It’s hard to imagine a less comfortable place for life than the clouds of Venus. They’re made mainly of sulfuric acid – something you wouldn’t want to dip your fingers into. Yet studies in the past few years are raising at least the possibility that microscopic life could inhabit those clouds.

There’s almost no way for anything to live on the surface of the planet. The atmosphere is too hot, dense, and toxic. But the clouds are about 30 miles high, where the conditions are more like those on Earth.

A few years ago, scientists reported finding phosphine in the clouds. On Earth, it’s a compound that’s almost always produced by living organisms. Other studies have found no trace of it. But earlier this year, astronomers reported finding new evidence of the compound.

Another study this year reported finding ammonia. On Earth, it’s produced mainly by living organisms and industrial processes. And yet another study said that some of the key building blocks in amino acids could survive in a high concentration of sulfuric acid.

None of that means that anything actually lives in the clouds. But it does mean that scientists will be taking a much closer look at Venus’s clouds in the years ahead.

Venus is the brilliant “evening star.” It’s quite low in the southwest as night falls. Tonight, it’s close to the upper right of the crescent Moon. It’ll be a little farther to the lower right of the Moon tomorrow night.

Script by Damond Benningfield