Venus may hold the key to discovering extra-terrestrial life

The initial detection was picked up as an anomaly by the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii through infrared and microwave wavelengths, and the findings were quickly substantiated by the ALMA, an array of radio telescopes in the desert of Northern Chile. Despite all this state-of-the-art technology, when it comes to speculating on how or why phosphine ended up there, experts are almost as clueless as you or I.

‘We’re really left with two possibilities,’ said William Bains of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ‘The first is that there is some completely known, exotic, and therefore very exciting chemistry going in the clouds of Venus that nobody has speculated on before. Or – and this is the more exciting one – the phosphine is being created by life.’

Thankfully, with astronomers across the globe twitching at the prospect of answering one of the universe’s most pertinent questions, we may not have to wait too long to glean some clarity from the situation. To this point, discovery expeditions to Venus had struggled to secure funding, with experts pointing to the planet’s volatile landscape as a serious hinderance and Mars has become the key subject for our otherworldly research.

However, this week’s astronomical breakthrough arrived in conjunction with a new industry proposal designed to steer planetary science missions and research for the next decade. On that front, Venus is sure to steal the Red Planet’s thunder in the years ahead.

UPDATE: @NASA Administrator @JimBridenstine talks up missions to Venus after detection of potential biomarker in Venusian clouds. Several mission proposals are in the hopper: https://t.co/lpGR6lCWFE #LifeOnVenus #phosphine (Pic: DAVINCI+ mission concept) pic.twitter.com/tWWFUeaZzP

— Alan Boyle 👽 (@b0yle) September 14, 2020

NASA is already working out the logistics of kickstarting an expedition to Venus before summer 2026. Sending a probe directly into the planet’s atmosphere will allow analysts to acquire the very first high-precision measurements of the phosphine in question, as well as a detailed UV map of the planet’s ancient geology. The mission, dubbed ‘DAVINCI’ is now being drafted for an official proposal in 2021.

As revered astronomer Carl Sagan once said: ‘Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence’. Right now, the evidence is promising, but we have some digging to do.