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Scientists have discovered signs of life on Venus!

This news has been making headlines for two weeks, but what does it exactly point at? Let's find out ...

Whenever the question of extraterrestrial life has arisen up, mostly Mars and a few moons orbiting Jupiter and Saturn have been a center of attraction.

Meanwhile, Venus is hot, and poisonous was long considered too inhospitable for anything to survive.

But now, digging through archival NASA data, scientists have found a hint of phosphine picked up by Pioneer 13 — a probe that reached Venus in December 1978.

Eventually, on September 14, 2020, a team of scientists announced that its members had detected phosphine gas in the caustic, hot atmosphere of Venus.

Phosphine is a toxic gas made up of one phosphorus and three hydrogen atoms (PH₃).

On giants like Jupiter and Saturn, immense heat and pressures can jam the phosphorus and hydrogen atoms together to form the molecule.

But on smaller, rocky planets like Earth and Venus, there isn't enough energy to produce copious amounts of phosphine in the same way.

And the only possible way to produce it is with the aid of anaerobic life or microbial organisms that don’t require or use oxygen.

Here on Earth, phosphine is found in our intestines, in the feces of badgers and penguins, and in some deep-sea worms.

Phosphine is extremely toxic, Its hazardous consequences are such that, it’s also used by terrorists as a chemical agent in warfare. Not to forget, on the TV show “Breaking Bad,” Walter White produced phosphine in his meth lab to kill two rivals.

But, who is making it in Venusian clouds? As far as the chemical and thermodynamic conditions on Venus are known, there doesn't seem any artificial process that can produce phosphine in the amounts it has been observed.

So, scientists are left with no other option to think of anything that might have produced it other than microbes in the upper part of the planet's thick atmosphere. And this is how phosphine is indicating signs of life on Venus.

On being asked about the existence of life on Venus, Sara Seager quoted: "We’re not saying we discovered life on Venus" ...It's just that life might be one of the possible reasons for the existence of phosphine on Venus amongst other unknown sources.

So what next?

Life on Venus is still a long shot. But now, there's a strong reason to take the idea seriously.

The measurements made to date have just given us a hint of the unexpected. To really get to the heart of this mystery, we need to go back to Venus.

And to do this, NASA is considering two of its four missions in the late 2020s to target Venus.

One, called VERITAS, would carry a powerful radar to peer through the thick clouds and return unprecedented high-resolution images of the surface.

The other one named DAVINCI+ would plunge through the atmosphere, to sniff any phosphine present.

Undoubtedly, this discovery has opened up a new set of possibilities for further exploration in search of life in the Solar System. A lot more exciting is yet to unravel. Stay tuned!