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In great news for India, scientists at <keyword id="6360409" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="100" keywordseo="NASA">NASA</keyword> have named a new organism discovered by them after the much-loved APJ <keyword id="5141" type="PERSON" weightage="100" keywordseo="Abdul-Kalam">Abdul Kalam</keyword>, according to PTI.<br /> <br /> Till date, the new organism - a form of bacteria - has been found only on the International Space Station (<keyword id="6416825" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="ISS">ISS</keyword>) and has not been found on earth!<br /> <br /> Researchers at the JPropulsion Laboratory (<keyword id="136455" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="JPL">JPL</keyword>), the foremost lab of NASA for work on inter-planetary travel, discovered the new bacteria on the filters of the International Space Station (ISS) and named it Solibacillus kalamii to honour the late president, who was a renowned aerospace scientist.<br /> <br /> <keyword id="5132" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Kalam">Kalam</keyword> had his early training at NASA in 1963 before he set up India's first rocket-launching facility in the fishing village of Thumba in Kerala.<br /> <br /> "The name of the bacterium is Solibacillus kalamii, the species name is after Dr Abdul Kalam and genus name is Solibacillus which is a spore forming bacteria," said Dr Kasthuri Venkateswaran, senior research scientist, Biotechnology and Planetary Protection Group at JPL.<br /> <br /> The filter on which the new bug was found remained on board the ISS for 40 months. Called a high-efficiency particulate arrestance filter or HEPA filter, this part is the routine housekeeping and cleaning system on board the international space station.<br /> <br /> This filter was later analysed at JPL and only this year did Venkateswaran publish his discovery in the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology.<br /> <br /> According to Venkateswaran, even as it orbits the earth some 400 kilometres above, the ISS is home to many types of bacteria and fungi which co-inhabit the station with the astronauts who live and work on the station.<br /> <br /> Venkateswaran said even though Solibacillus kalamii has never been found on earth till date, it is really not an extra-terrestrial life form or ET.<br /> <br /> "I am reasonably sure it has hitch hiked to the space station on board some cargo and then survived the hostile conditions of space," explained Venkateswaran.<br /> <br /> Naming the new microbe after Kalam was natural to Venkateswaran and his team.<br /> <br /> "Being a fellow Tamilian, I am aware of the huge contributions by Dr. Kalam," he said.<br /> <br /> New bacteria are usually named after famous scientists.<br /> <br /> Venkateswaran is part of a team which is asking that eternal question "are we alone in the universe?"<br /> <br /> Towards that, his responsibilities include monitoring the bug levels on the ISS and he also has to ensure that all spacecraft that fly to other planets are free of terrestrial bugs.<br /> <br /> One of his big jobs was to ensure that NASA's Mars <keyword id="69295" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Curiosity">Curiosity</keyword> rover -- the massive car-sized almost 1000 kg buggy -- was totally sterile when it left earth.<br /> <br /> By international law, this extreme hygiene is required else other planets could get contaminated by bugs that reach the Martian or other planets hidden on human satellites.<br /> <br /> Today the ISS is the size of a football field and its construction started with a launch in 1998 and as of now it is the largest human-made object orbiting the earth.<br /> <br /> Weighing about 419 tonnes, it can house a maximum of six astronauts and has costs roughly USD 150 billion.<br /> <br /> Till date, 227 astronauts have flown to the space station. This makes the space station actually a very dirty place and maintaining hygiene is critical so that humans can live on it with ease.<br /> <br /> On the space station all the air and water is recycled, being a completely closed environment there is a rapid build- up of moulds and bacteria on the station.<br /> <br /> These not only have to be cleaned but monitored to ensure that they do not corrode the walls of the space station and do not turn hazardous to the astronauts.<br /> <br /> Venkateswaran's main job is to monitor the environment of the space station so that harmful bugs do not proliferate.<br /> <br /> He heads the '<keyword id="4556997" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="microbial-observatory">Microbial Observatory</keyword>' on the ISS projects to measure microorganisms associated with compartments owned by the US.<br /> <br /> According to NASA, he also directs several research and development tasks for the JPL - Mars Program Office, which enables the cleaning, sterilisation, and validation of spacecraft components.<br /> <br /> He directs several NASA competitive awards on the microbial monitoring of spacecraft and associated environments for the Exploration System Mission Directorate, closed habitats like ISS or its earth analogues for the Human Exploration and <keyword id="4556998" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="operation-mission-directorate">Operation Mission Directorate</keyword>.<br /> <br /> But is the new bug of some use.<br /> <br /> "These spore formers tend to withstand high radiation and also produce some useful compounds protein wise which will be helpful for biotechnology applications," Venkateswaran said.<br /> <br /> His team has not characterised the bacteria fully but he hints that the new bug could be a key source for chemicals that can help protect against radiation damage.<br /><br />

NASA just named a space organism after APJ Abdul Kalam!

