People have speculated about life in Venus's atmosphere for decades. Q: Have there been any past indicators of life on Venus? Proposed processes included microorganisms as the absorbers. Venus also rotates very slowly, taking 243 Earth days to complete a Venusian day. High in the toxic atmosphere of the planet Venus, astronomers on Earth have discovered signs of what might be life. Shutterstock A truly alien explanation. This has relevance for assessing the exobiological potential of extrasolar Venus-like greenhouse planets. It’s clear that more detailed investigations are needed to verify life on—or above—Venus. It's believed to have had oceans billions of years ago. New research sheds light on the possibility of past life on Venus. Past life indicators in synastry can be very supportive and loving, but depending on the nature of the planets involved, you can also block each other and bring hard lessons into each other’s life. But the thinking behind life on Venus didn’t disappear completely. Researchers poring over archives from previous missions to Venus claim that NASA may have first detected phosphine signatures (indicating potential microbial life) back in 1978, and they just went unnoticed for the past 42 years. Astronomers have speculated for decades that high clouds on Venus could offer a home for microbes – floating free of the scorching surface, but still needing to tolerate very high acidity. Greaves, J. S. et al. 'As Venus heated up the oceans evaporated and the surface became so hot that any life would have been killed, but any life in the clouds would have survived.' 'Perhaps life originated in the past when Venus was cooler, with liquid water oceans. This would make sense for Venus obviously because the atmosphere is just so densely composing carbon dioxide. A truly alien explanation The third explanation to consider is that a truly alien form of life (life as we don’t know it) could have formed on Venus’s 400 ° C surface and survives there to this day. Venus has a hot and hellish surface, but the idea that life might exist in its relatively … May 22, 2019. As it heads towards the surface, it sends… In recent times, scientists have wondered if simple life might survive in Venus’ unusually cloudy atmosphere. A fundamental question in exobiology remains the degree to which habitats on Venus, past and present, were, or are suitable for life. This will require Herculean undertakings, as any actual upcoming missions to Venus are ideas, with no firm plans in place. If rocks from Earth containing microbial life entered Venus’s orbit in the past, this life may have adapted to Venus’s atmospheric conditions. 3 Life on Venus? The new findings suggest that if life ever existed on Venus, either now or in the past, it might actually be present in the air itself. In the past, the authors of the new paper pointed out, some researchers have suggested the possibility of life in the planet's uppermost cloud layer. (Courtesy: NASA/JPL-Caltech) Phosphine, which is a gas produced exclusively by microbes on Earth and considered to be a strong signature of life on other worlds, has been detected in the clouds of Venus. Cloudy world: a recently-enhanced image of Venus taken by the Mariner 10 spacecraft. Spacecraft Flies Past Venus En Route To Mercury, But Did It Find Signs Of Life In The Atmosphere? Now the spacecraft makes its journey into the planet’s thick, sulfurous atmosphere. Radius 3,760 miles | 6,052 kilometers. This precious resource was crucial to the evolution of life on Earth. Life on Venus | The Landscape, Timed Auction (62 / 100) Artwork Details "My work centres on an exploration of figurative painting, drawing from traditions of fresco and icon painting, and primarily investigating a fragmentary approach to narrative time and space which shifts between historical and contemporary references. Or, unlikely but possible, life could have barely clung to some ecosystems in the Martian soil. Year 225 Earth days. But today, it's considered inhospitable to life. Water is life. Pioneer 13 dropped a probe through Venus's clouds 42 years ago. It was also caused by an unknown process. The detection of phosphine molecules, which consist of hydrogen and phosphorus, could point to this extra-terrestrial ‘aerial’ life. Even those who are skeptical believe the findings to be intriguing. After speeding through space for 123 days, NASA’s Pioneer Venus 2 mission finally reaches its destination: Venus. 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