Vida em Vênus? Seria possível? Hoje, @astroaline e @funcionaloucura falarão sobre a detecção de fosfina na atmosfera de Venus!

Life in Venus? Could it be possible? Today @astroaline and @funcionaloucura will talk about the detection of phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus!

In September 14th, the detection of phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus was announced. This molecule, in Earth, is produced only by living beings or in laboratory.
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Could that molecules in Venus be produced by living beings too? Could this presence of phosphine be the first indicative of life out of our world?

Nowadays the search of life made by molecules called bio signatures - those originated necessarily by biological processes - has been gaining notoriety, in other planets and moons of the Solar System and even in exoplanets.

In the picture, we have Mars, Europe, Titan and Enceladus. Pictures out of scale.

Other processes in Venus could also originates phosphine. However the concentration of phosphine detected is not compatible with abiotic processes.

Astronomers spent more than a year trying to find other explanation for this concentration that wasn't the presence of life, before publishing the paper.

This announcement is a great example of how Science works in its own time, be it for taking measurements through experiments that get more sophisticated each day, or for interpreting data from various experiments.

Sometimes we measure something that was not expected and we have to work together with the science community to understand what it means.

This thread was written by Aline Novais ( @astroaline ) and Larissa Inácio ( @funcionaloucura ). #AstroThreadBR