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Kevin Loria</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul><li><strong>The Atacama Desert in Chile is one of the driest places on Earth and is comparable to the dry surface of Mars.</strong></li><li><strong>Researchers recently discovered that when it rains in the Atacama, microbial communities that lay dormant for decades or even thousands of years spring back to life.</strong></li><li><strong>It's possible that similar life could have evolved on Mars and may persist in subsurface niches where there's moisture.</strong></li></ul><p><br />Long ago, small oceans and lakes dotted the surface of Mars.</p><p>Microbial life could have thrived in the waters of the now hyperarid red planet. Currently, there are only traces of this past environment - water hides frozen in the soil, and potential nighttime snowfalls dust the dry surface.</p><p>It might be easy to assume that the loss of atmosphere and liquid water would have killed off all traces of life on our neighboring planet. But <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/02/20/1714341115">a new study</a> of one of the most Mars-like environments on Earth, the Atacama Desert in Chile, reveals that life may persist, lurking beneath Martian soil and waiting a chance to re-emerge.</p><p>Researchers found that in the extremely rare occasions when rain falls on the Atacama, there's an explosion of microbial life. This is the first thriving life that has been observed in this desert, the driest non-polar environment on the planet. </p><p>In the rare rainy conditions, long dormant bacteria below the surface wake and reproduce until the area starts to dry out again and they revert to a dormant state, leaving behind traces of DNA and decaying material.</p><p>"We believe these microbial communities can lay dormant for hundreds or even thousands of years in conditions very similar to what you would find on a planet like Mars and then come back to life when it rains," Washington State University planetary scientist Dirk Schulze-Makuch, who led the study, <a href="https://news.wsu.edu/2018/02/26/life-always-finds-way/">said in a news release</a>.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>ESO/C. Malin</span></p><p class="caption">The desert is also the location of a powerful observatory.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><h2>Life in extreme environments</h2><p>This discovery comes thanks to a stroke of luck. It happened to rain while the research team was in the desert in 2015. (It's so dry in the region that there are weather stations in the desert that have never seen rain).</p><p>That rainfall allowed the team to see that even this extreme environment can be habitable. The creatures that live there only become metabolically active after an increase in moisture.</p><p>This remarkable finding suggests that similar forms of life could persist on Mars in some subsurface niche that gets periodically exposed to moisture, the authors wrote in the study.</p><p>The team plans to continue their analysis of life in extreme environments. They will return to the Atacama in March and Schulze-Makuch said he'd also like to examine the Don Juan Pond in Antarctica, a pool so salty that it remains liquid even at a Martian-like -58 degrees Fahrenheit.</p><p>"It has always fascinated me to go to the places where people don't think anything could possibly survive and discover that life has somehow found a way to make it work," Schulze-Makuch said. "Jurassic Park references aside, our research tell us that if life can persist in Earth's driest environment there is a good chance it could be hanging in there on Mars in a similar fashion."</p>     <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/pretending-live-on-mars-nasa-research-experiment-2018-1">What it's like to pretend to live on Mars for 8 months</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

A study of one of the driest places on Earth has led scientists to believe that life could be lurking in the soil of Mars

<ul class="summary-list"><li>NASA's Perseverance rover has found potential evidence of <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-mars-rover-landing-jezero-crater-search-for-alien-life-2021-2">ancient microbial life on Mars</a>.</li><li>Scientists must bring the rock to Earth for further study, but three key features make it promising.</li></ul><p>NASA has snagged a chunk of rock on Mars that could someday prove to be <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-nasa-could-tell-us-aliens-are-real-2023-2">the first clear evidence of alien life</a>.</p><p>To be clear, NASA is not declaring that it's discovered Martian life. Rather, its <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-perseverance-rover-first-mars-sample-mysteriously-missing-2021-8">Perseverance rover has drilled a sample from a rock</a> with attributes that could have come from ancient microbial activity, the agency announced Thursday.