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    Something Weird Is Happening on Venus

    The discovery of a strange gas in its atmosphere puts the planet “into the realm of a perhaps inhabited world,” a researcher says<em>.</em>
    by Marina Koren Sep 14, 2020 5 minutes
    Source: JAXA / ISAS / Akatsuki Project Team

    Updated at 7:22 p.m. ET on Sept. 14, 2020.

    After the moon, Venus is the brightest object in the night sky, gleaming like a tiny diamond in the darkness. The planet is so radiant because of its proximity to Earth, but also because it reflects most of the light that falls across its atmosphere, more than any other world in the solar system.

    Something really weird is happening in those clouds.

    Scientists revealed today that they have detected traces of a gas in the Venusian atmosphere that, according to everything they understand about Venus, shouldn’t be there. They considered many explanations for what could be producing the gas, known as phosphine, and settled on an explanation guided by what they know about our own planet. On Earth, phosphine—a toxic gas—is produced by microorganisms.

    “As crazy as it might sound, our most plausible explanation is life,” Clara Sousa-Silva, a molecular astrophysicist

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