Life Found On Venus?

Processes that gave rise to life on Earth may not be unique to the planet

- Saswato R Das

The recent announcement that scientists have found possible signs of life in the clouds of Venus has resurrected the ageold question: Are we alone? It is a question that has intrigued scientists, philosophers, and science fiction writers for centuries. If confirmed, any life on Venus would be a major discovery, akin to finding Earth-like planets around other stars.

It would also be another triumph for modern astronomers, who believe that the processes which gave rise to life on Earth are not unique, and should have happened elsewhere in the cosmos. Even if it were primitive life, as is probably the case with any life on Venus, a confirmation of life beyond Earth would shatter centuries of religious dogma, and be a major milestone in the revolutionary journey that started with Nicholas Copernicus and Galileo Galilei, in which the Earth lost its special place as the center of the Universe.

Science fiction writers have been talking about life on Venus for centuries. In the second century AD, Lucian of Samosata depicted a war between the armies of the King of the Moon and the King of the Sun over the colonisation of Venus in his novel A True Story (probably the first known example of the genre of science fiction). The German Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher imagined Venus was populated with beautiful youth, who had golden hair and dressed in garments made of crystals in his 1656 work, Itinerarium Exstaticum.