"Microbes unlike any life on Earth" may have been detected on Venus
Scientists have discovered a rare molecule in the clouds of Venus, which suggests colonies of living microbes could exist in the oxygen-free environment in the planet's atmosphere.
The discovery has been described as "shocking" news by experts.
Scientists used powerful telescopes to detect a chemical, known as phosphine, that revealed that "something alive is the only explanation for the chemical's source".
Sara Seager, a planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said: "This is an astonishing and ‘out of the blue’ finding. It will definitely fuel more research into the possibilities for life in Venus’s atmosphere."
Speaking to the
New York Times, another planetary scientist named Sarah Stewart Johnson said: "There’s been a lot of buzz about phosphine as a biosignature gas for exoplanets recently, how cool to find it on Venus?"
Often referred to as Earth’s twin, Venus is roughly the same mass as Earth, with many experts believing that it was once covered in water and possessed an atmosphere where life as we know it could have flourished.
This information will now be looked into and studied further, and given how 2020 has gone thus far, we will not be surprised by anything that is discovered out there.
