"High in the toxic atmosphere of the planet Venus, astronomers on Earth have    
   discovered signs of what might be life.   
      
   If the discovery is confirmed by additional telescope observations and future    
   space missions, it could turn the gaze of scientists toward one of the   
   brightest    
   objects in the night sky. Venus, named after the Roman goddess of beauty,   
   roasts    
   at temperatures of hundreds of degrees and is cloaked by clouds that contain    
   droplets of corrosive sulfuric acid. Few have focused on the rocky planet as a    
   habitat for something living.   
      
   Instead, for decades, scientists have sought signs of life elsewhere, usually    
   peering outward to Mars and more recently at Europa, Enceladus and other icy    
   moons of the giant planets.   
      
   The astronomers, who reported the finding on Monday in a pair of papers, have    
   not collected specimens of Venusian microbes, nor have they snapped any   
   pictures    
   of them. But with powerful telescopes, they have detected a chemical —   
   phosphine    
   — in the thick Venus atmosphere. After much analysis, the scientists assert   
   that    
   something now alive is the only explanation for the chemical’s source.   
      
   Some researchers question this hypothesis, and they suggest instead that the   
   gas    
   could result from unexplained atmospheric or geologic processes on a planet   
   that    
   remains mysterious. But the finding will also encourage some planetary    
   scientists to ask whether humanity has overlooked a planet that may have once    
   been more Earthlike than any other world in our solar system.   
      
   “This is an astonishing and ‘out of the blue’ finding,” said Sara   
   Seager, a    
   planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an author    
   of the papers (one published in Nature Astronomy and another submitted to the    
   journal Astrobiology). “It will definitely fuel more research into the    
   possibilities for life in Venus’s atmosphere.”"   
      
   See:   
      
   https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/14/science/venus-life-clouds.html   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)