Venus News and Discussions

[weatheriscool]

Scientists Detect Chemical Signature of Life in Clouds of Venus Again
The presence of phosphine and ammonia suggests something could be alive on that blazing-hot world.
By Ryan Whitwam July 22, 2024
https://www.extremetech.com/science/sci ... enus-again

Our efforts to find hints of extraterrestrial life have been focused on Mars, but an increasing number of scientists are turning to Venus as a potential home for alien organisms. At a recent meeting of astronomers in the UK, two separate teams presented evidence for potential biosignatures in the clouds of Venus. One team claims to have spotted ammonia, and the other adds weight to the 2020 phosphine detection.

[weatheriscool]

Possible Signs of Life on Venus With Detection of Phosphine and Amonia
August 6, 2024 by Brian Wang

On July 17, 2024, two research teams reported that have re-detected the phosphine, and have tentatively found ammonia as well. Phospine and ammonia are produced by living microorganisms. It’s not proof that living microbes are floating around in Venus’ atmosphere.

The findings presented at the national astronomy meeting in Hull on Wednesday bolster evidence for a pungent gas, phosphine, whose presence on Venus has been fiercely disputed.

Dave Clements, an astrophysicist at Imperial College London in the U.K., and his colleagues used the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) in Hawaii for the task. The observations were part of the JCMT-Venus project. The researchers detected the phosphine signature and were able to track it over time.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/08/p ... monia.html

[wjfox]

[Time_Traveller]

Study of Venus's Haasttse-baad Tessera suggests formation by two large impacts

Nov 5, 2024



A trio of geologists and environmental scientists from Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and the University of Minnesota has found evidence suggesting that the Haasttse-baad Tessera formation on Venus was likely formed due to two large impacts early in the planet's history.

In their paper published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, Iván López, Evan Bjonnes and Vicki Hansen describe how they used geologic relations and numerical modeling to develop a theory to describe Venus's oldest recognized terrain feature.

Prior research has shown a large concentric multi-circle formation on the surface of Venus called Haasttse-baad Tessera. Prior research has also shown that, unlike other planets in the solar system, Venus has no evidence of crater impacts larger than 300 kilometers across. In this new effort, the research trio wondered if Haasttse-baad Tessera might be evidence of a much larger impact.

To find out, they took measurements of the formation and compared them with another formation—one found on Callisto, one of Jupiter's moons. Prior evidence suggests its multi-ring surface structure was formed due to a large impact. The rings were formed rather than craters because they were made of frigid water that surged from below the surface after the impact, deforming the crust. Finding similarities, the researchers carried out numerical modeling to find out if the concentric circles on Venus may have come about similarly.

The modeling showed that it was possible that not long after Venus was formed, it developed a thin skin over a molten surface. An asteroid or other large body striking it would have punched through the surface, causing molten material below the surface to be pushed out onto the nearby surface, deforming the crust in ways similar to that seen on Callisto. The result would be similar types of concentric circles.

https://phys.org/news/2024-11-venus-haa ... ation.html

[weatheriscool]

NASA installs heat shield on first private spacecraft bound for Venus
https://phys.org/news/2025-02-nasa-shie ... bound.html
by Abby Tabor, NASA

Led by Rocket Lab of Long Beach, California, and their partners at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Rocket Lab's Venus mission will be the first private mission to the planet.

NASA's role is to help the commercial space endeavor succeed by providing expertise in thermal protection of small spacecraft. Invented at Ames, NASA's Heatshield for Extreme Entry Environment Technology (HEEET)—the brown, textured material covering the bottom of the capsule in this photo—is a woven heat shield designed to protect spacecraft from temperatures up to 4,500 degrees Fahrenheit. The probe will deploy from Rocket Lab's Photon spacecraft bus, taking measurements as it descends through the planet's atmosphere.

[firestar464]

Modeling study finds Venus's crust is surprisingly thin

https://phys.org/news/2025-05-venus-crust-thin.html

[weatheriscool]

Life on Venus? Probe mission could search Venus clouds for unexplained hydrogen-rich gases
https://phys.org/news/2025-07-life-venu ... louds.html
by Royal Astronomical Society

The answer to whether tiny bacterial life-forms really do exist in the clouds of Venus could be revealed once and for all by a UK-backed mission.

Over the past five years, researchers have detected the presence of two potential biomarkers—the gases phosphine and ammonia—which on Earth can only be produced by biological activity and industrial processes.

Their existence in the Venusian clouds cannot easily be explained by known atmospheric or geological phenomena, so Cardiff University's Professor Jane Greaves and her team are plotting a way to get to the bottom of it.

[weatheriscool]

[weatheriscool]

Key driver of extreme winds on Venus identified
by Sarah Stanley, Eos
https://phys.org/news/2025-11-key-drive ... venus.html

Imagine the catastrophic winds of a category 5 hurricane. Now, imagine even faster winds of more than 100 meters per second, encircling the planet and whipping clouds across the sky, with no end in sight. This scenario would be astonishing on Earth, but it's business as usual on Venus, where the atmosphere at cloud level rotates about 60 times faster than the planet itself—a phenomenon known as superrotation. In contrast, Earth's cloud-level atmosphere rotates at about the same speed as the planet's surface.

[wjfox]

Russia is said to be reviving the Venera-D mission to Venus, now slated for 2036. I'll try to do a blog on this and/or update the timeline entry.

[wjfox]

[weatheriscool]

[wjfox]

If Venus Has Life It May Have Come From Earth, Scientists Say

12 April 2026

The theory of panspermia holds that life is spread through the cosmos via asteroids, comets, and other objects.

When the building blocks of life emerge on one planet, impacts can eject surface material into space, which then carries these seeds to other worlds.

For decades, scientists have debated whether this could have occurred between Earth and Mars (in both directions).

However, the recent controversy over the possible existence of microbial life in Venus' dense clouds has sparked discussions of interplanetary transfers between Venus, Earth, and Mars.

In a recent study presented at the 2026 Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC), a team from The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL) and the Sandia National Laboratories explored this idea in detail.

https://www.sciencealert.com/if-venus-h ... ntists-say



Credit: NASA