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Signs of Life discovered on Venus and atmosphere
- _Microft 6y agoAn article on the paper has leaked and was submitted here already: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24462429 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24462429
- perihelions 6y agoHere's a long-form article about this that appears tomorrow in Earth & Sky. It was apparently published early by accident, and taken down; hence this Google cache link. https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dUWrpm80WHsJ:https://earthsky.org/%3Fp%3D343883+ https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dUWrpm...
- hutzlibu 6y ago"What did the researchers find? Simply put, a gas that shouldn’t be there, and on Earth is considered a conclusive biosignature: phosphine, a very stinky gas. As far as scientists know, there are only two ways to produce it, either artificially in a lab, or by certain kinds of microbes that live in oxygen-free environments. Since it is rather unlikely there any alien labs on Venus, that leaves microbes." Or it reveals, that we still don't really know what is going on on venus, which chaotic atmosphere and vulcanic activity might very well result in the specific "lab conditions" to create phosphine. So, it is a very interesting find, worth investigating, but I just for the existence of a gas, I would not shout "proof of alien life", yet.
- avmich 6y agoInteresting. > As far as scientists know, there are only two ways to produce it, either artificially in a lab, or by certain kinds of microbes that live in oxygen-free environments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphine Philippe Gengembre (1764–1838), a student of Lavoisier, first obtained phosphine in 1783 by heating phosphorus in an aqueous solution of potash (potassium carbonate).[4][5]
- heavenlyblue 6y agoSo you can obtain it without microbes?
- saberdancer 6y agoYes, the article was clear on that. There are methods to produce it "naturally" or in a lab, but no explanation fits the amount of gas they have detected. So either they do not understand conditions on Venus, there is a new method to produce it or there is a microbe producing it.
- throwaway316943 6y agoAnd how do you propose to obtain elemental phosphorus in the atmosphere of Venus? As a side note, phosphorus is actually named after Venus the morning star, light bearer, etc because it is highly reactive and glows slightly in the presence of oxygen.
- gus_massa 6y ago> And how do you propose to obtain elemental phosphorus in the atmosphere of Venus? The second preparation method in Wikipedia looks more plausible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphine#Laboratory_routes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphine#Laboratory_routes > 4 H3PO3 → PH3 + 3 H3PO4 > Phosphine evolution occurs around 200 °C (400°F). But I only have a Chemistry specialization in my secondary school and I am not an astrogeologer.
- perl4ever 6y agoIs it possible a previous space probe seeded the atmosphere though? For example, did the Soviets sterilize all the Venera probes perfectly?
- felipemnoa 6y ago>>Is it possible a previous space probe seeded the atmosphere though? Even if this were the case, it would still be quite amazing.
- hutzlibu 6y agoHell yeah, a microbe released on Venus atmosphere decades ago and has not only survived, but produces already a measurable atmospheric effect? That would be a amazing sensation. Terraforming would then be much, much easier, than expected. But I doubt it.
- bsder 6y agoAn Earth microbe evolving to be suddenly Venus-adjusted would possibly be more stunning than just "life evolved on Venus".
- gremlinsinc 6y agoI disagree, close in proximity to 'stunning', however, finding true unique life that originated on a planet by itself organically goes a long way towards proving/disproving the fermi paradox. I think it was maybe Carl Sagan who said (something like): if we find life in our solar system it's probably game over for us, as it means the great filter is likely ahead of us, not behind us. Though, you can take one look at the world right now, and not see how easy it would be to just destroy it if we aren't careful (and we're not being careful).
- thechao 6y agoI agree with Nick Lane: the great filter is likely to be the Eukaryotic event.
- andrewflnr 6y agoSo if they eat phosphate minerals on earth, what are they eating way up in Venus's atmosphere?
- Koshkin 6y agoVenus’ atmosphere is probably richer in elements than Earth’s crust...
