Our nearest planetary neighbor may be more friendly to life than we previously thought.
Venus has long been assumed to be uninhabitable: its thick carbon dioxide atmosphere is swirling with yellow clouds of strong sulfuric acid, and its surface is something out of a nightmare, hitting over 850 degrees Fahrenheit and pressures 93 times that on Earth's surface.
Now, new research has suggested that some of the ingredients of life could exist within those clouds of extremely strong acid.
A pre-print paper on the arXiv server, which has yet to be formally peer-reviewed, has found that amino acids—the building blocks of proteins, and an essential molecule for the existence of life—can remain stable when exposed to concentrated sulfuric acid.
This implies that in those thick clouds of sulfuric acid, above the intense heat and pressure of the planet's surface, Venus could be inhabitable to life. Amino acids are often delivered to planets like Earth and Venus via meteors and other cosmic rocks.
"These findings significantly broaden the range of biologically relevant molecules that could be components of a biochemistry based on a concentrated sulfuric acid solvent," the authors wrote in the paper.
Previous work by the researchers found that nucleic acid bases—the building blocks of DNA—were also stable in concentrated sulfuric acid.
"[This] paper is very clearly about conditions in the clouds, at 48-68 km (30-42 miles) where the temperature is just right for liquid water to exist as droplets," David Rothery, a professor of planetary geosciences at the Open University, U.K., told Newsweek. "The clouds are very acidic, because of atmospheric sulfur dioxide dissolved in the water to make sulfuric acid. So the temperature is suitable for life, but the acid poses a challenge. However, this paper shows (by experiment) that amino acids (essential for life as we know it) can be stable in such conditions."
These findings indicate that life could emerge in several different solvents, rather than just water, the authors suggest. However, any life that may be able to withstand Venus's intense conditions likely evolved a long time ago, back when the planet was more similar to ours.
"Microbial life could have adapted to live in Venus's present-day clouds, but I think it very unlikely that life could have got started in the present conditions," Rothery said. "If there is life in Venus's clouds, I would expect it to be descended from life that started in a similar way to life on Earth, long ago (maybe 3-4 billion years ago) when conditions on Venus could have been much more similar to the early Earth (with oceans of liquid water)."
"When Venus' 'runaway greenhouse effect' led to evaporation and then loss to space of all the planet's water (except what's in those clouds) life would have become extinct except for microbes that were already living an airborne life, suspended in the atmosphere," he said.
If life could evolve on this chaotic planet, it would, of course, be very different from any sort of life we know on Earth.
The researchers hope to delve into whether this avenue could reveal the possibility of the evolution of life on other planets, and investigate whether chemical reactions may be occurring with amino acids in Venus cloud layers, around 30 miles to 40 miles above the surface.
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Scientists solve mystery of weird streaks in Venus's cloud
A new study in the journal Science Advances has found that strange patches and streaks in the clouds of Venus that are only visble in the ultraviolet range of light may be due to iron-sulfur compounds.
Researchers found that when they reacted iron with sulfuric acid to form minerals called rhomboclase and acid ferric sulfate, they were stable in the same extreme conditions found in the clouds of Venus. These minerals, when present with sulfuric acid, were found to absorb ultraviolet light in the same way as is seen on Venus, implying that they may be present in the clouds.
"The patterns and level of absorption shown by the combination of these two mineral phases are consistent with the dark UV-patches observed in Venusian clouds," paper co-author Clancy Zhijian Jiang, a biogeochemist at Cambridge University's Department of Earth Sciences, said in a statement. "These targeted experiments revealed the intricate chemical network within the atmosphere, and shed light on the elemental cycling on the Venusian surface."
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Jess Thomson is a Newsweek Science Reporter based in London UK. Her focus is reporting on science, technology and healthcare. ... Read more
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