Venus Is Dead! New Analysis Shows Phosphine, A Possible Biosignature, Is Absent
“So, what does this all mean? It means that the initial detection of phosphine, as claimed by the Greaves et al. team, is suddenly thrown into tremendous doubt. If they’ve analyzed their data in an unsound fashion, as this new work contends, then this chemical signature might not be present, after all. This new paper still needs to go through the peer review process, and I suspect that the original team will perform a reanalysis themselves to see what conclusions they arrive at.
In the absence of what initially appeared to be extraordinary evidence, we need to return to our default position: Venus has no evidence for being a biologically active world. Unless this new analysis is refuted and the initial work is vindicated, the idea of phosphine on Venus may be as dead as Venus itself.”
Last month, a series of three new papers came out, arguing that they had found evidence for phosphine, a chemical which is only naturally produced biologically on Earth, in great abundance in the atmosphere of Venus. Does this mean that there’s life on Venus? The possibility was fascinating, and led to a firestorm of speculation. But in a new study submitted just 2 days ago, an independent team found that the original analysis was unsound, and concludes that there’s no evidence for phosphine at all. Is Venus truly dead, after all?
Here’s what the new paper contends and how the pieces all fit together. If they’re right, the “extraordinary evidence” we needed has evaporated entirely.













