Bbc earth the biography atmosphere of venus
Bbc earth the biography atmosphere of venus and jupiter!
Clouds of Venus 'simply too dry' to support life
Image source, Akatsuki/ISAS-Japan/M.Thévenot
- Author, Jonathan Amos
- Role, BBC Science Correspondent
It's not possible for life to exist in the clouds of Venus.
Bbc earth the biography atmosphere of venus and mars
It's simply too dry, says an international research team led from Queen's University Belfast, UK.
Hopes had been raised last year that microbes might inhabit the Venusian atmosphere, given the presence there of the gas phosphine (PH3).
It was suggested the concentration could not be explained by geological activity alone.
But the new Belfast study puts a dampener on this idea.
The team assessed what is known about conditions in the clouds, gathered by space probes, and then looked across the library of lifeforms on Earth to see if any known organisms could persist in that challenging environment. The clouds are mostly sulphuric acid with a tiny fraction of water.
The analysis concluded that the mos