On a brown dwarf dozens of light years from Earth, astronomers have detected trace amounts of phosphine, a molecule that on this planet is produced by living things.
This discovery is not life, the astronomers say. Any life as we know it would be impossible to sustain in such an environment.
But the detection, published in the journal Science on Thursday, may help scientists on their quest to find both phosphine and life elsewhere in the galaxy. The presence of phosphine in the atmosphere of a brown dwarf, an object that falls somewhere between a planet and a star, can refine scientific understanding of how and where the molecule could be found in other places. Eventually, that knowledge will help astronomers determine if phosphine is a reliable hint of life on rocky planets in the Milky Way.
“We have to make sure we do the work of understanding all of the natural processes that can make this molecule, before we can rule them out and say there must be a biological source,” said Adam Burgasser, an astrophysicist at the University of San Diego who led the study.
In other words, scientists must know the chemistry of phosphine, before they can know if it is a result of biology.
Phosphine, a molecule made of three hydrogen atoms and one phosphorus atom, is tricky to create and easy to destroy. On Earth, it is largely made by microbial life in off-putting places, like rotting swamp plants and animal intestines. A widely debated announcement of phosphine on the planet Venus in 2020 spurred interest in the molecule as a possible hint of life on other worlds.
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