Sign of Life

The detection of PH3 towards the entire planet of Venus.
The left is the detection with JCMT and right is with ALMA.
The x-axis is labelled ‘Venus frame velocity’ because the observed spectra need to be corrected for the velocity at which
Venus is spinning. V=0 on the x-axis corresponds to the frequency at which PH 3 emits. On the y-axis, l:c stands for
line:continuum ratio. Continuum can be thought of as the background and the line corresponds to the PH 3 detection. Any
value away from zero means that there is flux at that frequency. Bumps and wiggles are normal and are called ‘noise’. The
authors are able to determine the significance of the detection based on the depth of the line compared to the noise (plus
some other dip could just be a random, extra-large wriggle. The intrinsic brightness of Venus may also introduce
such wriggles. The standard practice, therefore, is to write an equation of the wriggle and subtract it from the
observed data. The equation is generally expressed by a polynomial. The team used a twelfth-order polynomial,
that is, an equation with twelve variables (the simplest second order polynomial is: ax -y + b = 0, where x, y are
variables and a, b are constants) to describe the noise in their ALMA data, but other astrophysicists found “no
statistically significant sign of phosphine” in the ALMA data. Obviously, many more confirmations will be
necessary before accepting or rejecting the possibility of life in Venus - an extraordinary claim. The next mission
to Venus from the Earth should give us enough time to design an appropriate experiment for this, and it will be
sent by none other than India: the Shukrayaan-1 orbiter is currently scheduled for launch in 2023.
Ideal worlds for life

For life to evolve and thrive anywhere, a set of conditions needs to be satisfied, the most important of which is the presence of
water. Further, there has to be a ‘habitable zone’ conducive to life, the so-called Circumstellar Habitable Zone ( CHZ), also known
as the Goldilocks Zone. This means that a candidate planet’s distance from the parent star has to be such that water can exist in
liquid state under ordinary temperature and pressure. There also has to be an abundance of organic elements necessary for
making the complex organic molecules to capture and reflect the complexity of life - 99 per cent of all living forms on Earth are
composed only of six elements - carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulphur ( CHNOPS). Organic molecules of
these elements dispersed in water provide an ideal environment for chemical interaction between these molecules which forms
the basis of all metabolising mechanisms on Earth.
Are there such other worlds? Scientists have identified nine bodies inside the solar system where life might
exist in subsurface oceans of water or other organic liquids like methane or ammonia. These are Mars; Ceres-the
largest asteroid; Europa, Ganymede, and Calisto-all moons of Jupiter; Enceladus and Titan - moons of Saturn;
Triton, the largest moon of Neptune; and Pluto. Mars once had free flowing water on its surface. Some of it may
still be flowing underground. Life had so far been ruled out in Venus which once was within the Goldilocks Zone.
But the Goldilocks Zone also changes its boundaries due to the brightening of the Sun over the past billions of
years. On Venus, it triggered a “runaway greenhouse effect” which boiled its seas away, driving any living
microbes which existed on its surface waters into the Venus skies, where the temperature remains bearable and
water remains liquid even now as droplets.
Beyond our Solar System, scientists have discovered nearly 3400 Earth-like rocky planets within the
Goldilocks Zone in other stellar systems within and outside our galaxy capable of nurturing life, though without
any evidence of life so far. Such planets, called ‘exoplanets’, are detected indirectly from the stellar properties like
brightness, position etc. or by direct observations made by telescopes in space, like Hubble, Spitzer, Corot, and
Kepler Space Telescopes.
Signs of Life
Once an exoplanet is discovered, scientists look for bio-signatures of life in it. The planet’s visible or infrared
spectrum may reveal the presence of oxygen or methane, two gases produced by life through photosynthetic or
other biological processes. They may look for evidence of liquid water which is essential for life. Ozone will
provide another bio-signature as also the compounds of organic sulphur or carbon-di-oxide. However, some of
these gases and compounds may even be produced by abiotic processes; there also remains the possibility that
even when no bio-signature is detected, some form of life can still be ebbing and flowing beneath the surface of
the planets - in subsurface oceans of water or organic compounds like methane or ammonia, though less likely.
In Search of Super-habitable Exoplanets

Given that vastness of the universe and the immensity of time through which it has evolved, it is unlikely that a
single planet like our Earth in this Universe harbours life, where in fact it has been proved to exist and proliferate
under the most extreme conditions, in highly acidic, alkaline or radioactive environments, in hot springs and
frigid lakes deep below the surface. In September 2020, in a research paper titled “In Search for a Planet Better
than Earth: Top Contenders for a Super-habitable World” astrophysicists Dirk Schulze- Makuch, René Heller and
Edward Guinan from Washington State University identified the conditions that will make an exoplanet habitable
- in fact more habitable than our Mother Earth. According to them, it should be about 5-8 billion years

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The detection of PH3 towards the entire planet of Venus.

Ideal worlds for life

In Search of Super-habitable Exoplanets

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