Microbes In Jupiter's Clouds

[Voyager275]

Does anybody think that microbes might exist in the upper cloud layers? I personally don't think so because the hostility of the atmosphere but what do you think?

[HoloYolo]

It's a possibility. If NASA sends a plane to fly around the atmosphere to see if they're there would be a great discovery. I'd love to have other life in the solar system. But there's one problem. Where did they come from? They (most likely) have to have a starting point somewhere, like life here did.

[MinimumSky5]

Kaboom hit the nail on the head, Jupiter has enough energy in its atmosphere, and enough water, for life, the difficulty is that there really isn't enough complex carbon chemicals in the atmosphere to get life started, as they likely all settled deeper down, nearer the core.

[windows_x_seven]

NASA was planning to send a probe to Europa, wasn't it? There's liquid water there.

[lajoswinkler]

No. Life needs liquid medium to start in. There are no such things there. That's the first thing. Other than that, choice of chemical compounds is very limited. So, no.

[windows_x_seven]

No. Life needs liquid medium to start in. There are no such things there. That's the first thing. Other than that, choice of chemical compounds is very limited. So, no.

Life as we know it, to be exact. We haven't found life elsewhere to know how different it can be, so yeah.

[lajoswinkler]

Life as we know it, to be exact. We haven't found life elsewhere to know how different it can be, so yeah.

No. Life.

This has to do with physics and biochemistry, not biology. Life can not start in gases.

[MoeKitsune]

That escalated quickly.

[smjjames]

Theres water droplets in those clouds though, aren't there?

[HoloYolo]

Theres water droplets in those clouds though, aren't there?

Yes! You're right.

[Accelerando]

Unless you're talking a hot Jupiter at thousands of degrees "surface" temperature I'd assume you would have liquid vapors of some chemical or other. While it's true that heavier chemicals may tend to sink toward the core, the Jovian's upper atmosphere isn't separated by a solid boundary from the internal layers; so I also assume it's at least possible that convection would be able to uplift heavy carbon chemicals from the deep interior. Perhaps something like hotspots occurs on Jupiter, where organic chemicals are introduced to the high atmosphere by "eruptions" of hot gas/vapor/dust/goop?

[baggers]

This thread start another question: how to see "in" the Jupiter's "clouds and liquids"?

What sort of probe do we need for that? Will it be still able to communicate with "surface" pass a few meters in the "clouds"?

In one word: how to "explore" Jupiter?

[AngelLestat]

No. Life.

This has to do with physics and biochemistry, not biology. Life can not start in gases.

As Win7 said: "life as we know it", if you claim to know how all the life in the universe starts, even without a clear definition of "live" because we know only 1 case and we are not sure how it started, then.. you are dumb.

This is equal to said that earth was the center of everything in previous times. Only ignorance can allow such claims.

Yeah.. is unlikely.. but who knows!

Edited July 13, 2015 by AngelLestat

[lajoswinkler]

Theres water droplets in those clouds though, aren't there?

No, there are tiny solid crystals way up high in the atmosphere. Ammonium sulfide, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, three dominant compounds in shifting equilibrium, both in the sense of chemical reaction and phase change from gas to solid. There are other compounds, too, but these three are most obvious.

Down below hydrogen and helium are getting more and more dense and hot, gradually turning from gas to supercritical fluid. No phase boundary.

Unless you're talking a hot Jupiter at thousands of degrees "surface" temperature I'd assume you would have liquid vapors of some chemical or other. While it's true that heavier chemicals may tend to sink toward the core, the Jovian's upper atmosphere isn't separated by a solid boundary from the internal layers; so I also assume it's at least possible that convection would be able to uplift heavy carbon chemicals from the deep interior. Perhaps something like hotspots occurs on Jupiter, where organic chemicals are introduced to the high atmosphere by "eruptions" of hot gas/vapor/dust/goop?

Jupiter goes incredibly hot incredibly fast in its depths, so we can't expect anything complex coming up from its depths, if it comes at all.

This thread start another question: how to see "in" the Jupiter's "clouds and liquids"?

What sort of probe do we need for that? Will it be still able to communicate with "surface" pass a few meters in the "clouds"?

