Alien life on Venus? Phosphine gas discovery is a potential game changer

But there's a chance — a not insignificant chance — that scientists have made the first clear discovery of life beyond Earth.Researchers at Cardiff University in Wales and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, together with colleagues from Asian and other British universities, have just published a paper in the journal Nature Astronomy in which they claim to have found a smelly, toxic gas — phosphine — high in the thick clouds of the Venusian atmosphere. Methane might mean life on Mars — but it might not.What makes the discovery of phosphine in Venus' air so compelling is that the researchers have racked their brains trying to come up with ways to explain its presence short of invoking biology. They would be the microscopic refugees from a world that slowly went bad.In a conversation with me, Grinspoon reacted to the phosphine discovery by saying it "will force people to take seriously the plausibility of a cloud biosphere on Venus."If past is prologue, the excitement following the discovery of this malodorous gas will give way to an explanation that doesn't depend on the presence of life.