- wumms 6y agoGoogle cache link down now. Still cached here: https://archive.is/L7MT1#selection-1846.0-1846.1 https://archive.is/L7MT1#selection-1846.0-1846.1
- _Microft 6y agoIf this were true and if abiogenesis had been independent from life on Earth, we could basically assume that it is certain that life arises on planets with suitable conditions (as they were once in the history of Venus). In this case, the universe basically must teem with life in one form or another. These might be the biggest ifs one could imagine but I'm really excited for the follow-ups... (Cross-posted from another thread, as the other doesn't seem to gain traction)
- umvi 6y agoSeems more likely to me that if there is life on Venus, it was probably carried there from Earth at some point and probably has DNA/RNA base just like Earth life. Would be very interested if it was life with a completely different mechanism for reproduction.
- doctor_eval 6y agoAgreed, except that there is no reason that it had to go from Earth to Venus. Venus may have been habitable until 750 MYA.
- stupendousyappi 6y agoIndeed. All else being equal, I'd expect evolution to progress faster in hotter environments with more solar radiation. I wouldn't be surprised if Venusian microorganisms were more advanced, adaptable and capable of surviving an interplanetary journey than Earth ones two billion years ago.
- doctor_eval 6y agoI like to think that if we could dig beneath the surface we’ll find the remnants of an underground civilisation there... sort of like the martians from Broken Angels, but on Venus.
- saberdancer 6y agoIf this is true, I expect several missions to launch ASAP to try and test this hypothesis. If we could prove abiogenesis separate from Earth we will have good proof that life should be abundant. Very exciting news, I'm hoping that it is proof of life as that will give increase interest and funding for space exploration.
- tectonic 6y agoOn the other hand, we may have instead found evidence of a new abiotic form of phosphine synthesis— I expect scientists will be working hard to propose non-biological processes that could explain these results. I also expect some new Venus probes real soon now. This definitely could be the result of an unknown abiotic process. It also definitely could be evidence of life. Some papers to check out: - https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.05224 https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.05224 - https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/ast.2017.1783 https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/ast.2017.1783 For 3 billion years, ending about 750 million years ago, Venus was likely hospitable, leaving the tantalizing possibility that we’ve detected the last vestiges of an ancient ecosystem. Self-promotion: we'll cover this in-depth in Orbital Index (https://orbitalindex.com https://orbitalindex.com) this week.
- perihelions 6y ago"leaving the tantalizing possibility that we’ve detected the last vestiges of an ancient ecosystem." According to the paper in your first link [0], PH3 gets destroyed by ultraviolet light-related chemistry, and so has a short lifetime in planetary atmospheres (section 2.3 on page 7, though that's specific to Earth's atmosphere). I assume this means if they've detected phosphine, there must be an ongoing process generating or replenishing it. [0] https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.05224 https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.05224
- tectonic 6y agoYes, these present microbes would be ones that managed to evolve to live in the atmosphere after the surface was no longer habitable.
- perihelions 6y agoThat makes sense! I misunderstood your comment.
- mNovak 6y agoPerhaps possible Venus' very thick atmosphere shielded it from UV? Or a large pocket of it was recently released due to gelogic activity. Just spitballing, I don't know enough about phosphine chem to know if that's feasible.
- emerged 6y agoWhat's the confidence level that the detection of phosphine is not some sort of false positive? I read the majority of the google cache and that aspect seemed to be glossed over.
- saberdancer 6y agoI'm pretty sure this was first thing they checked for. Having a different observatory confirm the same results helps as well.
- Tossrock 6y agoThey used two different observatories (James Clerk Maxwell Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array) to confirm the signal. The chances of both being wrong in the exact same way is very low.
- jml7c5 6y agoThat suggests the instruments aren't faulty, but does not preclude systematic error.
- stevespang 6y agoThis should be flagged, Brian has no credentials to be publishing this . . .
- deanclatworthy 6y agoCan someone explain to me how we can use a telescope to observe for the presence of Phosphine?
- _Microft 6y agoThey collect light, split it into its colors and check for certain colors being more or less present or absent. This is a so called spectrum and different atoms, ions and molecules have a characteristic pattern there. Here is what this looks like when doing this with light of the sun: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraunhofer_lines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraunhofer_lines
- raducu 6y agoAnd why haven't we checked this before on Venus?
