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Acid-loving microbes may have evolved in the thick, highly-acidic clouds swirling round Venus, and might even still be there.

Prospects for Venusian life have generally been dismissed because of the harsh conditions on the planet’s surface. But discoveries of ever more microbes on Earth that live in highly acidic conditions is strengthening the case that life may be able to thrive in Venus’s dense cloud layer. About 50 kilometres above the planet’s hellish surface, sulphuric acid clouds have both milder temperatures and pressures than…