</p><p>To confirm their suspicions, scientists would need to<strong> </strong><a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-asks-help-retrieving-perseverance-mars-samples-alien-life-2024-4">bring the rock sample to Earth</a> and study it in more detail.</p><p>"This is exactly the kind of sample that we wanted to find," Katie Stack Morgan, a lead scientist on the <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/photos-from-nasa-perseverance-mars-rover-2021-2">Perseverance mission</a>, told Business Insider.</p><h2 id="8f9afd20-4848-4691-a11e-024987bef6aa">3 key features could point to alien life</h2><div type="image" title="reddish rock on mars with a drill hole surrounded by dirt beside a patch of white dust" height="3502" width="8192" msid="112054808" hostid="261" sizebytes="2623576"></div><p>The rock, nicknamed Cheyava Falls, has three critical features:</p><ul><li>First, white veins of calcium sulfate are clear evidence that water once ran through it.</li><li>Second, the rock tested positive for organic compounds, which are the carbon-based building blocks of life, as we know it.</li><li>Third, it's speckled with tiny "leopard spots" that point to chemical reactions that are associated with microbial life here on Earth.</li></ul><div type="image" title="rocky mars ground with red strip in the middle speckled with off-white leopard spots with black outlines" height="1200" width="1648" msid="112054810" hostid="261" sizebytes="204828"></div><p>However, both the organic material and the leopard spots could have come from non-biological processes. That's why<strong> </strong>scientists need to study the sample more closely on Earth to know for sure.</p><p>The rover has reached the limit of what it can learn about the rock.</p><p>"We're not saying there's life on Mars, but we're seeing something that is compelling as a potential biosignature," Stack Morgan said.</p><p>A biosignature is any feature that <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-may-have-accidentally-spread-life-to-mars-scientist-says-2021-5">points to the presence of life</a>.</p><p>"This is a very significant discovery," she added.</p><p>It's a much-needed win for the space agency. In recent months, NASA has taken hit after hit from budget limitations and technical errors across missions.</p><h2 id="ffbc8916-53bf-4e09-9d46-a0a92e0c9401"><strong>NASA needs this win</strong></h2><p>Earlier this year, the agency's first <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/astrobotic-moon-lander-leaking-fuel-after-launch-threatening-mission-2024-1">attempt to return to the moon </a>since 1972 failed. The NASA-funded Peregrine moon mission, by the company Astrobotic suffered a fuel leak shortly after launch, forcing it to return to Earth and burn up in the atmosphere. (The next attempt, a mission by the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="c-link" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/intuitive-machines-im-1-odysseus-moon-lunar-landing-mission-nasa-2024-2">company Intuitive Machines</a>, also funded by NASA, successfully landed on the moon.)</p><p>Then, new budgeting decisions came down. NASA's budget proposal for 2025 effectively <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/photos-chandra-xray-space-telescope-nasa-might-defund-2024-4">defunds the Chandra X-ray Observatory</a>, which is still a highly productive and functional mission.</p><p>And just<strong> </strong>last week, NASA officials announced they were <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-scrapping-moon-rover-it-spent-450-million-to-build-2024-7">scrapping the VIPER moon rover</a> that the agency has already spent $450 million to build. NASA plans to disassemble it and reuse some of the parts for future moon missions.</p><p>Meanwhile, two astronauts have been <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-astronauts-speak-out-boeing-starliner-spaceship-issues-space-station-2024-7">stuck on the International Space Station</a> for 51 days because the NASA-funded Boeing spaceship that carried them there is leaking helium and having thruster malfunctions.</p><p>Even Perseverance wasn't spared. In April, NASA announced it was canceling its $11 billion plan to send a follow-up mission, called Mars Sample Return, to collect the rover's tubes of Martian rock and carry them back to Earth. That was the plan that could've brought scientists the Cheyava Falls rock sample.</p><p>Instead, NASA is <a target="_blank" rel="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-helping-private-companies-build-business-moon-make-lunar-billions-2023-6"><u>asking companies to step in</u></a> and propose their own cheaper, faster versions of the mission.