- saberdancer 6y agoI'm sure it has been checked. This effect is not strong and they probably needed to "aim" for a specific part of Venus. Also newer telescopes and data analysis methods may be able to see the effect when before it would be lost in the noise.
- TheGallopedHigh 6y agoCould be a number of reasons. Most likely of which could be technological.
- tannhauser23 6y agoFrom the article: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dUWrpm80WHsJ:https://earthsky.org/%3Fp%3D343883+ https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dUWrpm... "This was an experiment made out of pure curiosity, really, taking advantage of JCMT’s powerful technology, and thinking about future instruments. I thought we’d just be able to rule out extreme scenarios, like the clouds being stuffed full of organisms. When we got the first hints of phosphine in Venus’ spectrum, it was a shock!"
- dvh 6y agoPhosphine was also found on jupiter and saturn: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/253319719_Ammonia_and_Phosphine_on_Jupiter_and_Saturn https://www.researchgate.net/publication/253319719_Ammonia_a... Also there is no water on venus.
- callahad 6y agoThe video explainer linked from the EarthSky article mentioned this, clarifying that there's no known natural and abiotic means of producing phosphine on rocky planets. Apparently gas giants can crank out phosphine without it being indicative of life.
- stupendousyappi 6y agoAmmonia has been proposed as an alternative solvent for life.
- rishav_sharan 6y agoOk. I am hyped. I had always been fairly obsessed with Venus and any news about possible biological processes there (though very unlikely) is welcome to my nerdy ears. Venus has a zone above the clouds where the atmosphere is not that cruel and the temperature livable. There is always the chance of airborne microorganisms living in the oasis layer above the hell that is the near-surface of Venus.
- messe 6y ago> Venus has a zone above the clouds where the atmosphere is not that cruel and the temperature livable. There is always the chance of airborne microorganisms living in the oasis layer above the hell that is the near-surface of Venus. Just to add to this, it's a similar temperature and pressure to earth, but the main gas is CO2. In other words, almost ideal for anaerobic organisms (bar the absence of water), which are the kind that generate phosphene, i.e. the biosignature that was detected.
- eutropia 6y agoPhosphine found exactly in the "habitable temperature" cloud range unexplainable by all current abiotic models, which meshes up with other observations of "unknown absorbers" in the same cloud range, which researchers have modeled to be particles about the size of bacteria. holy shit.
- robterrell 6y ago...ironic to discover life on another planet just as we're hitting the Great Filter here.
- ithkuil 6y ago... ironic to discover Greatly Filtered life on another planet
- jdmoreira 6y agoare we really? Could you explain exactly what you believe the great filter to be?
- vermilingua 6y agoTake your pick: climate change, nuclear holocaust, Kessler syndrome, we’re headed for a bunch of great filters with nobody hitting the brakes.
- ars 6y agoYou forgot the cell phone. No one is ever bored anymore, and all those serendipitous discoveries no longer happen. When was the last time you heard of a real genius? Or something genuinely new, rather than just slightly better than what came before it?
- greesil 6y agoHow about a reusable rocket ship?
- Santosh83 6y agoThe video says phosphine is also produced at hellish pressures in the depths of planets like Jupiter. So how likely is it that it is produced at hellish depths in Venus and then spat out into the atmosphere by active volcanism?
- saberdancer 6y agoVenus is a rocky planet, it doesn't have hellish depths like a gas giant does. The researches have no credible explanation how those quantities of phosphine can be produced on a rocky planet.
- jvanderbot 6y agoVenus has extreme heat and pressure at its surface. The temperature is around 500C, and the pressure is nearly 100 Bar (about the pressure at 3000ft depth). That is indeed hellish, and this is indeed a good question.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sedatk 6y agoThe locations this was observed was more Earthlike parts of Venus in terms of pressure and temperature according to the article.
- jvanderbot 6y agoA chemical formed in one place can be transported to other places, especially in a well-stirred environment like the Venusian atmosphere.
