The statistical reliability of 267 GHz JCMT observations of Venus

M.A. Thompson

In the light of the recent announcement of the discovery of the potential biosignature phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus I present an independent reanalysis of the original JCMT data to assess the statistical reliability of the detection. Two line detection methods are explored, low order polynomial fits and higher order multiple polynomial fits. It is found that, similar to other reanalyses of ALMA Venus spectra, the polynomial fitting process results in false positive detections in the JCMT spectrum. Furthermore, a non-parametric bootstrap analysis reveals that neither line detection method is able to recover a statistically significant detection. There is thus no significant evidence for phosphine absorption in the JCMT Venus spectra.

Comments: 4 pages, 5 figures. Submitted to MNRAS

Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)

Cite as: arXiv:2010.15188 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2010.15188v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)

Submission history

From: Mark Thompson 

[v1] Wed, 28 Oct 2020 19:16:17 UTC (251 KB)

https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.15188

Astrobiology