Molecules vital for life could survive in Venus’s acid clouds

Amino acids can survive in concentrated sulphuric acid similar to that found in Venus’s clouds. This doesn’t make Earth-like life more likely in these clouds, but it does open the possibility of a kind of life based on sulphuric acid instead of water.

Whether Venus’s clouds can harbour life has been hotly argued by scientists in recent years, especially after phosphine, a molecule produced predominantly by living organisms, was spotted in the planet’s…