</p><div type="image" title="mosaic of photos of light-saber-like sample tubes on the martian surface" height="1608" width="2860" msid="112054812" hostid="261" sizebytes="489456"></div><p>The Cheyava Falls rock <em>especially</em> needs the extra studying.</p><p>"This rock is also one of the most complex rocks we've seen on the surface of Mars. There is a lot going on in this rock," Stack Morgan said.</p><h2 id="bc7264ec-ecef-4ece-be0b-2d817095cffe"><strong>I</strong>s it aliens? Check the CoLD scale</h2><p>For now, this discovery is just a "step one" on the seven-step "confidence of life detection" (CoLD) scale.</p><p>The CoLD scale is a rough rating of scientific confidence in any potential alien-life discovery.</p><div type="image" title="illustration of a line of scientists in white lab coats building a tall stepped wall of green bricks with numbers 1 through 7 going up the side of it to the top, indicating stages of confirming evidence of alien life. the illustration is labeled &quot;CoLD SCALE&quot;" height="2550" width="3300" msid="112054809" hostid="261" sizebytes="266750"></div><p>"We've taken us up to the start of that scale, and I think that's what the rover was sent to Mars to do," Stack Morgan said.</p><p>A possible biosignature can climb to higher levels of confidence as evidence builds. For example, if scientists can confirm that known non-biological processes didn't create the leopard spots, the Cheyava Falls rock might ascend to step two or three.</p><p>But they need to get the sample to Earth first. And NASA needs to figure out how to do that.</p><p>"We're hoping that our most recent sample can play into the conversation about whether this effort is worth it," Stack Morgan said. "And we believe that it is."</p>

NASA just scored a badly needed win: The best potential evidence of alien life yet

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Aliens! The recent discovery of molecular compounds integral to life on Earth in dusty clouds located deep in interstellar space is an encouraging sign that aliens could exist out in the universe.</p>
<p>All amino acids, the molecules that make up proteins in human cells, muscles, and other tissues, contain a type of organic compound called iso-propyl cyanide, which consists of carbon, nitrogen, and hydrogen atoms. I-propyl is an essential building block of these essential molecules. Without i-propyl cyanide, there would be no amino acids and no life on Earth as we know it.</p>
<p>Since amino acids were first discovered in meteorites in the early '70s, it's been clear that life on Earth got a little help from space. Just how much, however, remains unclear.</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Now, scientists have taken one step further and discovered where i-propyl cyanide likely originates in our very own galaxy - the Milky Way.</p>
<p>Located 27,000 light years from Earth toward the center of our galaxy is one of the largest molecular clouds in the Milky Way, called Sagittarius B2. Molecular clouds are compact regions of dust that create the right environments for star formation, and therefore are also called stellar nurseries. And it's in Sagittarius B2, that a team of scientists recently discovered large amounts of i-propyl cyanide molecules.</p>
<p>Isopropyl cyanide is the most complex organic compound yet to be discovered in deep, interstellar space and the results are compelling for the possibility of life like ours in other neighboring solar systems within the Milky Way.</p>
<p>"Understanding the production of organic material at the early stages of star formation is critical to piecing together the gradual progression from simple molecules to potentially life-bearing chemistry," said Arnaud Belloche in a <a href="http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2014/09/new-molecule-found-space-connotes-life-origins">Cornell University press release</a>.</p>
<p>Belloche is the lead author of the paper documenting the scientists' results. The paper was published in the journal <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/">Science</a> on September 26.</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>To deconstruct the molecular make-up of Sagittarius B2, the scientists used the powerful array of radio telescopes in Chile called the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). With a price tag of $1.4 billion, ALMA is the most expensive ground-based telescope currently under construction.</p>
<p>Using the sensitive antennas of ALMA's radio telescopes, the scientists searched for the unique finger print of different molecules at certain radio wavelengths, which are longer than light waves in the visible regime and therefore cannot be seen with the naked eye. The scientists used 20 of ALMA's 66 antennae for their study.</p>
