Following up on Possible Sign of Life on Venus. After that announcement some scientists took another look at 1978 data from the Pioneer Venus Multiprobe. At the time nobody was specifically looking for phosphine, but a new analysis of the raw data supports the possibility that there is phospine in the atmosphere of Venus. Details at Is Phosphine in the Mass Spectra from Venus’ Clouds?.

This has happened before in astronomy. After both Neptune and Pluto were discovered, astronomers looked at old records and found that their predecessors had seen both bodies, but had not realized they were significant. In the case of Neptune one of those predecessors was Galileo.

Yesterday I got an email from Cosmoquest about a science press conference (“presser”) where a new discovery would be announced. With all the new distance-based communication technology anybody could watch, rather than just those in a select room, however large. The event was put on by the Royal Astronomical Society today. I watched it on the Cosmoquest Twitch TV channel. I had never heard of Twitch TV before.

The occasion was that

An international team of astronomers, led by Professor Jane Greaves of Cardiff University, today announced the discovery of a rare molecule – phosphine – in the clouds of Venus. On Earth, this gas is only made industrially, or by microbes that thrive in oxygen-free environments.

The discovery was made by spectroscopy using two different radio telescopes. The significance of this is that the production of phospine by purely chemical processes is very unlikely in the atmosphere of Venus. The team looked at every possible chemical reaction they could think up, and failed to find any that could come close to producing the observed amount of phospine.