- saberdancer 6y agoDepends on your definition of hellish. I guess Venus could be called that but it is not comparable to the pressures and temperatures that are found inside gas giants. For example Jupiter is estimated at 24000 Celsius at the core with pressures of several million bar. This is vastly different than environment on Venus and that is why they have no credible abiotic explanation for phosphine generation on Venus. My point was that Venus is not comparable to a gas giant.
- Keyframe 6y agoIf it weren't 2020, I'd cry out for the clickbait title... I still might, but discovery in itself is cool enough even without alien life form.
- layoutIfNeeded 6y agoSo, bacteria from the soviet Venera probes started to colonize the atmosphere?
- Ancapistani 6y agoI can’t imagine that enough time has passed for Earthly life to have spread as widely as the article suggests.
- perl4ever 6y agoHow long do you think a doubling time would be?
- TheOtherHobbes 6y agoDepends on the food source.
- andrewflnr 6y agoDoubtful. A microbe that thrives in an oxygenanated spacecraft hangar is probably not one that also thrives in sulfuric acid.
- kardos 6y agoSuch a microbe may have adapted to thrive in sulfuric acid. Unlikely, but it would be fascinating if it turns out to have happened that way...
- jamiek88 6y agoWe’ve been seeing these clouds of unknown reflectors for over 100 years, way before any missions.
- andrewflnr 6y agoNot absolutely impossible, but doubtful.
- sudoaza 6y agoLink to the press release redirects to login page, probably set to private. Seems legit!! https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/news/hints-life-venus https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/news/hints-life-venus
- RaoulP 6y agoAs an aside, who is this Brian Roemmele and what's his relation to the topic?
- jeffrallen 6y agoAnd why did he break the embargo? What's he got to gain from that?
- BlueTemplar 6y agoAh, the famous jungles of Venus!
- shadowgovt 6y agoWe must explore them; it is our Destiny.
- aazaa 6y agoThe thinking seems to go like this: 1. phosphine is found on earth in low-oxygen environments that harbor life (e.g., swamps) 2. abiological routes to phosphine, although known, require unusual reagents and/or elevated temperatures This 2019 article gives some background: https://news.mit.edu/2019/phosphine-aliens-stink-1218 https://news.mit.edu/2019/phosphine-aliens-stink-1218 Here's some evidence of phosphine production in a swamp: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0146638095000216 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/014663... This leaves (2), which is a bear because it states a negative. The claim that the phosphine on Venus is biological in origin requires no feasible route to the substance given the known chemistry of the planet's atmosphere. Given that Venus' atmosphere is a complex mixture held at very high temperature and pressure, the "sign" seems pretty weak here.
- Jetroid 6y agoAgreed. I think an unknown route to phosphine generation seems simpler and more likely than a biological explanation. YMMV. Occam's razor would therefore imply that this is not life.
- pdabbadabba 6y agoI think it's debatable, at best, whether Occam's razor would favor "an unknown process" over a known biological process. Especially when some research apparently has already been done, without success, to discover alternate processes. (And, by the way, the unknown process could also be biological!)
- TheDesolate0 6y agoyeah, but it's never aliens until it's aliens.
- appleiigs 6y agoWell... a biological process would be “rare” outside of earth, so if I was a betting man...
- stupendousyappi 6y agoAssuming no abiotic pathway is found, what type of mission will confirm Venusian life? I imagine that everyone will agree it's way too dangerous to bring a sample back to Earth for analysis, so I expect we'll need to send microscopes to Venus. We'll also need to send something down into the appropriate cloud layer to collect a sample. Keeping anything aloft in the atmosphere will be expensive, so I assume that they'll separate those two elements of the mission, Apollo-style. So I expect that they'll send an orbiter containing the microscopes, and then a glider that collects the sample and then fires an engine to get out of the atmosphere and rendezvous with the orbiter (a helicopter would also be possible, but I expect it will be easier to get a plane back out of the atmosphere than to launch some kind of ascent vehicle from a helicopter). If they can design the sample capture mission to preserve the atmospheric pressure, temperature, etc. they might be able to get it up for analysis with the organisms still alive.