<p>Signs of potentially abundant life in other parts of the galaxy sounds like a good thing, but for one futurist it's not. Abundant microbial life is a bad sign that <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nick-bostrom-hopes-theres-no-life-on-mars-2014-9">we will never become an interstellar civilization</a> - since these aliens would have had plenty of time to developed advanced space travel technologies, but we haven't heard one peep from them. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nick-bostrom-hopes-theres-no-life-on-mars-2014-9"></a></p>

New Chemical Signals From The Middle Of Our Galaxy Are A Good Sign For Alien Life

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Tiny, microbial life could be swarming deep below the surface of Mars or swimming in the underground oceans on Saturn's moon Enceladus, but that's not where we're likely to find the first life forms beyond earth.</p><p>The bad news is that the first alien life forms humankind will likely discover will be too far away to ever visit. But the great news is that we could detect these exotic beings extremely soon:</p><p>"I think we're probably going to be able to detect life on another planet in the next decade or so," <a href="http://www.chrisimpey.com/">Christopher Impey</a>, who is an astronomer at the University of Arizona and author of over a dozen popular <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">science</keyword> books, told Business Insider. The way we're going to do it is "by exploring exoplanets that we're discovering in large numbers."</p><p>Exoplanets are planets that exist outside of our solar system. The <a href="http://news.sciencemag.org/physics/2015/03/closest-exoplanet-remarkably-earth-sized">closest exoplanet we know of so far</a> is actually orbiting one of the nearest stars Alpha Centauri B about 4.3 light years from earth, but it would take current spacecraft technology well over <a href="http://earthsky.org/space/alpha-centauri-travel-time">100,000 years</a> to reach it.</p><h2>Why exoplanets?</h2><p>Discovering another life force beyond earth is going to be difficult no matter where astronomers look, but exoplanets have several advantages.</p><p>First, there are more earth-like exoplanets in our galaxy than in our solar system. Indeed, earth is the only real earth-like planet nearby, with Mars as a close but pretty disappointing second. As of right now, there are <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_potentially_habitable_exoplanets">over 45 exoplanets</a> in our galaxy thought to be potentially habitable.</p><p>Another advantage is that scientists can search for life on exoplanets inexpensively and efficiently with instruments on earth.</p><p>In contrast, large government agencies like NASA and the European Space Agency will likely have to land a robotic probe on the surface of Europa, or some of the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/where-is-there-liquid-water-in-the-solar-system-2015-3">other promising places in our solar system</a>, to discover evidence of life. (The <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/are-there-aliens-in-our-solar-system-2015-3">one exception could be</a> Saturn's water-rich moon Enceladus.)</p><p>"They're billion-dollar, decade-long missions and NASA's budget is so tight that you can only do one big thing at a time," Impey told Business Insider about missions to land a probe on a nearby planet or moon.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>On the other hand, with powerful telescopes on earth, scientists can sniff out alien life across the galaxy by inspecting the different cocktail of gases in these planets' atmospheres. Only planets with certain key elements and molecules will have the potential to spawn and sustain life.</p><h2>The chemical recipe for life</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>However, scientists are still debating what that perfect cocktail is.</p><p>For example, until last year, the detection of oxygen - an crucial element for life on earth - within an exoplanet's atmosphere would have been an extremely exciting discovery and widely considered a sure sign for life.</p><p>But in May, 2014 a pair of researchers - Robin Wordsworth and Raymond Pierrehumbert - <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/all:+AND+habitable+AND+terrestrial+AND+on+AND+atmospheres+AND+Abiotic+EXACT+oxygen%5fdominated/0/1/0/all/0/1">suggested that worlds</a> with large amounts of liquid water could still have lots of oxygen but be completely devoid of life. That's because light from the planet's star could have enough energy to separate the hydrogen and oxygen atoms making up water vapor in the atmosphere, where the hydrogen could then escape to space, leaving behind the oxygen.