jacob navia writes:

[snipped for brevity - line length]

given a temperature of 450 Celsius (842 F) it is not really surprising that
they didn't "laast long". It was incredible that they managed to survive at
all.

and the pictures returned revealed nothing but rocks.

Obviously at that temperatures and crushing pressures it would highly
surprising to see anything but rocks.

It's time that the atmosphere is explored since temperatures and
pressures are much more reasonable at altitude on Venus.

But let's temper our hopes for actual life. What's been detected is a
chemical signature that could indicate life. Or it could be from a so
far unknown chemical process that's unique to the atmosphere of Venus.

Jeff


There is no known chemical process that could generate phosphine.

I've seen one paper that claims simulated lightning can provide a
natural non-life cause for phosphine gas generation:

https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/11998/1/Gli2004a.pdf

But the results of the Venus study claim that the amounts of phosphine
detected in the Venusian atmosphere far exceeds the amounts that could
be produced this way.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-1174-4

This plus source data from two different observational mechanisms is what
makes all this very intriguing.

Dave