Microbial life could create habitable pockets in the clouds of Venus
The caustic clouds of the planet Venus might seem a very unlikely place to look for life, but a new study has shown it is at least theoretically possible for microbial life to create habitable pockets there.
No life we know of would be able to live on Venus, so the team behind the study instead looked at ways life could neutralise the sulphuric acid in the clouds. They started by studied one of the most inexplicable components of Venus’s atmosphere – ammonia.
“Ammonia shouldn’t be on Venus,” says Sara Seager from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who took part in the study. “It has hydrogen attached to it, and there’s little hydrogen around. Any gas that doesn’t belong in the context of its environment is suspicious for being made by life.”
The study revealed that whatever the source of this ammonia, its presence would create a cascade of chemical reactions that could neutralise the acid, and even explain other anomalies, such as small amounts of oxygen and oddly-shaped droplets, which have been observed before in Venus’s clouds. www.mit.edu