It's literally reeking of science!

After decades of being the least interesting terrestrial planet in the inner solar system, Venus, the oft overlooked second planet from the Sun, has suddenly come from behind and claimed the title of planet that might-but probably doesn't-harbor extraterrestrial life.

"Suck it Mars."

                            -Venus

"You uh...you smell that right? Is it, is it
the planet? Holy shit, let's never land here."

-Aliens

A team of researchers from Cardiff University led by professor Jane Greaves have detected phosphine gas in the planet's atmosphere. Phosphine-and I didn't know any of this, I'm just summing up the article you totally didn't bother to click on-is produced on Earth through a biological process and can be indicative of life. In its pure form the gas is odorless, but as it exists in nature it smells like, get this, rotten fish, which might go a long way towards solving the Fermi paradox.

Greaves' team tried to come up with some other, non-biological explanation for the gas, but couldn't, suggesting that unless there's some other process that produces phosphine that scientists just haven't discovered yet, Venus might in fact be home to alien life.

This is one of the rare instances where the scientific
explanation for something is either aliens or wizards.

"What is this Earth
emotion you call love?"

-Some microbes

Now because this is science, let's rein it in a bit. We're not talking about humanoid aliens with hilarious lumps of latex glue to their foreheads who are going to ask us to explain this Earth-emotion we call love. When they say life, they're talking about what are almost certainly microbes. Venus' surface temperature is something like 860º and the atmospheric pressure is 93 times more dense than Earth, so if there is anything living there, the speculation is that is probably something microscopic and airborne.

What? Look at the last election and
tell me we don't care more about coal.

So germs, which we have here on Earth, but still, venerial germs. Of course the question still rem-huh? Venerial just means from Venus. I didn't invent the language. The important take away here is that our planet's eccentric billionaires have been wasting their time hucking Teslas at the wrong planet. Mars is a radiation soaked hellscape, and if we ever have to flee our own planet-say because we love plastic straws and coal jobs more than our own children-Venus might be the way to go.

Yeah, it's a long walk from microbes to space colony, but still, it's pretty interesting stuff. Oh, and speaking of, people who think about this sort of thing speculate that because Venus' surface is under enormous pressure and super-hot, that venereal pioneers-again, not my word-would live in cities that float on the dense atmosphere which would also shield them from cosmic rays. You heard me, floating cities. Like goddamn Star Wars.

Sure it sounds nutty when I say it, but have some rich CEO give a
Ted Talk about it and suddenly people are buying tickets to Cloud City.