In one word: how to "explore" Jupiter?

You throw a probe built like a batysphere, encased in a tough reentry shield, into the planet. It slows down (incredible, enormous decelleration), deploys a parachute and takes measurements as it falls down.

As Win7 said: "life as we know it", if you claim to know how all the life in the universe starts, even without a clear definition of "live" because we know only 1 case and we are not sure how it started, then.. you are dumb.

This is equal to said that earth was the center of everything in previous times. Only ignorance can allow such claims.

Yeah.. is unlikely.. but who knows!

If you knew anything about these things, you'd never stick to the classical ignorant "life as we know it". It's not about biology. It's about basic chemical/physical laws. Life can not form in gases. Period. End of discussion.

[NFUN]

As Win7 said: "life as we know it", if you claim to know how all the life in the universe starts (even without a clear definition of "live" because we know only 1 case) then.. you are dumb.

This is equal to said that earth was the center of everything in previous times. Only ignorance can allow such claims.

Yeah.. is unlikely.. but who knows!

There is not really such a thing as scientific certainty, but this comes close. The distinguishing feature of gases is that there are almost no intermolecular forces. Gas molecules really don't care to be by one another, and any collisions between molecules are elastic and don't lead towards sticking together physically. Large, complex molecules can form, but due to Van der Waals forces and potential polarity, these molecules will probably not be gases, and in any case, groups of molecules working in tandem as anything but the simplest self-replicating proto-life is impossible. This isn't the same statement as "life cannot begin in Jupiter", as some liquids might exist in the atmosphere, but short of extraordinary chemistry we have not yet encountered nor predicted, life shouldn't be able to begin between gases.

//solid chemistry tends to be too slow or violent, but that's a different story

[Shpaget]

Period. End of discussion.

You make a good point there. You should have explained it this way earlier.

Now if only you could expand on it a bit further. I'm slightly on the slow and dull side of the knife drawer.

[Darnok]

You are not first person who is thinking about life on Jupiter

[AngelLestat]

No. Life needs liquid medium to start in. There are no such things there. That's the first thing. Other than that, choice of chemical compounds is very limited. So, no.

Please, search an astrobiologics making the same dumb claim, also life can come from asteroids and then reach the clouds, we dont even know where life was generated for first time in earth.

Second.. There are water droplets, and those can be like sea for microbes. Then you have a mixture of hydrogen, ammonia, methane and a host of various organic compounds, all the things that "life as we know it" needs.

Life can survive without water, then reborn when in enters in touch again.

If you knew anything about these things, you'd never stick to the classical ignorant "life as we know it". It's not about biology. It's about basic chemical/physical laws. Life can not form in gases. Period. End of discussion.

Yeah, the discussion is over for you, there is no way you can add any logic to your words.

The best quality of scientist, which allow them to learn and move forward, is to recognize their ignorance.

People who does not do this, are the most ignorant people in the world.

"Being a scientist requires having faith in uncertainty, finding pleasure in mystery, and learning to cultivate doubt. There is no surer way to screw up an experiment than to be certain of its outcome."

Learn to speak properly:

These are exactly the first results in google with "life jupiter clouds":

http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/Life/J_environment.html

http://www.universetoday.com/15134/is-there-life-on-jupiter/

http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,895649,00.html

https://astrobioloblog.wordpress.com/2011/04/19/life-in-our-solar-system-%E2%80%93-jupiter/

http://www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/eng/publications/nrc_pubs/tapping/2014/2014_04_03.html

You can see that some pages reach the conclusion that life is unlikely and some others said that is possible.

But if their conclusion is to show negatives, they use "life as we understand it" or "life as we know it".

It seems that is very hard to find someone who does not understand the fact that we know almost NOTHING about life yet.

There is not really such a thing as scientific certainty, but this comes close. The distinguishing feature of gases is that there are almost no intermolecular forces. Gas molecules really don't care to be by one another, and any collisions between molecules are elastic and don't lead towards sticking together physically. Large, complex molecules can form, but due to Van der Waals forces and potential polarity, these molecules will probably not be gases, and in any case, groups of molecules working in tandem as anything but the simplest self-replicating proto-life is impossible. This isn't the same statement as "life cannot begin in Jupiter", as some liquids might exist in the atmosphere, but short of extraordinary chemistry we have not yet encountered nor predicted, life shouldn't be able to begin between gases.

