Life on Venus?

[Gargamel]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-space-exploration-venus/potential-sign-of-alien-life-detected-on-inhospitable-venus-idUSKBN2652GO

Well, now there's a really good reason to send a floating mission to the clouds there. 

 

[Guest]

Someone beat me to it Dangit!

Really the only way to confirm is via spacecraft. May make one of the four NASA probes currently in review chosen.

[Commodore_32]

1 minute ago, The Doodling Astronaut said:

May make one of the four NASA probes currently in review chosen.

Oh I would love to see it!

[Guest]

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-selects-four-possible-missions-to-study-the-secrets-of-the-solar-system'

This discovery may just make DAVINCHI+ chosen. The team might be very excited to be the team to discover aliens!

Kinda crazy to think... that we once explored Venus heavily and said there must be no life there... I was taught there was no way at all Venus would have life in school.

Edit:

https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2020/pdf/2599.pdf

Edited September 14, 2020 by Guest

[Guest]

 

[kerbiloid]

Do the Venusians and the Martians distribute, who produces methane and who produces phosphine?

Or somebody wants a Venus research funding?

[Guest]

1 minute ago, kerbiloid said:

Do the Venusians and the Martians distribute, who produces methane and who produces phosphine?

Or somebody wants a Venus research funding?

Phosphine tho in the amounts they are seeing isn't something you see without bacteria

Methane on the other hand could be produced by bacteria on Mars but could also be a geological event happening

[kerbiloid]

3 minutes ago, The Doodling Astronaut said:

Phosphine tho in the amounts they are seeing isn't something you see without bacteria

Methane on the other hand could be produced by bacteria on Mars but could also be a geological event happening

But where is the Venusian bacterial methane then?

[KSK]

Bah - might have known I'd be ninjaed. Just finished listening to the press conference - really interesting stuff.

They're being understandably cagey about claiming detection of life - not least because the amount of sulphuric acid in Venus' atmosphere makes it very unlikely that anything resembling terrestrial organisms could survive. On the other hand, they've eliminated all the non-biological routes to producing phosphine - their models are falling short there by several orders of magnitude.

So, as somebody pointed out on Twitter (I forget who, sorry), we've got novel chemistry, unexplained spectroscopy or possible life happening here, all of which are pretty interesting!

Edited September 14, 2020 by KSK

[kerbiloid]

6 minutes ago, KSK said:

On the other hand, they've eliminated all the non-biological routes to producing phosphine - their models are falling short there by several orders of magnitude.

So, either a life lives, or the models are wrong. I vote for the former!

P.S.
Is that NASA poll about the future researches still active?

Edited September 14, 2020 by kerbiloid

[KSK]

1 minute ago, kerbiloid said:

So, either a life lives, or the models are wrong. I vote for the former!

OK, I should probably correct myself. They've eliminated all the non-biological routes using chemistry that they're aware of.   That's not ruling out unknown chemistry but it's hard to say much about that, it being unknown and all.

[Guest]

Honestly there have been too many false claims in the past where I don't want to get too excited

I like how all the non science people hearing this think it's some kind of animal 

It's bacteria if it is, or some kind of extremophile

[Dr. Kerbal]

Venus may have life. We have found life on earth in crazy places; volcanoes, nuclear reactor, anartica, and more!

Edited September 14, 2020 by Dr. Kerbal
m

[sevenperforce]

The cool thing, I think, is that this is the most likely way of finding life on another planet. We would see novel chemistry first.

[coyotesfrontier]

Bizarrely, the announcement seemed to have been predicted in a 4chan thread last Friday. I can't post the thread here as 4chan is very much a NSFW site, but I can DM anyone who wants to see it.

[sevenperforce]

4 minutes ago, coyotesfrontier said:

Bizarrely, the announcement seemed to have been predicted in a 4chan thread last Friday. I can't post the thread here as 4chan is very much a NSFW site, but I can DM anyone who wants to see it.

It was leaked.

[coyotesfrontier]

3 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

It was leaked.

Yeah, that's it. Probably shouldn't have posted it, I should have thought about it more.

Edited September 14, 2020 by coyotesfrontier

[Guest]

I'm being reminded of a certain thread where I made some bold claims about life in extreme conditions, and quite a few people reacted with disbelief.  I can't say that I expected that, but I can say that given what we know, the idea is plausible. That said, if this is true, then we're in for some really weird stuff. Extremophiles on Earth are bizarre enough, but Venus? 

TBH, given those results, whatever's causing them would be pretty weird whether it's really life or not. Oh, well, it's an exciting time to be in biophysics.  I'm currently specializing towards things that happen in humans, but if they really find extraplanetary life I think I'll switch.  

[magnemoe]

2 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

The cool thing, I think, is that this is the most likely way of finding life on another planet. We would see novel chemistry first.

That has been true for some time as in exo planets. 
Helium was first identified on the sun  
Now its that star with trans uranium elements https://www.newscientist.com/article/2125615-oddball-star-could-be-home-to-long-sought-superheavy-elements/ is much weirder
 

[sevenperforce]

6 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

That has been true for some time as in exo planets. 
Helium was first identified on the sun  
Now its that star with trans uranium elements https://www.newscientist.com/article/2125615-oddball-star-could-be-home-to-long-sought-superheavy-elements/ is much weirder
 

I remember one of my first actual upper-level physics lab projects was rediscovering the absorption lines in the stellar spectrum.

[Guest]

 

[coyotesfrontier]

Can anyone here estimate the probability that this turns out to be correct, and there actually is life on Venus?

[tater]

[sevenperforce]

12 minutes ago, coyotesfrontier said:

Can anyone here estimate the probability that this turns out to be correct, and there actually is life on Venus?

Yes, I can make the estimate. It's 50-50.

Error bars on that estimate are rather large, though.

[Guest]

We know phosphine can be naturally produced in high temperatures, this happens on Jupiter, for instance. What got people so excited is that Venus is hot, but not that hot. Either there's some place in there where there's a 500K+ hotspot, or some other process is at work here. This could be geochemistry, but one thing life does is produce molecules that are typically difficult to make otherwise. 

This actually got me thinking. We know terrestrial life can make phosphine, and that there are species that could survive in the atmosphere of Venus. Were the Venera probes decontaminated? I'm not sure if Soviets had an equivalent to Planetary Protection Officer at the time, and even if they did, they knew Venus was a hellhole back then, and extremophiles were poorly researched at the time. I wonder, what are the chances that one of those hitched a ride in one of the parachute containers, or on a balloon probe, and, having found a perfect environment, spread far enough for its metabolites to show up? It's a rather disturbing thought.