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From Science News: No signs (yet) of life on Venus

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University of Cambridge researchers conclude, “The unusual behavior of sulphur in Venus’ atmosphere cannot be explained by an ‘aerial’ form of extra-terrestrial life, according to a new study.”

As it sped away from Venus, NASA's Mariner 10 spacecraft captured this seemingly peaceful view of a planet the size of Earth, wrapped in a dense, global cloud layer.
Venus from Mariner 10. NASA ID: PIA23791

Any life form in sufficient abundance is expected to leave chemical fingerprints on a planet’s atmosphere as it consumes food and expels waste. However, the Cambridge researchers found no evidence of these fingerprints on Venus.

Even if Venus is devoid of life, the researchers say their results, reported in the journal Nature Communications, could be useful for studying the atmospheres of similar planets throughout the galaxy, and the eventual detection of life outside our Solar System.

“We’ve spent the past two years trying to explain the weird sulphur chemistry we see in the clouds of Venus,” said co-author Dr Paul Rimmer from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences. “Life is pretty good at weird chemistry, so we’ve been studying whether there’s a way to make life a potential explanation for what we see.”

The researchers used a combination of atmospheric and biochemical models to study the chemical reactions that are expected to occur, given the known sources of chemical energy in Venus’s atmosphere.

“We looked at the sulphur-based ‘food’ available in the Venusian atmosphere — it’s not anything you or I would want to eat, but it is the main available energy source,” said Sean Jordan from Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy, the paper’s first author. “If that food is being consumed by life, we should see evidence of that through specific chemicals being lost and gained in the atmosphere.”

They found that the metabolic reactions can result in a drop in SO2 levels, but only by producing other molecules in very large amounts that aren’t seen. The results set a hard limit on how much life could exist on Venus without blowing apart our understanding of how chemical reactions work in planetary atmospheres.

“To understand why some planets are alive, we need to understand why other planets are dead,” said Shorttle. “If life somehow managed to sneak into the Venusian clouds, it would totally change how we search for chemical signs of life on other planets.”

Science Daily

“To understand why some planets are alive…” This is the big question. I hope that researchers will acknowledge that the existence of life on the only planet known to contain life depends on far more than just getting the habitability conditions correct.

Comments
“To understand why some planets are alive…” This is the big question. I hope that researchers will acknowledge that the existence of life on the only planet known to contain life depends on far more than just getting the habitability conditions correct.
Do you have any reason to think they are not aware of this?Seversky
June 20, 2022
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