</p><p>"Any claims about the remote detection of life beyond the solar system would be open to a lot of close scrutiny," Jack O'Malley-James <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25314-dead-exoplanets-can-have-oxygenrich-atmospheres-too.html">told New Scientist for an article about the study</a>. "So knowing more about the non-biological sources of atmospheric gases, coupled with methods for ruling those sources out, would help to make those claims more robust."</p><h2>A new fleet of gigantic, revolutionary telescopes</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>While scientists like Wordsworth and Pierrehumbert are investigating what to look for, astronomers and engineers are working on the tools we'll use in the search for life outside our solar system by building the largest, most powerful telescopes in history.</p><p>"[Exoplanets] are far away and they're very faint," Impey told Business Insider. "You need a huge collecting area to get the light from a distance of an earth-like planet."</p><p>The collecting area of a telescope refers to the size of the part of the instrument, called the mirror, which collects the light from distant objects. Astronomers will then study this light to detect different chemical signatures in the atmosphere. Similar to how each human has a unique thumbprint, each element has a specific light signature, which astronomers can detect through a method called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectroscopy">spectroscopy</a>.</p><p>But, it's going to take the most powerful telescopes in history to detect the faint light signatures of these molecules on distant exoplanets. <span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Right now, astronomers at institutes across the globe are building three gigantic, next-generation telescopes, two in Chile and one in Hawaii:</span></p><ul><li>The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) will be <a href="http://www.space.com/14075-10-biggest-telescopes-earth-comparison.html">three times large than any current telescope</a> and will produce images 10 times sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope. It's currently under construction at Las Campanas Observatory in La Serena, Chile and is scheduled to begin operations by 2024.</li><li>The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) is expected to provide images that are <a href="http://www.space.com/14075-10-biggest-telescopes-earth-comparison.html">12 times sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope</a> and was scheduled to begin operations atop Hawaii's dormant volcano Mauna Kea as soon as 2025. However, <a href="http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/28757745/protest-against-thirty-meter-telescope-spreading-worldwide">recent protests</a> have temporarily halted construction.</li><li>The European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) will dwarf both the GMT and TMT with a mirror the size of half a soccer field! (See the image above.) Construction on the E-ELT began in June 2014 in Cerro Armazones, Chile, and this colossal telescope is scheduled to start operations in 2024.</li></ul><p>These three huge telescopes each have the capability to observe distant worlds and maybe, just maybe, make the most important discovery in the history of the human race by answering that tantalizing question: Are we alone?</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/what-aliens-look-like-2014-12">Scientists Have A Pretty Good Idea What Aliens May Actually Look Like</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="k4MTU2cjqHJG6cOulknf6VK7dBGi8s-U" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

We're going to detect alien life in the next decade, but not where you might think

<ul class="summary-list"><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/researchers-suggest-venus-used-to-be-habitable-2019-7">Venus' carbon-dioxide-rich atmosphere</a> and high temperatures make the planet's surface <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-venus-surface-is-like-2017-1">inhospitable to life</a>.</li><li>But new research suggests the clouds surrounding <keyword id="6436894" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="venus">Venus</keyword> could harbor microbial life.</li><li>A new study found traces of phosphine — a gas typically produced by anaerobic <keyword id="141368" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="microbes">microbes</keyword> on Earth — in the upper reaches of Venus' clouds.</li><li>The researchers said the phosphine's origin "could be unknown photochemistry or geochemistry, or possibly life."</li></ul><p>Astronomers have assumed for some time that the best places to hunt for extraterrestrial life in our solar system are on Jupiter and Saturn's moons or on Mars. But new research suggests we should check out our other planetary neighbor too.