- rsynnott 6y ago> I imagine that everyone will agree it's way too dangerous to bring a sample back to Earth for analysis There’s always the ISS.
- sireat 6y agoI'd argue that ISS is a bit too close for comfort to Earth to be analyzing extra terrestrial bacterial samples. So a moon base or more realistically something orbiting Moon would be a better candidate.
- Buttons840 6y agoPeople come and go from the ISS, just as they do from labs on earth. Is the ISS really that different?
- rsynnott 6y agoI mean, people come and go to labs holding _smallpox_. I would assume the main risk of bringing back to earth would be landing failure, but just having the thing in a room doesn't seem like a huge risk compared with what certain labs already deal with.
- scarmig 6y agoIf indeed abiotic processes couldn't have generated the phosphine and life does exist on Venus, some questions I'm pondering: 1) How can we determine whether Venusian and Terran life share a common ancestor? A seemingly clear signal would be a different genetic basis for Venusian life than DNA, but would the converse be true, or just a sign of convergent evolution? 2) How hard would it be to send a probe there that could perform a preliminary analysis of the life form? How hard would it be to bring a sample back to Earth? 3) This would be an indicator of life existing in the habitable zone of Venus' atmosphere. How should that change our estimate of the likelihood of other forms to exist on the surface of Venus? Earth extremophiles can exist at >100C, but the surface of Venus is >450C. On the other hand, there'd be a continuum which would allow evolutionary processes to work their magic. Acidity is also an issue, but the life forms in the habitable zone already be living at levels impossible for any known Earth species.
- stupendousyappi 6y agoIf the Venusian life has anything vaguely like replicating paired strands of nucleic acids, I think we have to assume a common ancestor (and I'd put my money on it coming from Venus). Even if there's no commonality whatsoever in details of the genetic code. FWIW, if we do discover life on Venus, I expect this to be the case. Regarding #2, bringing a sample back to Earth is way too dangerous. At least, I'm certain NASA will see it that way, and I doubt any other space agency has the capability to execute a sample return mission within the next 10 years without NASA assistance.
- reducesuffering 6y agoIs the extreme danger for Earth or for the life form? What is it? Is it the risk of some extreme replication?
- stupendousyappi 6y agoDanger for earth. When we introduce a species to a new environment, sometimes it dies, and sometimes it becomes an invasive species and kills a lot of other stuff. And some of those invasive species are big (like snakehead fish) and some are small (like the smallpox virus or, frankly, SARS-Cov-2). Many experts think there's a risk that an extraterrestrial microorganism could devastate some or all Earth life, given that no Earth life has had a chance to evolve defenses against it.
- biggestlou 6y agoI’m still looking for intelligent life on this planet!
- biggestlou 6y agoTough crowd
- sumedh 6y agoWhat is your definition of intelligence?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nbulka 6y agoI'm surprised no one has connected the dots yet: This was the work of Oumuamua.
- na85 6y agoBeen following this topic for a little bit now, and one thing I don't see being discussed very often is the possibility that the phosphine gas is being created by bacteria or microbes of terrestrial origin. I.e. who's to say that the lander that made planetfall a while ago wasn't contaminated with a hardy strain of bacteria?
- anonAndOn 6y agoWe know that tardigrades can survive in space and that there are Martian rocks sprinkled over the Earth. Perhaps there were some microbes blasted into Venutian orbit when the Chicxulub meteor took out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago?
- stupendousyappi 6y agoIt could have been any number of meteors over the last 4 billion years, on either planet.
- mekkkkkk 6y agoThere's a lot of talk about the great filter this, and the great filter that. Even if life is abundant, what gives you the impression that civilization level intelligence would be? Out of all the species that ever roamed the earth, only a single one has reached this point. Perhaps it's an absolutely incredible fluke or glitch in our biology that is one in a [insert astronomical number]. It's tempting to think something in the lines of "oh but if it happened here in our little shitty solar system, it can't be very special". But that's more or less the anthropic principle.
