Is there life on VENUS?

The planet is incredibly hostile to life as we know it, but could Venus have evolved its own ecosystem? Penny Wozniakiewicz investigates

Humans are unlikely to ever set foot on Venus’s surface. The extreme and relentless oven-like temperatures and chokingly thick and toxic atmosphere would be deadly to us, and all life as we know it. Yet the idea that life might be found on the surface of Venus was once a popular one. Venus is the second-brightest object in our night sky (the first being the Moon), but despite this accolade, when looked at through a telescope, it is underwhelmingly featureless. The entire surface is hidden from view by a thick and permanent blanket of cloud which left scientists of the early 20th century with little way of knowing for certain what lay beneath. Chemist and Nobel prize-winner Svante Arrhenius (1859–1927), for example, believed the clouds were made from water, just…

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BBC Sky at Night United Kingdom (Digital) - 1 Issue, December 2024

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