A Popular Alien-Hunting Technique Is Increasingly in Doubt

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Recent controversies bode ill for the effort to detect life on other planets by analyzing the gases in their atmospheres.

In 2020, scientists detected a gas called phosphine in the atmosphere of an Earth-sized rocky planet. Knowing of no way that phosphine could be produced except through biological processes, “the scientists assert that something now alive is the only explanation for the chemical’s source,” The New York Times reported. As “biosignature gases” go, the phosphine seemed like a home run. Until it wasn’t.

One scenario is that volcanoes release chemical compounds called phosphides, which could react with sulfur dioxide in Venus’ atmosphere to form phosphine—a plausible explanation given that scientists have found evidence of active volcanism on our twin planet.

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