New research has debunked a controversial 2020 study that claimed to have found the chemical phosphine in Venus' hellish atmosphere. The chemical’s reported existence had hinted that there was alien life on the planet.
In 2020, a team of researchers announced that they had found phosphine in Venus' atmosphere using data collected by the Japanese space agency's Akatsuki spacecraft, which has been orbiting Venus since 2015. On Earth, phosphine is released into the atmosphere when organic matter decays. The alleged detection of the chemical in Venus' atmosphere sparked theories that extraterrestrial life could be present on our neighboring planet.
The detection was retrospectively corroborated by data that had been collected by NASA's Pioneer 13 probe during its visit to Venus in 1978. However, the astronomical community remained skeptical of the findings.
Now, in a new study published Oct. 21 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters (opens in new tab), researchers used the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) — a plane-mounted telescope co-run by NASA and the German space agency — to scan Venus' atmosphere. The researchers found that it was extremely unlikely that phosphine exists in Venus' atmosphere, and even if it did, the chemical could not be present in concentrations greater than 0.8 parts per billion, which is too low to have been created by extraterrestrial life.
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