2024-04-02 05:45:43
The results of recent research suggest that the clouds of Venus could be suitable for some forms of life to subsist in them.
In contrast to the scorchingly inhospitable surface of Venus, a cloud layer that extends from 50 to 65 kilometers above the planet’s surface harbors milder temperatures that would support some extremely resilient forms of life.
If there is life in that cloud layer on Venus, it must be very different from most life forms on Earth. This is because Venus’s clouds are composed largely of droplets of sulfuric acid, an intensely corrosive chemical that dissolves metals and destroys most of Earth’s biological molecules.
The new study offers a less pessimistic view of the acidity of these clouds. Their results indicate that, in fact, some key components of life, including important amino acids, can persist in concentrated sulfuric acid solutions.
The study was carried out by a team made up of, among others, Sara Seager, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and her son Maxwell D. Seager, from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, both institutions in the United States.
The search for life in the clouds of Venus has gained momentum in recent years, fueled in part by the controversial detection of phosphine (a substance considered a sign of life) in the planet’s atmosphere. Although this detection remains the subject of debate, the news has reinvigorated an old question: Could Earth’s sister planet support life?
In search of an answer to that question, scientists are already planning several missions to Venus, including the first largely privately funded one, backed by the US-based space launch company Rocket Lab. This mission, for which Sara Seager is the principal scientific researcher, aims to send a spacecraft through the clouds of Venus to analyze its chemistry for signs of organic molecules. The launch into space is scheduled for January 2025.
The new study deepens the notion that Venus’s clouds could harbor complex chemicals necessary for life. As the authors of the study clarify, complex organic chemistry is, of course, not life, but there is no life without it. In other words, if certain molecules can persist in sulfuric acid, perhaps the highly acidic clouds of Venus are habitable, although they are not necessarily inhabited.
Fuente: NCYT de Amazings / Photo: NASA