Potential sign of alien life detected on inhospitable Venus

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17. From the atlantic

Until now, phosphine has been detected only on three other worlds in the solar system. On Earth, it is found in swamps and marshlands, and in the intestines of some animals. On Jupiter and Saturn, the gas is forged within the planets’ violent storms, under extreme conditions that aren’t known to exist anywhere else. Sousa-Silva and the other researchers mimicked similar processes on Venus using computer simulations. They sent jolts of lightning coursing through the atmosphere and meteorites crashing through the clouds. They simulated the scraping of crust against crust, even though Venus doesn’t have plate tectonics, because they couldn’t think of anything else that could produce enough energy to force phosphine into existence.

The researchers managed to produce phosphine in these scenarios in tiny amounts, not enough to be detected from Earth. Which is how Sousa-Silva and the team found themselves seriously considering the explanation that scientists keep at the very bottom of the list because it’s usually the least likely. As the saying goes, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. “I’m skeptical,” Sousa-Silva said. “I hope that the whole scientific community is just as skeptical, and I invite them to come and prove me wrong, because we’re at the end of our expertise.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/09/venus-life-phosphine-microbes/616342/