Researchers are scouring the archives of previous missions to Venus, claiming that NASA may have first detected phosphine signatures—indicating potential microbial life—back in 1978, and they just went unnoticed for the past 42 years, RT reported.
On September 14, the world was shaken by the announcement that phosphine—a toxic gas that might include microbial life—had been detected in the clouds above Venus. There are currently no known natural processes that explain the volume of the gas found.
Though it is still too early to definitively say that there is life on Venus producing the gas, the bombshell announcement briefly wrested attention away from Mars in the search for life elsewhere in our solar system.
However, Rakesh Mogul, a biochemist at Cal Poly Pomona in California, and his colleagues found that phosphine signatures may actually have been detected by the Pioneer 13 probe which reached Venus’ orbit back in December of 1978.
The discovery is not yet peer-reviewed and doesn’t really add much detail that scientists did not already know to the “life of Venus” story, but it may solidify the recently reported discovery.
RT reported:
The 1978 data was produced by the Large Probe Neutral Mass Spectrometer (LNMS) instrument which descended into Venus’ extremely inhospitable atmosphere via parachute in December 1978. It managed to beam back data before meeting a grim death on the hottest planet in our solar system (surface temperature of 462 degrees Celsius).
Researchers in the 1970s focused on other chemical compounds and seemingly didn’t pay too much heed to the phosphorus-based compounds hinted-at in the data.
Mogul’s team found signals matching phosphine in the data as well as definitive evidence of actual phosphorus atoms in the atmosphere, which would likely have degraded from phosphine compounds in the upper atmosphere.
The researchers note, however, that the LNMS wasn’t built to hunt for phosphine-like compounds and their signatures would be shrouded among dozens of other molecules.
“I believe that evidence in the legacy data were sort of discounted because it was thought that they could not exist in the atmosphere,” Mogul said.
Mogul and others also discovered traces of chlorine, oxygen, and hydrogen peroxide in the archives, yet more chemicals which, technically, shouldn’t arise naturally in the clouds above Venus.
“We believe this to be an indication of chemistries not yet discovered,” the experts said, “and/or chemistries potentially favorable for life.”
NASA, the ESA, Roscosmos, and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) all have plans for future generations of Venus probes that will potentially unravel the mystery in the coming years.
Some have been skeptical of the discovery in the archives, however, suggesting that with additional detail, the traces discovered may just be noise picked up by the sensors.
Michael Radke tweeted: “The signals that they are trying to separate are very small and very close together. And if it *is* in this spectrum I would want to see it at more than just one altitude. Make absolutely sure it’s not noise.”
Others noted that if the signal was strong and conclusive to begin with, it would likely have raised eyebrows decades ago.
David Grinspoon tweeted: “Interesting to see some folks have made up their minds that it absolutely is not there. Which is just as silly as being certain it is there at this point… Looking for it in archival data is a good move, but if it were a clear signal it likely would have been published before…”
Venus has widely been considered to have too hostile an environment to accommodate life as we know it, being the second planet from the sun and having a surface temperature of around 864 degrees Fahrenheit.