Related papers: The Venusian Chronicles
Millimeter-waveband spectra of Venus from both the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) seem to indicate there may be evidence (signal-to-noise ratio of about $15\sigma$) of a…
Measurements of trace-gases in planetary atmospheres help us explore chemical conditions different to those on Earth. Our nearest neighbor, Venus, has cloud decks that are temperate but hyper-acidic. We report the apparent presence of…
Venus is Earth's sister planet, with similar mass and density but an uninhabitably hot surface, an atmosphere with a water activity 50-100 times lower than anywhere on Earths' surface, and clouds believed to be made of concentrated sulfuric…
For over half a century, scientists have contemplated the potential existence of life within the clouds of Venus. Unknown chemistry leaves open the possibility that certain regions of the Venusian atmosphere are habitable. In situ…
The search for life elsewhere in the universe is one of the central aims of science in the 21st century. While most of this work is aimed at planets orbiting other stars, the search for life in our own Solar System is an important part of…
The potential detection of ppb levels phosphine (PH3) in the clouds of Venus through millimeter-wavelength astronomical observations is extremely surprising as PH3 is an unexpected component of an oxidized environment of Venus. A thorough…
The recent candidate detection of ~1 ppb of phosphine in the middle atmosphere of Venus is so unexpected that it requires an exhaustive search for explanations of its origin. Phosphorus-containing species have not been modelled for Venus'…
Recently, phosphine was discovered in the atmosphere of Venus as a potential biosignature. This raises the question: if Venusian life exists, could it be related to terrestrial life? Based on the known rate of meteoroid impacts on Earth, we…
The Venus Life Finder Missions are a series of focused astrobiology mission concepts to search for habitability, signs of life, and life itself in the Venus atmosphere. While people have speculated on life in the Venus clouds for decades,…
The potential detection of phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus has reignited interest in the possibility of life aloft in this environment. If the cloud decks of Venus are indeed an abode of life, it should reside in the "habitable zone"…
Venus is known for its extreme surface temperature and its sulfuric acid clouds. But the cloud layers on Venus have similar temperature and pressure conditions to those on the surface of Earth and are conjectured to be a possible habitat…
The presence of phosphine (PH$_3$) in the atmosphere of Venus was reported by Greaves et al. (2021a), based on observations of the J=1-0 transition at 267 GHz using ground-based, millimeter-wave spectroscopy. This unexpected discovery…
The detection of phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus at an abundance of $\sim 20$ ppb suggests that this gas is being generated by either indeterminate abiotic pathways or biological processes. We consider the latter possibility, and…
Searches for phosphine in Venus' atmosphere have sparked a debate. Cordiner et al. 2022 analyse spectra from the Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) and infer <0.8 ppb of PH3. We noticed that some spectral artefacts…
Long-standing unexplained Venus atmosphere observations and chemical anomalies point to unknown chemistry but also leave room for the possibility of life. The unexplained observations include several gases out of thermodynamic equilibrium…
On 14th September 2020, the Royal Astronomical Society made an official statement coupled with a webminar on the discovery of phosphine on Venus. Single-line millimetre-waveband spectral detections of phosphine (with a signal-to-noise ratio…
Life in the clouds of Venus, if present in sufficiently high abundance, must be affecting the atmospheric chemistry. It has been proposed that abundant Venusian life could obtain energy from its environment using three possible sulfur…
We revisit the hypothesis that there is life in the Venusian clouds to propose a life cycle that resolves the conundrum of how life can persist aloft for hundreds of millions to billions of years. Most discussions of an aerial biosphere in…
The atmosphere of Venus remains mysterious, with many outstanding chemical connundra. These include: the unexpected presence of ~10 ppm O2 in the cloud layers; an unknown composition of large particles in the lower cloud layers; and hard to…
We are of the opinion that several anomalies in the atmosphere of Venus provide evidence of yet-unknown processes and systems that are out of equilibrium. The investigation of these anomalies on Venus should be open to the wide range of…