</p><p>A <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-1174-4">study published on Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy</a> found that Venus' clouds contained traces of phosphine: an extremely flammable, poisonous, and corrosive gas also found on Earth. On Earth, phosphine is produced either by people in labs or by anaerobic bacteria. So the <a href="https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/ast.2018.1954">phosphine on Venus</a> seems most likely to have come from a living organism.</p><p>The authors of the study weren't able to verify the origin of the phosphine, but they said that none of the other potential sources they investigated, like volcanic activity on Venus, could explain the amount of the gas they found.</p><p>"We really went through all possible pathways that could produce phosphine on a rocky planet," Janusz Petkowski, an author of the new study, <a href="https://news.mit.edu/2020/life-venus-phosphine-0914">told MIT News</a>. "If this is not life, then our understanding of rocky planets is severely lacking."</p><p>According to NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine, the discovery "is the most significant development yet in building the case for life off Earth."</p><p>"It's time to prioritize Venus," <a href="https://twitter.com/JimBridenstine/status/1305598182571810822">he tweeted</a> Monday.</p><h2>Phosphine's mysterious origin</h2><p>Venus is the hottest planet in our solar system. Its average surface temperature is a <a href="https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/681/solar-system-temperatures/#:~:text=Venus%20is%20an%20exception%20because,Fahrenheit%20(471%20degrees%20Celsius).">blistering 880 degrees Fahrenheit</a> (471 degrees Celsius) — hot enough to melt lead.</p><p>That coupled with the planet's carbon-dioxide-clogged atmosphere would seem to make Venus quite inhospitable to life.</p><p>But some researchers, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/2151259a0">including the famed astronomer Carl Sagan</a>, have suggested that though Venus' surface may not be habitable, the band of clouds that surrounds the planet could host microbes.</p><p>The new discovery lends further credence to Sagan's idea.</p><p>The phosphine gas scientists found was in the upper reaches of Venus' cloud deck, up to 39 miles above the surface. The gas, PH3, consists of phosphorus and hydrogen atoms linked together.</p><p>Petkowski's team discovered it thanks to observations of Venus from the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array observatory in Chile. Based on that data, they calculated that Venus' clouds had about 20 parts per billion of phosphine gas.</p><p>There shouldn't have been any phosphine there. The study authors wrote that PH3 "would be rapidly destroyed" in Venus' atmosphere, as sunlight or sulfuric acid in the clouds would wipe out the gas before it could accumulate.</p><div type="image" title="solar orbiter venus flyby" height="1414" width="2000" msid="78113502" hostid="261"></div><p>So the scientists attempted to model how the phosphine might have accumulated in Venus' cloud deck.</p><p>First they modeled geological and chemical scenarios, like tectonic plates moving, volcanic activity, or meteor strikes. They also tested whether chemical processes or intense lightning in the clouds could have produced the gas.</p><p>None of those calculations yielded the amount of phosphine they'd detected.</p><p>"If no known chemical process can explain PH3 within the upper atmosphere of Venus, then it must be produced by a process not previously considered plausible for Venusian conditions," the authors wrote. "This could be unknown photochemistry or geochemistry, or possibly life."</p><p>Other scientists said further observations are needed to confirm the new findings.</p><p>Dirk Schulze-Makuch, an astrobiologist who was not involved in the study, <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/09/possible-sign-of-life-found-on-venus-phosphine-gas/">told National Geographic</a> that a biological explanation for the phosphine was still possible, as were so-far-undiscovered geologic or light-induced chemical reactions.</p><p>"Venus is basically still an alien planet," Schulze-Makuch said. "There are a lot of things we don't understand."</p><h2>Venus' surface and atmosphere are vastly different</h2><p>Conditions on Venus' surface contrast starkly with those in its atmosphere.</p><div type="image" title="Venus NASA surface" height="1233" width="1644" msid="78113504" hostid="261"></div><p>The planet's surface "is very, very corrosive," Gustavo Costa, a chemist and materials scientist at NASA's Glenn Research Center, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-venus-surface-is-like-2017-1">previously told Business Insider</a>, adding that "it's like hell on Earth."