Life has been discovered on Venus, according to a Russian scientist.
An article, printed in the Solar System Research magazine, highlighted several objects said to resemble living beings, which were photographed by a Soviet landing probe in 1982.
The Venus-13 mission, which was launched in 1981 and boasted a craft and a lander, was designed to explore the surface of the planet. Its launch was followed closely by Venera-14. Both took four months to reach Venus, deploying parachutes once they had entered the atmosphere. Alongside pictures, the probes took surface samples and seismic readings.
Leonid Ksanfomaliti, a scientist at the Space Research Institute of Russia’s Academy of Sciences, has published research analysing the pictures from the probe, which he describes as a “black flap”, a “scorpion” and a “disk” that "emerge, fluctuate and disappear".
According to Ksanfomaliti, the objects change location between photographs.
"What if we forget about the current theories about the non-existence of life on Venus, let's boldly suggest that the objects' morphological features would allow us to say that they are living," the article read.
The Venusian planet sits 76 million miles from the sun and boasts a surface temperature of 460 degrees Celsius. No evidence of life on Venus has ever been found.