Astronomers: There may be no signs of life on Venus

According to the British "New Scientist" weekly website reported on October 20, a new analysis report suggested that Venus may not have much phosphine. News of phosphine gas observed in the metallic atmosphere in September caused a stir because it could come from life. However, the researchers extrapolated from archival data that the amount of phosphine gas on Venus could be very limited.

Following the initial discovery, Clara Susa-Silva of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts and colleagues studied data collected in 2015 at the Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii.

The report noted that they found no signs of this gas. The original observations found phosphine at a concentration of about twenty parts per billion, but the team believes it is only five parts per billion at most.

Susa Silva said: "Is it because there is no phosphine? That's possible, but we have to try to figure out what went wrong with the initial interpretation of the data. ”

However, it is also possible that this is a clue to the distribution of phosphine in Venus's atmosphere. It is predicted that phosphine gas in many parts of the atmosphere will be rapidly destroyed, especially at the top of the clouds, and infrared data is detected from this area. Sousa-Silva said it is therefore possible that the probe data is not deep enough.

It is also possible that the concentration of phosphine on Venus changes over time. Susa Silva said: "If phosphine comes from life, we think there is a huge uncertainty in Venus. On Earth, phosphine does come from living organisms, and phosphine is extremely unstable. In most atmospheres, phosphine is almost non-existent, but there is a lot over where phosphine is produced. ”

All in all, Susa-Silva said, suggests that we need to further observe Venus at many different wavelengths, trying to detect more and more data from different regions of the atmosphere. She said: "It's not a big problem. It's really interesting, it makes us understand what we have to do for future research. (Compiler/Zheng Guoyi)

Source: Reference News Network