Congratulations!Varuna Deopersad successfully presented her MSc thesis

26 July 2024

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We are proud to announce the successful defence of the master thesis of our ICSS Student Varuna Deopersad.

Her thesis “Estimating detectability of phosphine (PH₃) in the Venusian atmosphere using spectral modeling” was supervised by Prof. Dr. Peter Hauschildt and Prof. Dr. Lars Kutzbach (both Universität Hamburg).

Phosphine is a chemical known to be produced only by living things on the Earth. It is not known to be present on other rocky planets within the solar system. However recent scientific research indicated that telescopes on the Earth were used to detect phosphine on Venus. This research seeks to find out if the detections of phosphine in the Venusian atmosphere made by these telescopes are plausible. This is important because if concentrations of phosphine on Venus are verified as detectable this may potentially imply that life is on Venus. To do this research, a model or a computer-based imitation of the properties of the Venusian atmosphere was used. It was found that the concentrations of phosphine detected by the telescopes, when replicated in the model, can in fact be detected at the same wavelength. There are also other wavelengths where phosphine may potentially be detected in the model of the Venusian atmosphere, but further research by ground-based telescopes or space devices are needed to confirm this.