- profmonocle 6y agoThe hypothesis also makes a huge assumption: that if intelligent civilizations were common, they would be detectable by us. The radio waves emitted by our own civilization don't go that far (compared to the distance between stars) before becoming nearly indistinguishable from background noise.
- rsynnott 6y agoAlso, they’re dying. Earth is probably less noisy now that 50 years ago.
- umanwizard 6y agoWhy is that the case?
- rsynnott 6y agoAs I understand it, the most visible stuff would be TV signal and over the horizon radar. TV signals have gotten less powerful, over the horizon radar is less of a big deal than it used to be. In another 50 years, will terrestrial TV, or any high power terrestrial radio, be a thing at all?
- jodrellblank 6y agoIt’s wasteful to spend the power to broadcast up into the sky when no viewers are up there; more focused directional transmitters, more sensitive receivers which allow lower power signals, more information sent over cable and fibre optic and undersea transmission lines and point-to-point satellite, more microwave and laser links compared to spam-everywhere radio broadcasts.
- l0b0 6y ago> Research scientists […] submitted a paper to the peer-reviewed academic journal Astrology […] Someone might want to very quickly correct that to "Astrobiology". This whole presentation, of going from a tweet to a Quora Q&A obviously posted by the same person, is a bit weird.
- watersb 6y agoAutocorrect has been particularly difficult this week.
- UncleOxidant 6y agoAnd a very weird Quora at that. They posits that gravity waves keep these organisms in the atmosphere. And then goes on to mention that viruses that cause disease may be coming from space.
- dhab 6y agoprotomolecule is winning, as expected
- gdubs 6y agoSo, this is a bit “out there” but something I’ve considered for a while is: 1) NASA scientists published a paper that showed just how difficult it would be to find evidence of a past, advanced civilization on Earth. 2) There was, if I understand correctly, a window of time where Venus was potentially inhabitable. So, the idea I’ve wondered is: is it possible that Venus had, at one point, an advanced civilization that triggered a runaway greenhouse effect?
- garmaine 6y agoHard to imagine a civilization advanced enough to trigger a runaway greenhouse effect and yet not having achieved a space program with all that energy usage. EDIT: Venesian satellites would have been detected, if that's not clear.
- rsynnott 6y agoAfter 750 million years? I doubt any of ours will be detectable after that time, at least not without a very careful search (which hasn’t been done for speculative Venusian ones).
- spideymans 6y agoI’d also assume that if a Venusian civilization was capable of releasing satellites, they also likely generated an abundance of space junk which, over the course of hundreds of millions of years, would completely tear apart any trace of these satellites.
- cgriswald 6y agoIt’s be quite a bit easier to trigger a runaway greenhouse effect at 0.74 AU. In addition, besides needing a boost to maintain orbit (solar panels that function for 750 million years?) some forces have acted to slow and reverse Venus’ rotation and it is hard to imagine satellites wouldn’t be significantly affected over long time scales. A space program isn’t necessarily a natural consequence of CO2 production anyway. That might be especially true for creatures who don’t have the benefit of a moon.
- UncleOxidant 6y agoSomething doesn't add up here: This is sourced by a guy on twitter (@BrianRoemmele) who AFAICT doesn't have expertise in the area. Now go read his Quora on this: https://www.quora.com/Was-life-discovered-in-the-clouds-of-Venus-in-2020/answer/Brian-Roemmele?ch=10&share=756a32e9&srid=Pi3 https://www.quora.com/Was-life-discovered-in-the-clouds-of-V... It gets quite bizarre: "We should also not rule out far more complex life from the observations of Phosphine. It is quite possible we will observe life as large as a Whale on Earth quite happy suspended in the gravity waves of Venus." WTAF? Also, how did the video in his tweet somehow become available a day early as well as the Earth&Sky article. Something doesn't smell right here. The explanation is that the Earth & Sky article was put up early by mistake and pulled.. and this guy happened to find it. Another explanation could be that an article was written to look like an Earth & Sky article and put on a google drive... and that he got a couple of friends to make the short video on the MIT campus. Otherwise how does that video somehow appear today, a day early as well as the article?
