Sagan pointed out that high in the planet's atmosphere the temperature and pressure are much lower than on the surface, where conditions are very harsh indeed. Professor Jane Greaves of Cardiff University led the team which looked at the microwave spectrum of the atmosphere, searching for the absorption characteristic of phosphine (PH3) as this is only produced in Earth by certain bacteria and by human activity. Absorption at the right wavelength was detected by astronomers working at two separate radio telescopes. The amount of the gas was very small, but much larger than was predicted by any inorganic mechanism that they could envisage. I am sure that this result came as a great surprise to exobiologists. Mars, Titan and Enceledus have been thought to be the most likely places to find extraterrestrial life in our Solar System and no-one else had really considered Sagan's suggestion about Venus. I am sure that today many sceptical scientists are scrutinising the details of the team's paper and thinking up experiments to confirm or overturn the report Phosphine gas in the cloud decks of Venus | Nature Astronomy I expect that alternative suggestions will appear soon. Time will tell whether this result will be generally accepted: if so the space agencies will have to consider sending spacecraft into the atmosphere of Venus. It is just possible that in 20 years time, a zoo or a science museum may exhibit a jar containing microscopic Venusian creatures.
I was thinking about that possibility myself when I read this news. How incredibly strange that would be to see at a zoo though almost like something from an old episode of Star trek or the Twilight Zone. You are right though, there is indeed a possibility that this could happen at some point in the future.
Given that we have found no planets other than Earth so far that have life on them, it seems planets that sustain life are extremely, extremely rare. Earth may even be the only one. It seems to me that the chances that the one planet we have found signs of life on (if it has life, it may for all we know might be the only other planet with life) is the one closest to Earth. I wonder if whatever life there is on Venus (if there is any) somehow came from Earth? Tardigrades can survive in space, maybe some bacteria can too and somehow made their way to Venus. Either way, if their is life on Venus, I would prefer the whole planet be designated as a wildlife preserve. We've ruined our own planet enough, might as well leave another one as it is meant to be.
Perhaps . . . it is impossible to make a sensible prediction when we really only know sufficient details for one planet (this one, of course); to put it another way, it is unreliable to generalise based on a sample size of one. The famous Drake equation is an attempt to rationalise the question of the possibility of life elsewhere in the Universe (and of intelligent life that we might communicate with) - and it is possible to guess what the probabilities might be: but any of the guesses may be wildly wrong, so we just don't know. By temperament and training, I very much doubt whether there is life on Venus - but I could be wrong.
And yet muti Billionaire space contractor to NASA Robert Brigalow states aliens are here and now and have been here for a very long time! US 60 minuites
