2/ What they found is phosphine, a gas that here on Earth is either made artificially (it& #39;s dangerous and used as a fumigant) or by bacteria. On Venus, it appears to be in a cloud layer about 50 km above the surface, where the temperature is pretty Earth-like.
3/ The scientists looked very hard to see what can make phosphine non-biologically (details are in my article linked above), but didn& #39;t find anything that could explain the amount they saw. To be clear: THAT DOESN& #39;T MEAN LIFE. It only means they couldn& #39;t come up with anything.
4/ We don& #39;t know the chemistry in the Venusian clouds hugely well, so there could be some weird non-bio thing going on there. We& #39;ve seen stuff like this before in the moons of the gas giants; odd chemistry that looks like life but isn& #39;t.
5/ So please don& #39;t run around saying scientists have found life on Venus. They have found evidence of something that *could* have been produced by life, but also may not have. We don& #39;t know.

Still, it& #39;s pretty interesting, and cautiously exciting.
6/ Weirdly, a while back there were dark patches found in the clouds of Venus when observed in ultraviolet. The patches could be made of something 1-15 microns in size... about right for a bacterium. This is around the same altitude the phosphine is. https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/life-in-hell-could-venus-have-a-bacterial-infection">https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/...
7/ It& #39;s not clear what those patches might be. It could be just, well, *stuff*, clumpy material floating in the winds. Bacteria is a stretch, but it does kinda sorta fit the data. This could just be coincidence, mind you. But it& #39;s interesting.
8/ FWIW, phosphine is a simple molecule of one phosphorus atom and 3 hydrogens, and it& #39;s emitted by anaerobic bacteria here on Earth, usually in rotting corpses. So, ick.
9/ The surface of Venus is incredibly hostile. Tremendous pressure from the thick air (90X Earth& #39;s at sea level!) and temperatures hot enough to melt lead and tin. Up higher it& #39;s nicer, though the clouds are made of droplets of 90% sulfuric acid. Oof. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFUgy3crCYY">https://www.youtube.com/watch...
10/ If life is there, it would be VERY different from here. But we just don& #39;t know. Atmospheric chemistry is ridiculously complicated, and there& #39;re a lot of gaps in our understanding of what& #39;s going on above Venus.
11/ Obviously, we need to send more probes to our evil twin sister planet and take a MUCH closer look. There are plans in the works to do that. This news may spur some detector design. :) I hope so. Whether life or not, it& #39;s interesting, and it& #39;d be cool to know more about it.
12/ And if it *IS* life… well. Wouldn& #39;t THAT be something? All this time looking to Mars, and hellish Venus could be where we find it 1st. Delightful! https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="😆" title="Lächelndes Gesicht mit geöffnetem Mund und fest verschlossenen Augen" aria-label="Emoji: Lächelndes Gesicht mit geöffnetem Mund und fest verschlossenen Augen">

Which is all the more reason to be healthily skeptical. The more we want something to be true the more careful we need be.
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