On The Biomass Required To Produce Phosphine Detected In The Cloud Decks Of Venus

Abstract

The detection of phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus at an abundance of $\sim 20$ ppb suggests that this gas is being generated by either indeterminate abiotic pathways or biological processes. We consider the latter possibility, and explore whether the amount of biomass required to produce the observed flux of phosphine may be reasonable. We estimate that the typical biomass densities predicted by our simple model are potentially orders of magnitude lower than the biomass density of Earth's aerial biosphere in the lower atmosphere. We briefly discuss how small spacecraft could sample the Venusian cloud decks and search for biomarkers.

8 pages; 2 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Venus' Mass Spectra Show Signs of Disequilibria in the Middle Clouds
• A Precursor Balloon Mission for Venusian Astrobiology

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Re-analysis of the 267-GHz ALMA observations of Venus: No statistically significant detection of phosphine
• The statistical reliability of 267 GHz JCMT observations of Venus: No significant evidence for phosphine absorption
• A Precursor Balloon Mission for Venusian Astrobiology
• Transfer of Life Between Earth and Venus with Planet-Grazing Asteroids
• The Phosphene Controversy: Is it Phosphene? Is there life on Venus?