Scientists speculate that we may have friends far away on Venus

Scientists believe Venus could be harbouring alien lifeforms.

The planet, which sits a casual 47 million kilometres from us in our solar system, has ammonia in its upper atmosphere.

Researchers have reportedly been fixated on why Venus’ atmosphere contains the combination of hydrogen and nitrogen ever since it was discovered back in the 1970s.

Now they might have an answer.

On Earth, ammonia is a byproduct of left-over waste from aquatic lifeforms and some scientists reckon Venus could be home to some type of alien life.

The team of researchers from Cardiff University, MIT, and Cambridge University wanted to see whether any life could actually be sustained on the tumultuous planet.

It was previously thought that nothing could survive on Venus because it was so hot and acidic. The only chance of there being life would be microbiomes in the atmosphere.

However, after looking into the presence of ammonia in the upper atmosphere and taking that into account, they came up with an interesting theory.

The ammonia would technically kick off some chemical reactions that would lower the acidity of the clouds down to zero (which is still super high), according to The Independent.

If it was indeed at zero, then that would provide grounds for alien life to grow.

Dr. William Bains, from Cardiff University’s School of Physics and Astronomy, co-authored the study into this strange phenomenon.

“We know that life can grow in acid environments on Earth, but nothing as acid as the clouds of Venus was believed to be,” he said.

“But if something is making ammonia in the clouds, then that will neutralize some of the droplets, making them potentially more habitable.

“There are many other challenges for life to overcome if it is to live in the clouds of Venus.

“There is almost no water there for a start and all life that we know of needs water. But if life is there, then neutralizing the acid will make the clouds just a bit more habitable than we thought.

“Having said that, if there’s even a small chance there’s life there it will be such an epoch-changing discover that it’s really worth following up.”

A space mission is expected to head to Venus in 2023 and its main goal will be looking into cloud particles to see if they contain life.

However, it’s not expected to get concrete proper samples analysed until late into the 2030s, so we could be waiting a while for this very important answer.

Source: Agencies