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TagBiosignatures and Venus

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Celestial digital art, Venus planet and galaxies in outer space

New Analysis Casts Doubt on Claims for Life on Venus

The newer study agrees that the composition of Venus’s atmosphere is unusual but not that it is evidence for life.

A new study throws cold water (vapor?) on an earlier paper that suggested that aerial life forms could exist in Venus’s massive cloud cover: Researchers from the University of Cambridge used a combination of biochemistry and atmospheric chemistry to test the ‘life in the clouds’ hypothesis, which astronomers have speculated about for decades, and found that life cannot explain the composition of the Venusian atmosphere. Any life form in sufficient abundance is expected to leave chemical fingerprints on a planet’s atmosphere as it consumes food and expels waste. However, the Cambridge researchers found no evidence of these fingerprints on Venus. University of Cambridge, “No signs (yet) of life on Venus” at ScienceDaily (June 14, 2022) The paper is open access. Read More ›