Credit: ESO / M. Kornmesser / L. Calçada & NASA / JPL / Caltech
Microbial life may be present in the atmosphere of Venus, according to a paper published in Nature Astronomy today.
(Written by Rohan Byrne, our resident geoscientist. Follow him at @buildmeaplanet)
Traces of a telltale gas called phosphine have been detected in sunlight bouncing off the planet. The gas, a rare chemical sometimes used as a pesticide, has never before been observed on rocky planets other than Earth, where it is almost always a product of life.
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