For centuries, humans looked up at the brightest planet in our night sky and thought, “could someone be looking back at us?” Venus was always considered to be Earth’s twin sister; the two planets hold alike similar orbits, they are both within the general habitable zone of the Sun, they are both similar in size, mass, and of course gravity; wouldn’t it make sense that under those vibrant orange clouds, there would be another species of extraterrestrials. This is how we thought all the way until the 1960s, when the great planetary astronomer Carl Sagan discovered an immense greenhouse effect occurring on Venus. For the moment, our dreams of a great planetary partner world brimming with extraterrestrial life were diminished; still, there is a great phrase that goes as such: “there is always a way around everything.” It is possible that we may or may not have found how a hypothesized extraterrestrial found a way around Venus’s hellish conditions.

If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or corrections, email me using the address listed below:
learningbywilliam@gmail.com

References:
Carl Sagan’s Discovery of the Hellish Conditions on Venus
https://mashable.com/article/venus-life-theory-carl-sagan/
Current CO2 Prevalence in Earth’s Atmosphere
https://www.co2.earth/
Doubts and Controversy Surrounding This Discovery
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/venus-phosphine-possible-sign-life-doubts-how-science-works
Conflicting Evidence Detailed by the Discoverer Herself
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/10/31/1011487/not-finding-life-on-venus-disappointing-good-science-phosphine-biosignature/
What is Phosphine?
https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Phosphine
Discovery of Phosphine on Venus:
https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2009/2009.06499.pdf
Discovery of Glycine on Venus:
https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.06211
PBS Space Time Video (this video motivated me to learn more about this, and eventually, because I felt there was more that could be said, to make an episode surrounding it for myself)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNdy-LJWNQs
What Phosphine is
https://scitechdaily.com/what-is-phosphine-and-why-does-it-point-to-extra-terrestrial-life-floating-in-the-clouds-of-venus/
Carl Sagan Research Paper Detailing Theoretical Life on Venus
https://www.nature.com/articles/2151259a0
Wikipedia Page Detailing “Life on Venus”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_on_Venus