- The Royal Astronomical Society held a press briefing announcing the detection of ~20 ppb phosphine (PH₃) in Venus’ cloud decks at ~55 km altitude, a gas that on Earth is overwhelmingly produced by anaerobic biology and has no known robust abiotic source under Venusian conditions.  
- The discovery paper, “Phosphine gas in the cloud decks of Venus” (Nature Astronomy, 2020), was linked alongside a complementary Astrobiology paper proposing that the enigmatic UV-absorbing patches in Venus’ lower-cloud haze could be a photosynthetic aerial biosphere cycling between desiccated spores and metabolically active droplet-embedded cells.  
- Participants debated how to falsify or confirm a biological origin: higher-resolution spectroscopy to map PH₃ vertical and horizontal distribution, correlation with the UV-dark features, and ultimately in-situ cloud sampling were cited as decisive next steps.  
- Cultural skepticism was voiced that even if microbial life were proven, public reaction would downplay the significance (“just microbes,” “we always knew life was out there”), illustrating the shifting goalposts surrounding extraterrestrial-life announcements.  
- Additional scientific links shared during the session included a pre-print arguing that NANOGrav pulsar-timing residuals may be the first evidence of a stochastic gravitational-wave background from cosmic strings (arXiv:2009.06555) and a controversial Zenodo report claiming SARS-CoV-2 shows genomic signatures of laboratory engineering rather than natural zoonosis.