Phosphine on Venus Cannot be Explained by Conventional Processes William Bains1,9, #,*, Janusz J. Petkowski1, #,*, Sara Seager1,2,3, Sukrit Ranjan1a, Clara Sousa- Silva1,2, Paul B. Rimmer4,5,6, Zhuchang Zhan1, Jane S. Greaves7, Anita M. S. Richards8 1Dept. of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Mass. Ave., Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA. 2Dept. of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Mass. Ave., Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA. 3Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Mass. Ave., Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA. 4Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3EQ, UK. 5Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, JJ Thomson Ave, Cambridge CB3 0HE, United Kingdom 6MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Francis Crick Ave, Cambridge CB2 0QH, United Kingdom 7School of Physics and Astronomy, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF24 3AA, UK. 8Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, Department of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Manchester, Alan Turing Building, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK. 9School of Physics & Astronomy, Cardiff University, 4 The Parade, Cardiff CF24 3AA, UK a SCOL Postdoctoral Fellow # These authors contributed equally to this work, and are listed alphabetically. * Correspondence to:
[email protected],
[email protected]. Keywords: Phosphine, Venus, Thermodynamics, Photochemistry, Biosignature gas, Life 1 Abstract The recent candidate detection of ~1 ppb of phosphine in the middle atmosphere of Venus is so unexpected that it requires an exhaustive search for explanations of its origin. Phosphorus- containing species have not been modelled for Venus’ atmosphere before and our work represents the first attempt to model phosphorus species in the Venusian atmosphere.