In a landmark announcement, astronomers from USA, UK and Japan have announced the detection of the gas phosphine in the flowers of Venus, phosphine, which goes by the chemical formula pH three is synthesized by anaerobic life forms and organic matter, as well as in the lab by humans. So the researchers said about trying to find the source of this gas on Venus and come up with nothing that we know or understand that.

So they offer as explanation, only the options that are left some chemical process that we do not know or understand or life. In this episode we're going to discuss the new findings from Venus, what faasteam is, how it was detected and what could possibly create it, why we think there could be life in the clouds of Venus, and what all of this means.



phosphine gas is a bio signature on Venus bio signatures are markers that indicate potential present or past life. A common one is water. Of course, whenever we send out spacecraft, or we're looking at exoplanets, or even other bodies in our own solar system. We chase after water because water is a bio signature. Similarly, there's also methane, we keep seeing methane spikes in the Martian atmosphere. Every time on Earth, because on earth methane is produced by either volcanism or ruminating animals. There's no volcanism on Mars. And unfortunately, there aren't any powers on Mars, Venus is a different situation than planet is a hellscape. It is the hottest planet in the solar system, even though Mercury is closer to the sun. The average surface temperature on Venus is 415 degrees Celsius, which, as everyone commonly says is hot enough to melt lead. This is because of dense atmosphere. Venus has the biggest atmosphere of the four rocky planets in our solar system. And this atmosphere is composed of almost 96% carbon dioxide. At one point in the past, we think that Venus did have liquid water with emotions, just like Mars. But at some point, a runaway greenhouse effect, took hold, and it started to raise global temperatures. In fact, we think this is the field that awaits us on Earth, if we don't act immediately. But back to Venus. Naturally, we do not expect life to survive on the surface at 450 degrees Celsius. We think that about 50 kilometers above the surface in the clouds of Venus. The environment is a bit more temperate since at least the 1960s. Some scientists have considered the possibility that this awful atmosphere may host microbial life. Despite the extremely acidic conditions that are prevalent.

Now, fossil is produced on Earth as we saw earlier by human activity or by microbes, both of which are capable of maintaining and sustaining a certain concentration of the gas in the oxygen filled atmosphere in the presence of oxygen faustin appears and disappears rather quickly natural processes do not produce enough or phosphine gas to keep the concentration sustained in our atmosphere. And it turns out that the same logic applies to Venus as well. There are trace amounts of gases that come and go and these can be attributed to natural processes, but a significant and sustained quantity of gas would imply life on Venus, forcing is found in the atmospheres of giant gaseous planets like Jupiter and Saturn, because these environments lack oxygen and audit high temperatures and pressures, causing the same chemical reactions that we do in labs to produce foreseen rocky planets, do not have environments that are conducive to the natural production of foreseen, making it a potentially good indicator for life. So it's a good bio signature for Venus. Keeping this in mind, back in 2017.

This research team actually originally sent them out, performing a theoretical experiment where they could determine the amount of phosphene, that would need to be protected on Venus, to say that there is an indication of life. This was the objective, with which they started that project. however, as soon as they started to look for for Steam.

They surprisingly realized that there's much more foreseen than they anticipated in the clouds of Venus, the concentrations are at about 20 parts per billion, which is a number that's impossibly high for an environment that contains oxygen. Furthermore, the quantity is nearly 1000 times what is found. So naturally. This begs for an explanation. If you have seen the very first episode of Breaking Bad, you have seen phosphine gas in action. Worldwide inside the trailer van and gunpoint adds red phosphorus, instead of iron into water, and he traps two characters inside the trailer man, as a colorless, odorless dossing gas. The leader explains to Jesse that red phosphorus in the presence of moisture and accelerated by heat phosphorus hydride or phosphine gas. The visuals might not be all that accurate, but the reaction basically is. And this is what scientists hope to find as an explanation in Venus as well.

But it turns out there simply are no chemical reactions that could even be nauseum clouds, which can explain this amount of sustained phosphine concentrations. The researchers studied to eliminate natural causes one by one. First, they eliminated the accidental observations of other gases such as ammonia, which can falsely reflect as phosphine. During detection, then they examine the composition of the atmosphere and the reactions produced for scene, only to conclude that the conditions are simply not good enough to introduce the gas at such high concentrations in the atmosphere of Venus. Additionally, they also ended up, eliminating planetary phenomena like volcanism or lightning for non being powerful enough again, other exotic processes, such as logs few friction, or even the solar wind could only produce the gas in a negligible amount, according to their people and findings. Furthermore, in the conditions where faustin was found the gas should survive for just about three years. According to the researchers estimation. But the presence of gas. Really indicates that there is an active process that is introducing the scientists have made it clear that although their findings offer life as a potential explanation to the presence of gas. The presence of gas itself is not evidence of life. If anything, going by our historical astronomical track record. Most scientists think that it is likely that there is an alternate explanation for why foreseen is being produced, other than alien microbes, because it's never aliens. In this case, in a change from our regular discourse on extraterrestrial life, we can at least reframe it to say that it's likely not aliens, but for ones. We don't know.

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