Chemical Signature of Life on Venus?

摘要

Venus is considered a sister planet to Earth. The two planets are similar in size and mass and both reside in the habitable zone of our sun. Venus, however, is currently an extremely hostile place. Consumed by a runaway greenhouse effect, the surface is over 900 F degrees, and the atmospheric pressure at the surface is over 90 times what we experience here on Earth. The surface shows signs of volcanic activity in the past, but some researchers speculate that there is still some active volcanism on the planet. The atmosphere of Venus is extremely thick and there are high winds, but the temperature in the cloud decks is moderate and stable. Scientists have speculated that if there were life on Venus, the only place possible for it to survive is in the atmosphere. This conjecture began in earnest with Carl Sagan in 1967, when he and Harold Morowitz published an article in the journal Nature (Sagan and Morowitz, 1967). Venus and the possibility of life in its clouds have been the subject of many papers and research studies since.