[idlewords]

We had a false alarm about Venusian phosphine (as the article mentions) a few years back. It would be very exciting to get these tentative detections confirmed.

There is a lot of microbial life on Earth living in clouds, almost all of it uncharacterized. Microbes have been found living high up into the stratosphere. At the very least, a search for life in the clouds of Venus would prompt us to learn more about this fascinating ecosystem here at home.

Review article on terrestrial life in the stratosphere for those interested: https://www.mdpi.com/1467-3045/38/1/8

[jvanderbot]

Does microbial life "live" there, or is it deposited there by other means?

[idlewords]

I believe the question of whether there's life that's entirely confined to clouds is open.

[rbanffy]

Doesn’t make much evolutionary sense on Earth where the high atmosphere is one of the least hospitable places to be. Makes more sense on Venus, where the high atmosphere is the least hellish place one can be.

We can, in the meantime, investigate strategies for collecting our own cloud-dwellers so we can build a probe that does the same on Venus while it descends a little through the atmosphere before launching back a sample recovery capsule.

Heat shield, parachute, balloon, stay for a couple hours collecting samples of the atmosphere, filtering particulates, making nice movies, and so on, then pop the balloon right before launching the return vehicle?

[financetechbro]

It’s not unreasonable to have microbial life floating around our atmosphere when you consider the fact that there is microbial life deep in the trenches of the ocean

[kjkjadksj]

Both. Some stuff its thought to be an evolved dispersal strategy.