Life on Venus? Hold your horses!

SETI Live

Tags: Astrobiology, Planetary Exploration, Solar System, SETI Live

Time: Thursday, Mar 11, 2021 -

Location: Online Livestream

New research casts doubt on the possibility of life in Venus’ atmosphere. Join us for a SETI Live to consider the search for life in Venus. We invited JPL technologist Alex Akins and University of Washington Professor and Drake Award recipient Vikky Meadows to discuss recent findings with SETI Institute astronomer Franck Marchis.

Articles by both guests have been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters (ApJL).
arxiv.org/abs/2101.09837
https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.09831

 Alex Akins is a technologist at NASA-JPL and leads a paper that describes the analysis of recalibrated data taken with the ALMA instrument. The team cannot confirm that the presence of phosphine in Venus’ atmosphere.

Vikky Meadows, Professor at the University of Washington and Drake Award recipient, is a co-author on an additional paper showing that the spectral signatures originally attributed to phosphine in the Venus clouds are more likely explained by the presence of sulfur dioxide in Venus’ upper atmosphere.

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