What If There Is Life on Venus?

4 min read

Is alien life really out there? Humanity has wondered about it for decades, and according to scientists, this might finally be a reality. Astronomers have discovered there could be life on Venus.

Does this mean we’ll finally meet aliens? Could this help us discover other aliens? And what does this discovery mean for us?

Venus might not be as alien as you think. The planet is roughly the same size as Earth, and its gravity is 91% of our planet’s. We always talk about Mars being a potential home for humans, but we shouldn’t count out Venus either.

And if there is life on the planet, could this speed up our process of making it our new home?

But first, let’s look into why exactly scientists think there might be life on Venus. It all has to do with phosphine. This is a colorless, flammable, and explosive gas that’s also pretty stinky. It smells like a mix of garlic and decaying fish.

This gas can be found on Earth, and it’s dangerous to everything that uses oxygen to survive. It was used as a chemical weapon during World War 1, and is produced from cooking meth.

This gas is not very pleasant, and can be extremely deadly. But now astronomers have found out that phosphine might be in Venus’ atmosphere. At first glance, this might seem like a terrible thing, since this gas kills anything that breathes oxygen. But that doesn’t mean that life can’t exist.

Just because something doesn’t require oxygen doesn’t mean it’s completely lifeless. Inside Venus’ clouds of phosphine, there could be anaerobic bacteria. These are organisms that don’t require oxygen to survive. They could be living on Venus, producing this phosphine gas.

Keep in mind that all of this is not fully verified yet. But astronomers have been keeping an eye on Venus for nearly all of 2020, and this is what they think they’ve discovered. So if this type of alien life did really exist on Venus, what would it mean for us humans?

When you first hear about alien life, you probably think about Martians with big heads and us being able to shake their hands. But that wouldn’t be possible with these lifeforms on Venus.

As it stands right now, we wouldn’t be able to see any of the life on Venus with our naked eye. It’s all bacteria and microbes. And all that potential phosphine on the planet, it makes visiting Venus more dangerous for humans than ever. So will we be meeting this life form anytime soon? Probably not.

Is this discovery still incredibly exciting? Absolutely!

And sure, it’s discouraging we haven’t found Martians yet, but try not to be too disappointed. When discovering potential alien life, we should remember to expand our ideas about what exactly these alien lifeforms could be. They don’t necessarily have to be something with two or four legs that humans are able to interact with. The possibilities for potential alien life are endless, things we can’t even imagine yet.

And who knows what this current life form could turn into. It may start small, but in millions of years, we might see Venus bloom into a planet full of organic life. Life on Venus might not be limited to organisms living in phosphine gas either. Experts think that due to all the extreme climates on the planet, life could form almost anywhere. And that goes for the rest of the Solar System too. With scientists discovering potential life on Venus, who knows what else is out there? Researchers will just have to keep searching to find out.