//solid chemistry tends to be too slow or violent, but that's a different story

To not write so much, read above.

We are talking about life in jupiter clouds, but you are changing the subject to "life started in pure gases without liquid or particles", which is impossible to not find liquids or solids in atmospheres. Also pure gases can form solids or liquids too under certain conditions.

Life is about replicators. If you have a replicator who adds certain errors and code some info in each process, you have evolution.

We dont have ANY idea of all possible replicators which under certain enviroment can create complex or simple life analogous to what we know it.

Culture expresions are replicators, with its base unit meme. software or instructions can be replicators inside a computer, we can have different kind of replicators in chemistry under extreme (for us) conditions, we know almost nothing on chemistry under high pressures or heat or lack of it. How many different bonds can appear? Complex effect may arise as super conductors, super fluidity, or different states of matter.

Of course life as we know it is impossible to survive under high temperatures, but if is base on bonds that only happen at those temperatures, then what is the problem?

If it would be an intelligent artificial (with our same level of understand it) but without any example of life base on ADN.

It would not be able to imagine that life "as we know it" can exist.

[KerikBalm]

First, none of those citations are academic or really scientific... its all layman's popsci type articles....

Second, they address the possiblity of life existing, not forming there.

Third, they are all highly speculative, and just looking at the most basic requirements can be met, before going further into detail and more complicated requirements.

They pretty much all conclude likely failure of the most basic conditions.

From your own citation (the astrobio blog):

So how likely is this exotic floating alien ecosystem?

Sadly, pretty unlikely. Firstly, although Jupiter’s atmosphere contains some water, it probably doesn’t have much, and what water it does have probably exists deep within Jupiter’s atmosphere, likely at a depth that would be lethal to life.

Secondly, Jupiter’s atmosphere is far from tranquil. If you look at a picture of Jupiter you see horizontal bands of colours, these are clouds of gas, mostly ammonia, flowing horizontally in Jupiter’s atmosphere at different speeds. The lighter ones, usually a white colour, are called zones, and are regions of Jupiter’s atmosphere that are rising, while the darker clouds, usually orange to red are called belts and are areas in Jupiter’s atmosphere that are descending. Life living in Jupiter’s atmosphere would likely be at the mercy of these vertical atmospheric flows, and organisms would probably find themselves being pulled down to depths with a temperature and pressure that would destroy organic molecules.

Jupiter also has powerful horizontal flows between its bands and belts called jets, which achieve speeds up to 100 meters per second (360 km per hour). As these flows interact with neighbouring jets huge vortices can form (like cyclones on Earth), the largest of which is called the Great Red Spot, which has been known to exist continuously for almost 350 years and is so large it could swallow two to three Earths. If life could avoid the deadly vertical currents, I’m pretty sure the horizontal jets would be equally as hazardous.

From another

The region where it is 32 degrees sounds OK, but where the temperature is 32 degrees, the pressure is about the same as it would be if you were a couple miles below the sea on Earth. This region is probably within Jupiter's liquid region. The air of Jupiter is definitely a region that is well below freezing temperatures!

In the atmosphere there are at least three known cloud decks of ammonia, ammonia-combined-with-sulfur, and water, perhaps even made of huge droplets.

There is energy in the environment from lightning, ultraviolet light, and charged particles.

Jupiter's interior possesses an environment of pressures as great as three million times the sea-level pressure on earth, and temperatures as high as 10,000 degrees.

Overall, this environment sounds very unfriendly to life as we know it on earth.

And another thing you cited:

Is there life on Jupiter? While there have been no samples taken that could test for microscopic life on the planet, there is quite a bit of compelling evidence that shows there is no possible way for life as we know it to exist anywhere on the planet. Try this link for one scientist’s take on finding life in the cosmos.

First, let’s look at the conditions on Jupiter that preclude the existence of life. The planet is a gas giant composed mainly of hydrogen and helium. There is virtually no water to support known life forms. The planet does not have a solid surface for life to develop anywhere except as a floating microscopic organism.