</p><p>The pressure on Venus' surface, Costa said, would feel like being 3,000 feet, or about 914 meters, underwater.</p><p>But high in the planet's atmosphere, about 40 miles above its surface, temperatures range from <a href="https://astronomy.com/news/2018/04/could-life-be-hiding-in-the-clouds-of-venus">90 to 160 degrees Fahrenheit</a> (30 to 70 degrees Celsius). Pressures there are equivalent to sea level on Earth.</p><p>That's the part of the atmosphere where Petkowski's team found phosphine.</p><p>"This phosphine signal is perfectly positioned where others have conjectured the area could be habitable," Petkowski told MIT <keyword id="6355005" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="news">News</keyword>.</p><h2>Scientists have suggested before that Venus' clouds may be habitable</h2><p>In the 1960s, Sagan wrote <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/2161198a0">two</a> <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/2151259a0">papers</a> discussing the possibility of life on Venus. He concluded that the planet's surface, on average, was too hot for proteins and biological processes to hold up.</p><p>"The overall chances of life on the surface of Venus remain bleak," <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/2161198a0">Sagan wrote</a>.</p><p>But <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/2151259a0">he added</a> that "while the surface conditions of Venus make the hypothesis of life there implausible, the clouds of Venus are a different story altogether."</p><p>Sagan and Harold Morowitz, a molecular biophysicist at Yale, posited in 1967 that there could be a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/2151259a0">livable layer in Venus' clouds</a> where churning air would keep microbes aloft. They even worked out the math for an organism with a balloon-like, hydrogen-filled "float bladder" that could keep it alive.</p><p>In the decades since then, astronomers have continued to investigate this possibility. A <a href="https://liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/ast.2017.1783">study</a> published in 2018 suggested that temperate Venusian clouds could harbor extremophiles: microbes that can inhabit environments that are extremely hot, acidic, or toxic.</p><p>"On Earth, we know that life can thrive in very acidic conditions, can feed on carbon dioxide, and produce sulfuric acid," one of the authors of that study, Rakesh Mogul, <a href="https://news.wisc.edu/is-there-life-adrift-in-the-clouds-of-venus/">said in a press release</a>.</p><p>Mogul's team mentioned as an example living microbes that have been found in our own atmosphere, 25 miles above Earth's surface. There's no reason similar microorganisms couldn't thrive on other planets.</p><p>"Venus could be an exciting new chapter in astrobiology exploration," Mogul said.</p><h2>Future missions to Venus could tell us more about its clouds</h2><p>To get a clear look inside Venus' clouds, astronomers need to send a probe.</p><p>NASA has for decades researched and partly funded conceptual missions to Venus, but the agency hasn't launched a dedicated mission to the planet since 1989. Europe and Japan, meanwhile, put spacecraft into orbit around Venus in 2006 and 2015, but those weren't equipped to seek out signs of life.</p><p>Peter Beck, the CEO of a private launch company called Rocket Lab, has said he'd like to change that. On August 31, the company <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/rocket-lab-launches-photon-satellite-2020-9" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">launched its first Photon spacecraft</a>, designed to carry technology into <keyword id="41531" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="space">space</keyword>. Beck said Photon <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/rocket-lab-ceo-peter-beck-electron-failure-photon-lunar-spacecraft-2020-7" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">could eventually reach Venus</a>, Mars, and the moon.</p><div type="image" title="rocket lab Electron vehicle orbital launcher ELaNa19 liftoff zealand launch Trevor Mahlmann rocketlab" height="934" width="1400" msid="78113505" hostid="261"></div><p>"I'm madly in love with Venus," Beck <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhqzSVEGVxw" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">said in a video</a> in August, adding that he was working to launch a mission to the planet in 2023 using Photon.</p><p>"We're going to learn a lot on the way there, and we're going to have a crack at seeing if we can discover what's in that atmospheric zone," Beck said. "And who knows? You may hit the jackpot."</p>

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