David Kipping

Basically, laughing gas is a product of microbes.

That's something that we're starting to get more interest in looking for.

Methane gas in combination with other gases can be an important biosignature.

Phosphine as well, and phosphine is particularly relevant to the solar system because there was a lot of interest for Venus recently.

You may have heard that there was a claim of a biosignature in Venus's atmosphere, I think it was like two years ago now.

And the judge and jury are still out on that.

There was a very provocative claim and signature of a phosphine-like spectral absorption.

But it could have also have been some other molecule in particular, sulfur dioxide, which is not a biosignature.

Yeah.

I mean, how much do we believe the detection in the first place?

If you do believe it, does that necessarily mean there's life there?

And what gives?

How can you have life in Venus's atmosphere in the first place?

Because that's been seen as like a hellhole place for imagining life.

But I guess the counter to that has been that, okay, yes, the surface is a horrendous place to imagine life thriving.

But as you go up in altitude,

very dense atmosphere means that there is a cloud layer where the temperature and the pressure become actually fairly similar to the surface of the Earth.

And so maybe there are microbes stirring around in the clouds which are producing phosphine.

At the moment, this is fascinating.

It's got a lot of us