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Greaves may be wary of sparking a furor like the one that resulted from the initial detection of phosphine by her team three years ago.

She reflected on how the search for phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus was prompted and how that led to the 2020 situation. She said the decision to investigate Venus resulted from the study of other solar system worlds like Saturn and improved telescope technology that allowed for the probing of the atmospheres of smaller planets.

"I vaguely remembered Venus is supposed to have this potential habitat in the high clouds, which is anaerobic, and we eventually got telescope time, so I thought, 'Why don’t we have a very quick look and see if there’s some phosphates in Venus clouds, an analog to things living on the surface of the Earth?'" Greeaves said. "Astonishingly, we found it, and all hell broke loose!"

The potential detection sparked a flurry of follow-up research, some of which was conducted by teams consisting of scientists involved in the initial phosphine detection, that failed to turn up the molecule. And these new findings from Greaves and her team are likely to prompt even more follow-up investigations.

The debate could be settled in the not-too-distant future, for Venus has emerged as a planetary science and astrobiology priority. For example, two NASA missions, called VERITAS and DAVINCI, and Europe's EnVision orbiter are scheduled to launch toward the planet in the next decade. DAVINCI will carry a descent probe, which will study the Venusian atmosphere up close as it plunges through it.