MIGHT THERE BE LIFE ON VENUS? PHOSPHORUS GIVES A HINT.

As reported Sept, 2020, scientists have detected Phosphine (PH3) in the atmosphere of Venus. This is significant because it suggests the possibility of life based in part upon a biochemistry that incorporates phosphorus as a byproduct or ‘mainframe’ of at least one life form on Venus.

In solution chemistry the salvation coefficient ‘determines’ the effectiveness of a chemical species to have an effective Dynamic in a specific solvent. And this coefficient is a function of the predominant pressure and temperature. The sigificance for extraterrestrial life forms is that under varying standard conditions (T,P, radiation...) there exists for a range of extraterrestrial environments a correlated range of solvation populations much like various fauna populations in planetary zones. Consequently, there are ‘families’ of chemical species, with similar solvation properties, stability-suited for various extraterrestrial zones. And, as well, there are families of solvents available to match to those zones. Consequently, just as water, H2O - the hydride of Oxygen is the predominant solvent on Earth (and ammonia, NH3, the predominant  atmospheric component... and the building block of our protein and DNA-RNA bio-information transfer systems),  we might expect ‘hydride cousins’ to be favored solvents and basic chemical building blocks on other planets. Thus on Venus, it is not surprising in that very different ‘T,P’ environment, to find the hydride of phosphorus, PH3 (Phosphine), to be a (stable?) ‘Life-marker’. (There also are other families of chemical life-markers, each distinctive to, and thermodynamically appropriate for, a wide range of extraterrestrial environments.) These basic points lead to the wonderful expectation that for nearly every extraterrestrial environment, there could theoretically be a characteristic (and ‘stable’) life-chemistry (‘life’ is a chemical system as far as we know.) With that said, we should expect ‘life’, varying from ‘primitive’ to ‘sentient forms, to exist throughout the universe... but with the proviso that other factors are present to sustain life ... for at least some time. Relative to cosmic time, billions of years, Earth’s life didn’t take long to appear (organized RNA assemblages) but it took several billion years of stop-and-go, near-total-extinctions and dead-end ‘life experiments’ for planetary conditions to ‘stabilize’ long enough, or ‘be influenced by’ eg cosmic ray mutations, for sentience to appear and be sustained. Of course, as we’ve come to realize there is a downside to sentience that human thinkers recognize to be a detriment to our continued existence, I.e., ‘Poised Sentience’, enough to build our own shelters and ‘husband’ our own food supply , not enough sentience to understand when to stop selfish gratification and save ourselves from self-extinction.