Free floating organisms could only exist at the very tops of the clouds due to atmospheric pressure that is progressively more intense than anything seen on Earth. While the cloud tops could harbor life that is resistant to solar radiation, the atmosphere is in constant chaos. Convection forces the lower atmosphere upwards and colder areas of the atmosphere are constantly being sucked closer to the core. The churning would eventually expose any organisms to the extreme pressures nearer the core, thus killing any that may develop.

Should an organism find a way to resist atmospheric pressure that reaches 1,000 times what it is here on Earth, there are the temperatures close to the planet’s core. Gravitational compression has heated areas near the core to over 10,000 degrees Celsius. It is so hot in some areas that hydrogen is in a liquid metallic state. While organisms on Earth live in areas near volcanoes, the temperatures there do not approach Jovian levels.

Jupiter is completely inhospitable to life as we understand it, but its moon Europa has been proposed as a possible habitable zone. It is thought to have a large amount of water ice on its surface. Some of which covers a proposed ocean of water slush. The conditions under the water ice could be harboring microscopic life according to some scientists.

The question â€Âis there life on Jupiter†seems pretty well decided. There is no way that life as we understand it could exist on the gas giant.

In considering the possibility of life on earth's planetary neighbors, astronomers have regularly passed up that distant giant Jupiter (1,312 times larger than earth). Jupiter drifts in a suffocating yellow cloud of ammonia and methane, 483 million miles from the sun, and scientists have reached the conclusion that the temperature of its cloud layer is a deathly cold â€â€207° F. Its shroud is believed by some to conceal an ice layer 17,000 miles thick.

( there is a "but", but the rest of the article is behind a paywall, and it already points to the consensus -> no life, with fringe speculation that goes against the consensus)

This isn't the first time I've caught people using references that say they opposite of what they are trying to argue... I wonder, the last time I did... was it you as well?

Edited July 13, 2015 by KerikBalm

[MinimumSky5]

Water is needed to act as a solvent, i.e. something to suspend organic molecules in to enable reactions to take place. Gases don't work for two reasons

One, they are too thinly spread, the chance of two molecules in a gas colliding, let alone reacting, is much lower than water due to the density difference.

Two, in liquids, molecules tend to dissolve into invidual molecules, while in gases, they normally stick together in dust grains. This means that there is a vastly reduced surface area for chemistry to take place, and not much scope for life to develop.

Also, Lajoswinker, I agree with what you were trying to say but not the way you tried to say it, rather than explaining why you thought you were right, you just stated your opinion and tried to end the argument, remember, as we have no samples of the jovian atmosphere we cannot definitively rule out life, just state how unlikely it is.

Edited July 13, 2015 by MinimumSky5

[lajoswinkler]

Thing is, it's not the first time same people are beating this dead horse. There are certain individuals here who like to push their wishful thinking as scientific theories, so people get tired of writing the same things all over again.

Astrobiology is something I endorse and I really don't talk out of my ass. These are the basics. Basics of chemical reactions. In gas phases it's physically impossible to have organized systems clumped up together, forming boundaries with equilibriums and solvated particles crawling around through the crowd.

[RAINCRAFTER]

I wish life in the clouds for those microbes was possible, the pressure on the surface is too high.

[lajoswinkler]

I wish life in the clouds for those microbes was possible, the pressure on the surface is too high.

There is no surface on Jupiter. If you mean by surface of clouds, check these two graphs. First one is less detailed, second one focuses on the cloud layer.

[Camacha]

No. Life.

Absolute statements require absolute proof. Since our best scientists do not have this proof when it comes to life and its requirements, only best guesses, I am fairly sure you do not have proof either

[magnemoe]

Absolute statements require absolute proof. Since our best scientists do not have this proof when it comes to life and its requirements, only best guesses, I am fairly sure you do not have proof either

No we don't know how life started, we also don't know all other alternatives for life, we know lots of the requirements as in that will not work.

You are likely to need an pretty concentrated soup of complex molecules for it. An drying puddle with mud could easy set this up. Far harder in an gas giant.

Now if microbes could survive in the atmosphere life could have come from other planets, you would however probably need an sizable rock to survive reentry I think.