The DOI matches its Crossref record; 45 of the 45 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Phosphine gas in the cloud decks of Venus
Open accessAbstract
Measurements of trace gases in planetary atmospheres help us explore chemical conditions different to those on Earth. Our nearest neighbour, Venus, has cloud decks that are temperate but hyperacidic. Here we report the apparent presence of phosphine (PH3) gas in Venus’s atmosphere, where any phosphorus should be in oxidized forms. Single-line millimetre-waveband spectral detections (quality up to ~15σ) from the JCMT and ALMA telescopes have no other plausible identification. Atmospheric PH3 at ~20 ppb abundance is inferred. The presence of PH3 is unexplained after exhaustive study of steady-state chemistry and photochemical pathways, with no currently known abiotic production routes in Venus’s atmosphere, clouds, surface and subsurface, or from lightning, volcanic or meteoritic delivery. PH3 could originate from unknown photochemistry or geochemistry, or, by analogy with biological production of PH3 on Earth, from the presence of life. Other PH3 spectral features should be sought, while in situ cloud and surface sampling could examine sources of this gas. The detection of ~20 ppb of phosphine in Venus clouds by observations in the millimetre-wavelength range from JCMT and ALMA is puzzling, because according to our knowledge of Venus, no phosphine should be there. As the most plausible formation paths do not work, the source could be unknown chemical processes—maybe even life?
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The HITRAN2020 molecular spectroscopic database
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Metadata
- Authors
- Greaves, J. S., Richards, A. M. S., Bains, W., Rimmer, P. B., Sagawa, H., Clements, D. L., Seager, S., Petkowski, J. J., Sousa-Silva, C., Ranjan, S., Drabek-Maunder, E., Fraser, H. J., Cartwright, A., Mueller-Wodarg, I., Zhan, Z., Friberg, P., Coulson, I., Lee, E., & Hoge, J.
- Venue
- Nature Astronomy
- Published
- 2020-09-14
- Volume
- 5
- Issue
- 7
- Pages
- 655-664
- ISSN
- 2397-3366 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3086299117
- Cited by
- 267
- References
- 45
- FWCI
- 20.98
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
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- Greaves, J. S., Richards, A. M. S., Bains, W., Rimmer, P. B., Sagawa, H., Clements, D. L., Seager, S., Petkowski, J. J., Sousa-Silva, C., Ranjan, S., Drabek-Maunder, E., Fraser, H. J., Cartwright, A., Mueller-Wodarg, I., Zhan, Z., Friberg, P., Coulson, I., Lee, E., & Hoge, J. (2020). Phosphine gas in the cloud decks of Venus. Nature Astronomy. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-020-1174-4
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