Are there organisms living on the hottest planet in our solar system? Maybe. Astronomers found a sign associated with life high in the atmosphere of Venus. Two telescopes in Hawaii and Chile spotted phosphine in Venus’ thick clouds. On Earth, that chemical comes from life.

Phosphine is a toxic gas. It’s in ooze at the bottom of ponds. It’s in the guts of some creatures like badgers. It’s inside piles of penguin poop. A study in the journal Nature Astronomy reports that Venus has phosphine too.

Sara Seager is a planetary scientist. She co-authored the Venus phosphine study. She says that researchers “exhaustively went through every possibility and ruled all of them out: volcanoes, lightning strikes, small meteorites falling into the atmosphere. . . . Not a single process we looked at could produce phosphine in high enough quantities to explain our team’s findings.”

How could life exist on such a hot planet? Temperatures on Venus are around 800 degrees! And there is no water.

Ms. Seager wonders if life could be 30 miles above the surface of Venus. That’s where thick carbon-dioxide clouds stay around room temperature (about 70 degrees). Those clouds contain tiny water droplets. That could be where microbes (very tiny organisms) live. Scientists need proof.

David Grinspoon is an astrobiologist. He says that finding phosphine on Venus “almost seems too good to be true.” Study co-author David Clements is also excited. He says his head tells him “it’s probably a 10% chance that it’s life,” but his heart “obviously wants it to be much bigger because it would be so exciting.”

God spoke, and Venus was created. He made it unbearably hot for humans to live there. He made Earth perfect for people to call home. But still, it is exciting to learn more about the other planets.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the Moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? –– Psalm 8:3-4