Signs of life on Venus may have been found decades ago

[Mike Wehner]

• NASA found the clues to life on Venus almost four decades ago but never realized it.
• A probe that was sent to Venus back in 1978 returned readings that showed the presence of what appears to be phosphine, which may be produced by biological processes.
• The data supports the recent research that found phosphine in Venus' atmosphere, though we still don't know if life actually exists there.

There's been a whole lot of talk recently about the possibility of life existing in some form on Venus. The planet is a toxic hellscape, but upon scanning its atmosphere a compound called phosphine was detected, which can originate from organic processes. It's big news, and space agencies are already talking about how they might further probe the mystery with missions to Venus, but is this really news? Shockingly, it might not be.

As LiveScience reports, a now-ancient NASA mission to Venus way back in 1978 may have detected the presence of phosphine decades before this more recent discovery. The data is examined in a new paper that was published to arXiv.

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Signs of life on Venus may have been found decades ago originally appeared on BGR.com on Fri, 2 Oct 2020 at 23:00:43 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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