Hints of life discovered on Venus

A UK-led team of astronomers has discovered a rare molecule - phosphine - in the clouds of Venus, pointing to the possibility of extra-terrestrial 'aerial' life. The presence of life is the only known explanation for the amount of phosphine inferred by observations Paul Rimmer Astronomers have speculated for decades that high clouds on Venus could offer a home for microbes - floating free of the scorching surface, but tolerating very high acidity. The detection of phosphine molecules, which consist of hydrogen and phosphorus, is an important step in the search for life beyond Earth, a key question in science. The results are reported in the journal Nature Astronomy . The discovery was made by Professor Jane Greaves while she was a visitor at the University of Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy. Greaves and her collaborators used the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) in Hawaii to detect the phosphine, and followed up their discovery on the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile. Both facilities observe Venus at a wavelength of about 1 millimetre, much longer than the human eye can see.