That phosphine hype last year was just that: hype. Instead, MIT (and Cardiff and Cambridge UK) are now looking at ammonia - again.
We'd like to know whether life even can survive in Venus' clouds, maybe 35°C at 1.3 bar pressure of Carbon Dioxide. MIT think it can: ammonia dissolved in sulfuric acid makes the acid less like a leaky battery and more like a lemon juice.
The life would produce ammonia - to survive - and give off oxygen as waste. The paper says it gets the ammonia from the ambient nitrogen, of which Venus has twice as much as we have (buried in the CO2).
Seems like something the floating zeppelins would dearly love to have in the outer layers of their habitat. Oxygen and weak acid seems a sight better than unbreathable air and strong acid.
No comments:
Post a Comment