Venusian Life?

[Souper]

Does Venus harbor life in its atmosphere? Or are there small, extremely durable bacteria (or possibly animals) capable of withstanding the harsh environment?

Which would be more likely?

[lajoswinkler]

Nothing can live on the surface. Clouds, highly unlikely. Solvent content is very, very low. Even then, it would have to come from the surface, as there can not be abiogenesis in a gaseous medium.

[Ralathon]

Why are you asking the question if you think you already know the answer?

As far as we know there is no life in the venusian atmosphere. Spectrographs show no signs of complex molecules in the upper atmosphere and the high temperatures near the surface will render it sterile. You could argue that the lifeforms could be based on different chemical processes, but that's like arguing that there could be a dragon in your shed if it was invisible.

If you have any proof of such lifeforms I'm more than willing to examine the evidence, but for now Venus gets a stamp of "dead" from me.

[stupid_chris]

Alright, this thread doesn't even have one page and already we had to do some cleaning. Mind to everyone to keep it sane in here? Next time we'll just go ahead and close it, so no troublemaking please.

[Dispatcher]

I vote for extremophiles in the upper atmosphere.

[KerikBalm]

I vote for sterile due to an extremem lack of smaller MW molecules in the atmosphere

[RuBisCO]

Well sure there could be life living in the clouds:

1. We still don't know what the unknown ultraviolet absorber is.

2. There is a lot of evidence the clouds are made of a lot more then just sulfates, more then #1. Venera's strange chlorine levels when it samples cloud particles to determine their composition, the different types of particle sizes and profiles, etc.

3. Venus's sulfur cycles could support some kind of sulfur feeding organism, like the ones in deep see hydrothermal vents and volcanic cesspools, many of which are acidophiles (although it questionable if anything could evolve to live in concentrated sulfuric acid) such an organisms could take sunlight and crack H2SO4 to H2O and SO3, could take CO2 or CO and SH2 to make biomass and SO2, or what ever, the detected levels of CO, SH2, and even oxygen in venus's atmosphere make for conditions that could hypothetically support the growth of microbial life (assuming it can survive the acid).

There could even be life on venus's surface, just not life as we know it, something inorganic and barely more probable than unicorns and spaghetti monsters.

[KerikBalm]

Thermodyanmic atmosphere escape means that H2O will be lost from Venus's atmosphere, I'd guess SH2 would be as well.

Its just not happening

[RuBisCO]

Thermodyanmic atmosphere escape means that H2O will be lost from Venus's atmosphere, I'd guess SH2 would be as well.

Its just not happening

Very VERY slowly, over billions of years, hence why Venus has so little water today, hence why its detiruium ratio is absurdely high.

[NERVAfan]

There is very little water vapor in Venus' atmosphere (~20 ppm) which would probably mean very few if any water droplets - I think that's the main problem for microbial life in the clouds.