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  • Matters Arising
  • Published:

No evidence of phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus from independent analyses

Nature Astronomy volume 5, pages 631–635 (2021)Cite this article

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Matters Arising to this article was published on 16 July 2021

The Original Article was published on 14 September 2020

arising from J. Greaves et al. Nature Astronomy https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-020-1174-4 (2020)

The detection of phosphine (PH3) in the atmosphere of Venus has been recently reported on the basis of millimetre-wave radio observations1 and their reanalyses2,3. In this Matters Arising we perform an independent reanalysis, identifying several issues in the interpretation of the spectroscopic data. As a result, we determine sensitive upper limits for PH3 in Venus’s atmosphere (>75 km, above the cloud decks) that are discrepant with the findings in refs. 1,2,3.

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Fig. 1: Comparison between the results obtained by the authors of the original paper and its reanalysis and our independent analysis of the same data retrieved from the ALMA science archive.
Fig. 2: Residual JCMT data and models of SO2 and PH3.

Data availability

This paper makes use of the 2018.A.00023.S ALMA data, available at https://almascience.nrao.edu/asax. The JCMT data are available at https://www.eaobservatory.org/jcmt/science/archive.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to commend the team of Greaves et al.1 for making their data and scripts available. ALMA is a partnership of ESO (representing its member states), NSF (USA) and NINS (Japan), together with NRC (Canada), MOST and ASIAA (Taiwan) and KASI (Republic of Korea), in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. The Joint ALMA Observatory is operated by ESO, AUI/NRAO and NAOJ. The JCMT data were collected under project S16BP007. JCMT is operated by the EAO on behalf of NAOJ, ASIAA, KASI and CAMS as well as the National Key R&D Programme of China (2017YFA0402700). Additional funding support is provided by the STFC and participating universities in the United Kingdom and Canada. We recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that the summit of Maunakea has always had within the indigenous Hawaiian community. We are most fortunate to have the opportunity to conduct observations from this mountain.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Solar System Exploration Division, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA

    G. L. Villanueva, M. Cordiner, S. N. Milam, C. A. Nixon, V. Kofman, G. Liuzzi, S. Faggi, T. J. Fauchez, M. Lippi, R. Cosentino, A. E. Thelen, S. Charnley, G. N. Arney, A. M. Mandell & R. Kopparapu

  2. Department of Physics, Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, USA

    M. Cordiner

  3. Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    P. G. J. Irwin & C. F. Wilson

  4. Department of Astronomy, University of Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

    I. de Pater & E. M. Molter

  5. National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), Socorro, NM, USA

    B. Butler

  6. Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian, Cambridge, MA, USA

    M. Gurwell

  7. Department of Astronomy, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    S. H. Luszcz-Cook

  8. American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY, USA

    S. H. Luszcz-Cook

  9. Physics Department, American University, Washington, DC, USA

    V. Kofman, G. Liuzzi, S. Faggi & M. Lippi

  10. Universities Space Research Association, Columbia, MD, USA

    T. J. Fauchez & A. E. Thelen

  11. University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    R. Cosentino

  12. SOFIA Science Center, Moffett Field, CA, USA

    A. Moullet

  13. Max-Planck-Institut fur Sonnensystemforschung, Gottingen, Germany

    P. Hartogh

  14. Observatoire de Paris, LEISA/CNRS, Meudon, France

    N. Biver

  15. Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy, BIRA-IASB, Brussels, Belgium

    A. C. Vandaele

  16. California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, CA, USA

    K. R. de Kleer

Authors
  1. G. L. Villanueva
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  2. M. Cordiner
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Contributions

G.L.V., P.G.J.I., M.G., V.K. and G.L. performed the retrievals and the radiative-transfer modelling. M.C., I.d.P. and B.B. calibrated and analysed the ALMA data. S.N.M., C.A.N., S.H.L.-C., R.C., A.E.T., A.M., E.M.M., S.C., N.B. and K.R.d.K. assisted with the interpretation of the interferometric spectra. C.F.W., S.F., T.J.F., M.L., P.H., G.N.A., A.M.M., A.C.V. and R.K. assisted with the interpretation of the results in the context of the Venusian atmosphere and its photochemistry. All authors contributed to writing and revising the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to G. L. Villanueva.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Peer review information Nature Astronomy thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–4, details of vertical profiles (Section 1), details of the analysis of the ALMA data (Section 2), validation of the ALMA analysis by interpreting other nearby lines (Section 3) and study of the altitude of the probed narrow molecular absorptions (Section 4).

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Villanueva, G.L., Cordiner, M., Irwin, P.G.J. et al. No evidence of phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus from independent analyses. Nat Astron 5, 631–635 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-021-01422-z

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