by New research is pointing to the sulfuric acid clouds of Venus as a possible abode for life.
The New Venus The study 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 catalyst in today’s planetary exploration, but life on other planets does not necessarily have the same biochemistry as our life here on Earth,” said Janusz Pętkowski, a research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge. “Life needs some liquid medium to function, but must there always be water?”
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Amino acids are surprisingly stable
It is a great discovery the new study, which appears in a special collection of “Centers” research papers in the journal Astrobiology, that amino acids remain stable in concentrated sulfuric acid. That is of great interest to astrobiologists, for amino acids are the building blocks of proteins, essential to life as we know it.
And that brings us full circle to the sulfuric-laden acids Venusian clouds. Venus is often called Earth’s sister planet, but is it also the heavenly companion of cozy microbes?
“These results significantly expand the range of biologically relevant molecules that can be components of solvent-based biochemistry of concentrated sulfuric acid,” Pętkowski and his research colleagues state in the paper, titled “Stability of 20 Biogenic Amino Acids in Concentrated Sulfuric Acid: Implications for the Normality of the Clouds of Venus.”
Solvent for life
Pętkowski points to other possible liquid solvents on the surface, subsurface or in the clouds of the planets and moons. “Therefore, it is important to understand the basic chemistry that occurs in such possible alternative solvents for life, to assess whether complex organic chemistry could form in them, be stable and soluble. Worldwater is a dominant liquid, but other liquid solvents are also present in our Solar system,” he told Space.com.
Pętkowski has a lifelong interest in debt-related research exoplanet, biosignature gases and theoretical biochem. One goal of his work is to determine whether or not any universal laws of biology can be identified, a quest that uses “cheminformatics” computer simulations to help design future laboratory experiments.
The research team is particularly interested in concentrated sulfuric acid as a potential solvent for life. Liquid droplets of concentrated sulfuric acid build the clouds of Venus. The acid concentrations in the droplets vary from 81% to 98% acid, the rest being water.
An important item to mix into that Venusian cloud mix: Amino acids and other organics are continually being delivered to Venus by meteoric material.
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Morning Star Initiative
Could such an aggressive solvent in the clouds of Venus set the stage for alien biochemistry?
“If so, then of course such a life would be fundamentally different from life on earth,” said Pętkowski. He and colleagues are motivated to study organic chemistry in concentrated sulfuric acid, to see if such complex reactions might be occurring in the cloud layers of Venus, about 30 miles to 40 miles (48 to 64 kilometers) up.
This research is likely to inform future missions to the cloud-printed planet. These efforts include the Venus Life Finder Mission (now known as the Rocket Lab Mission to Venus), which is scheduled to launch aboard a Rocket Lab Electron rocket in early 2025, and the subsequent projects from the Morning Star Missions to Venus initiative led by the astrophysicist and MIT planetary scientist Sara Seager.
Pętkowski is deputy principal investigator of the Venus Life Finder Mission Concept Study.
Objective #1 for the Venus Life Finder is searching for the presence of organic matter within cloud-layer particles as a function of altitude.
Early work on the scientific and technical challenges of privately funded Venus exploration helped Advance Initiativesa series of space science programs financially supported by a foundation founded by entrepreneurs Julia and Yuri Milner.
“Earth’s ‘Evil Twin’ Venus is receiving increasing attention as a possible habitable place, and as a possible habitable place,” Pete Worden, executive director of the Breakthrough Initiative, told Space. com. “It is possible, and increasingly likely that Venus has a life that carries life. Maybe even the life of the Earth came there!”
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Not universally hostile
“We have shown that concentrated sulfuric acid is not universally hostile to organic chemistry and that many organics are surprisingly stable and soluble for months, if not longer, in this aggressive solvent,” said Pętkowski.
In earlier work, the investigative team showed that other key molecules needed for life – nucleic acid bases – are stable in concentrated sulfuric acid, “promoting the notion that the atmosphere of Venus could support complex chemicals needed for life,” Pętkowski added. .
The stability of amino acids in concentrated sulfuric acid is an “unexpected discovery,” Pętkowski said, “which further supports the notion that complex organic chemistry is possible in the concentrated sulfuric acid clouds of Venus, and that organic chemistry is likely indeed present . present in the clouds of Venus.”
