The truth about Phosphine on Venus
- Georgina Griffiths
- Mar 12, 2021
- 2 min read
To begin with, why is phosphine so exciting? Phosphine is a flammable, corrosive and toxic gas. It smells of decaying fish or garlic and is colourless. Putting all this aside, the presence of phosphine could indicate the existence of alien microorganisms and Venus and could therefore indicate that Venus has an environment which is fit for life of some form.
A team of scientists in a paper released in September of 2020 announced that they had sufficient evidence for phosphine in the atmosphere. It is expected that phosphorus would be found as an oxide rather than bonded with hydrogen. The team carried out their research through use of a form of spectroscopy which would reveal changes in amplitude and the frequency. And through their research they concluded that their data implied a high quantity of phosphine in the atmosphere.
But, in November 2020 their data was discredited, another group investigated the same thing and did not find any phosphine in their results. This led to the original team reevaluating their data and methods as well as other groups analysing their data and sadly it was revealed that their findings had been too eager. Their data was not entirely discredited as there may still be a chance of phosphine but in not quite as higher quantity as initially believed. Although this may seem like a sad result, especially following the initial excitement, it truly reveals the course of science, through trial and error.
References:
"Prospects for life on Venus fade — but aren’t dead yet", by Alexandra Witze, for nature, accessed 7/2/21, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03258-5#:~:text=The%20reanalysis%20found%20that%20phosphine,methane%20spikes%20appearing%20on%20Mars.
"Phosphine gas in the cloud decks of Venus", by Greaves, J.S., Richards, A.M.S., Bains, W. et al. Phosphine gas in the cloud decks of Venus. Nat Astron (2020), accessed 7/2/21 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-020-1174-4
"Promising sign of life on Venus might not exist after all", by Nadia Drake, for National Geographic, accessed 7/2/21 https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/10/venus-might-not-have-much-phosphine-dampening-hopes-for-life/
Phosphine entry to PubChem, accessed 7/2/21, https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Phosphine
Image via Wikipedia, accessed 7/2/21 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphine
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