The planet Venus has always been a place folks look to and want to see the potential for life. Prior to visiting it with spacecraft, folks imagined it was a tropical world. Then, we learned it’s 900 degrees Fahrenheit and rains acid. So, not so much of a paradise.

But, researchers keep looking for ways for Venus to be good for life, and a new paper in the journal Astrobiology distills out the discussions of more than fifty scientists who met in Moscow in 2019 to discuss Venus’s potential for life.

The paper reminds readers that Venus spent three billion years with a more Earth-like ocean environment that could have evolved microorganisms just like Earth. Further, it repeats the idea put forward since the 1960s by folks, including Carl Sagan, that life could exist in the clouds, and some observations – including the repeated imaging of dark patches – are consistent with life; they just aren’t proof.

We bring this paper up just as a reminder that there could be life on Venus, and that is kind of awesome. This isn’t two crazies off in the corner saying “Venus has aliens”; this is a global community saying what we see is consistent with the possibility of life, but we can’t prove it. And even if it doesn’t have it today, it may have had it in the past.

And sometimes, it is this amazing “life may have found a way” story that we need to have in our day.

More Information

University of Wisconsin–Madison press release

“Venus, an Astrobiology Target,” Sanjay S. Limaye et al., 2021 May 7, Astrobiology

“Introducing the Venus Collection—Papers from the First Workshop on Habitability of the Cloud Layer,” Sanjay S. Limaye et al., 2021 September 28, Astrobiology