Earlier in September, researchers detected phosphine spots in the atmosphere of Venus — suggesting the presence of life — and since then scientists have surmised that a meteor may have scooped particles of Earth's atmosphere in the distant past and delivered them to our solar system's second planet, according to a new study shared on a pre-print server.
The research comes from Harvard University's Department of Astronomy, and suggests asteroids may have grazed Earth's atmosphere in the distant past — at least 600,000 — and carried high-altitude microbes to Venus.
"Although the abundance of terrestrial life in the upper atmosphere is unknown, these planet-grazing shepherds could have potentially been capable of transferring microbial life between the atmospheres of Earth and Venus," wrote researchers Abraham Loeb and Amir Siraj in the study's abstract. "As a result, the origin of possible Venusian life may be fundamentally indistinguishable from that of terrestrial life."
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