Found in the droppings of badgers and penguins and used as an ad hoc chemical weapon on the TV series Breaking Bad, is phosphine the definitive proof that extraterrestrial life exists on the Planet Venus?
By: Ringo Bones
The planet Venus, despite of earning the moniker as “planet Earth’s twin” has since been dismissed as hostile to familiar forms of life because its surface temperature averages 800 degrees Fahrenheit and on its surface, the atmospheric pressure is 90 times that of planet Earth – akin to going 3,000 feet underwater. Not to mention the clouds of sulfuric acid found on its upper atmosphere. But recently, hopes had been raised that there’s definitive proof that extraterrestrial life exists on Venus because astronomers had detected a chemical that can only be produced as a metabolic byproduct of anaerobic microorganisms here on planet Earth – and that very chemical is called phosphine.
Here on planet Earth, phosphine can be found in our intestines as a metabolic byproduct of anaerobic microorganisms living there, in the feces of badgers and penguins and in some deep-sea worms, as well as other biological environments associated with anaerobic organisms. It can be very poisonous in large enough concentrations. Militaries have employed it for chemical warfare and it is widely used as a fumigant in commercial farms because it is less corrosive than ammonia. On the TV show Breaking Bad, the main character Walter White used it as an ad hoc chemical weapon to kill two of his rivals. Sadly, scientists have yet to provide a definitive explanation on how Earth’s anaerobic microorganisms produce it.
Phosphine has been detected by the Cassini spacecraft on the atmospheres’ of the planets Jupiter and Saturn due to the immense pressures exerted by these gas giant planets’ atmospheres. But at atmospheric pressures closer to planet Earth’s it seems that phosphine can only be produced with the association of the metabolic processes of anaerobic microorganisms and associated environments.
Back in June 2017, Dr. Jane Greaves, an astronomer at Cardiff University of Wales set out to test the hypothesis first proposed by astronomers Carl Sagan and Harold Morowitz back in 1966 that the cloud layer just 31 miles below the upper atmosphere of the planet Venus might harbor life because the average temperature there is only 83 degrees Fahrenheit and the atmospheric pressure is about the same as that found here on Earth at sea level. Using the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii to look for signs of various molecules on the Venusian atmosphere, Dr. Grieves chose to zero in phosphine because, according to her, phosphorous might be a sort of go-no-go for life.
According to Sara Seager, a planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, using phosphine gas a s a sign of extraterrestrial life on planet Venus is an “out of the blue finding” after the interests raised over the publishing of the papers she co-authored in Nature Astronomy and the journal Astrobiology. Harvard University astrophysicist Clara Sousa-Silva whose research paper she co-authored with Seager focusing on phosphine has now raised further interest in exploring the planet Venus further for definitive proof for signs of extraterrestrial life. Sadly only one spacecraft – Japan’s Akatsuki spacecraft – is currently performing a lonely vigil of orbiting planet Venus since 2016. Maybe NASA should send a balloon-borne probe to explore Venus’ upper atmosphere to find signs of extremophiles living on the sulfuric acid droplet clouds.
