The website Earthsky seems to have broke the story early then removed it however the google cache still has it. Well done Cardiff who toook the lead on this research 

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dUWrpm80WHsJ:https://earthsky.org/%3Fp%3D343883+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

As a matter of fact this idea is not new. In the late 1970s (or perhaps very early eighties) C.Boyer, the French astronomer who discovered the 4 Day rotation of the atmosphere of Venus, published a paper in l'Astronomie mentioning that certain changes in velocity of markings during the course of the Venusian day could be due to the greater activity of life forms in the clouds.

Of course at cloud top level temperature and pressure are quite modest and carbon dioxide still plentiful...... Camille Flammarion would have been keen on this idea, being a great promoter of the concept of Universal life, originally stated by Fontenelle.

Interesting news

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-54133538

The Nature Astronomy paper has just been made available as open access.

Way back in 1963 the late Donald Barber the last professional astronomer at NLO believed there was life in the Venusian atmosphere. By his observations of bacterial growth on his photographic plates which coincided with inferior conjunctions of Venus he deduced these organisms had been blown to us by the solar wind. He even sent the bacteria away for analysis, which were unable to be identified! Article here:

http://shadetreephysics.com/Barber%201963.htm

David

Although the Nature Astronomy website has the paper available to read, I find it's a bit difficult to follow on the screen and wanted to print it. The pdf link they gave only downloads the first page and then freezes. However, I note the full 54 pages are available on ArXiv today for anyone who is interested.

The Venus/phosphine discovery team has also written a "hypothesis article" on "The Venusian Lower Atmosphere Haze as a Depot for Desiccated Microbial Life: A Proposed Life Cycle for Persistence of the Venusian Aerial Biosphere".

It is available on ArXiv here (pdf link at top right of that page)

As the first interview got underway I wondered if the team had made their discovery using a Sky-Watcher Infinity 76 'scope...?   :-)

     Alex.

There's a good old Yorkshire expression for such speculative claims: " 'Appen ".

It all depends on the inflection in the pronunciation:

'Appen - this is entirely possible; (or, the bandwagon effect).

'Appen - Just possible, but I consider it unlikely; (or, the sceptical rival effect).

'Appen - next it'll be turnips on Titan... (or, the view from Barnsley top).

I'm not in the least surprised by the possibility of life in the upper atmosphere of Venus.  The microbes were carried there on board the Verena probes, which would hardly have been sterile at launch.

If you read the "hypothesis paper" you realise that the life would need to be just as exotic, if not more so, than any chemistry to produce PH3.  

A third possibility is the have miss identified the line which given the technical challenges seems possible. I think they too easily dismissed  SO2 as a source of the line. 

Regards Andrew 

Some thoughts:

The planets in our solar system all come from the same building blocks.

Bacterial life in Venusian atmosphere is a theory, but Anding's comment is plausible.

Or, have they discovered some unknown chemistry ?

Spectroscopy was the tool used to make the discovery !

Jack

Essex UK

This recent ultra-high-res image was sent on to me by my good friend Prof. I.T.S. Knott-Lykely, of Eccles.

Corroborative evidence for phosphine in the Venusian atmosphere published today:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.12758

And a possible geological mechanism https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.11904

Regards Andrew

Doubt cast on the reliability of the alma signal https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.09761

Regards Andrew 

It had to be bad science or spiders in the waveguide.

It seems the alma data has been withdrawn temporarily while they review the initial calibration. It is not known if this will impact the results.

Regards Andrew 

"No phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus"  https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.14305

I have to write, as a chemist, that amounts of phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus, however small, must be regarded as dubious. In the presence of tiny amounts of oxygen, the gas is spontaneously flammable, forming phosphorus pentoxide as a white smoke, and water vapour. We know that photolysis of oxygen-containing compounds by short-wave UV radiation can produce oxygen radicals in the atmosphere of Venus, so there is certainly going to be a short lifetime for any phosphine. By the way, I often demonstrated its flammability to my A level classes, though I don't recommend it as a home experiment. You take a tiny piece of white phosphorus, which of course can no longer be bought, and cover it with a few cc of very concentrated NaOH solution, and heat gently it in the fume cupboard. Attach a delivery tube and after a few moments the apparatus will emit beautiful white smoke rings from the end, as each bubble of phosphine combines with the air. No need to add that caustic soda is dangerous, and white phosphorus even more so!

The team responds to criticism of their announcement of phosphine discovery here. They say the ALMA data support PH3, but at lower concs than previously claimed. Standing by their conclusion, they call for further data.

I have just been reading the new paper and they are relying on the centriod of the spectral line to distinguish PH3 from SO2 in the 0.3 k/s range. While I feel sure they will have corrected for the Earths velocity as that would be standard for stellar work, I can't  find any reference to correction for the motion of Venus. Does anyone know if this was done.

Also the high wind speed on Venus could shift the line if it did not average out in the measurement. 

Regards Andrew