Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Enigmatic Venus – Cloudy with a scattering of life?
Image credit: NASA

New research has focused on the clouds of Venus saturated with sulfuric acid, work that enhances the potential habitability of that world – not at its surface, but high above the planet’s hell hole-like landscape.

Just-published research calls for the start of a new branch of astrobiology and a new branch of organic chemistry.

“The search for signs of life beyond Earth is a motivator in modern-day planetary exploration, but life on other planets does not have to have the same biochemistry as our life here on Earth,” says Janusz Pętkowski, a research affiliate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge. “Life needs some sort of liquid medium to function, but does it always have to be water?”

For detailed information, go to my new Space.com story – “Alien life could thrive in Venus’ acidic clouds, new study hints” – at:

https://www.space.com/alien-life-venus-clouds-amino-acids-stable-sulfuric-acid

Rocket Lab mission to Venus – a private affair.
Image credit: Rocket Lab