- HuShifang 6y agoHe does seem like a bit of a "character." But maybe he had a webscraper that just happened to catch the premature post, and is just trying to self-aggrandize on a real scoop? Nasawatch [0] is saying that several sources have confirmed it to them... [0]: http://nasawatch.com/archives/2020/09/phosphine-detec.html http://nasawatch.com/archives/2020/09/phosphine-detec.html
- UncleOxidant 6y agoAnd he just happened to have a big quora write up ready? And he happened to get the video a day early too?
- HuShifang 6y agoProbably a leak from one of the embargoed reporters is more likely, if it's true. Obviously we'll find out soon. But if the Earthsky.org story a fake, he certainly did a vastly better job producing the fake than he did self aggrandizing off of it.
- civilized 6y agoBefore we get too excited, we already know phosphine is in Jupiter's atmosphere, and Jupiter is an awfully unlikely candidate for life. So the claim that it can only be produced in the lab and by microbes strikes me as already implausible, even if we don't know exactly why there's phosphine in Jupiter's atmosphere. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Jupiter#CITEREFAtreya_Mahaffy_Niemann_et_al.2003 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Jupiter#CITERE...
- sonofgod 6y agohttps://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1910/1910.05224.pdf https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1910/1910.05224.pdf talks at length about it -- the result is known to be wildly invalid for gas giants, as they have the temperatures and pressures to have viable chemical pathways to phosphene.
- civilized 6y agoYeah - the argument in the paper is a lot more nuanced than it's being represented in the media, where it's being flattened to the point of uselessness.
- tgflynn 6y agoIf life exists in Venus' atmosphere and it's carbon based shouldn't we have detected evidence of organic molecules, notably methane, by now ?
- Linked_Liszt 6y agoLooks like the article Google archive has gone down. -Image Backup: https://imgur.com/a/uiTcA4Q https://imgur.com/a/uiTcA4Q -WayBack Archive Backup: https://web.archive.org/web/20200914003530/https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dUWrpm80WHsJ:https://earthsky.org/%3Fp%3D343883+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us https://web.archive.org/web/20200914003530/https://webcache....
- tazedsoul 6y agoI shared this with my girlfriend, and she, without being phased even slightly, replied, “Can I tell you a secret? I’ve always known that Venus is alive.”
- mhh__ 6y agoIs she any good at lottery numbers?
- enchiridion 6y agoEither this guy is a crank or the world is about to change. Maybe both? https://mobile.twitter.com/brianroemmele/status/1287771307229102081?s=21 https://mobile.twitter.com/brianroemmele/status/128777130722...
- DonHopkins 6y agoIf only Julia Child were still around to show us how to safely cook up a batch of delicious phosphine. Julia Child Cooks Primordial Soup (1973) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24467695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24467695 Walter White had a quick and easy recipe (which doesn't actually work in reality): https://breakingbad.fandom.com/wiki/Phosphine_gas https://breakingbad.fandom.com/wiki/Phosphine_gas Breaking bad red phosphorous scene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9mLUB_pKQE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9mLUB_pKQE
- himinlomax 6y agoDoing a sample recovery from Mars's surface is very hard at this point. It should be much easier to do a sample recovery from Venus's high atmosphere, shouldn't it? Is there anything planned to that effect?
- G4E 6y agoI'm not an astrophysist nor biochemist, so i'm sorry if this is a dumb question, but how likely is it that we "contaminated" Venus with earth's microbiology embedded in our previous probes ?
- niemenmaa 6y agoRoyal Astronomical Society's press release will be held at "4 pm" https://twitter.com/RoyalAstroSoc/status/1305454796225351682 https://twitter.com/RoyalAstroSoc/status/1305454796225351682 Youtube stream of the press release: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IIj3e5BFp0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IIj3e5BFp0
- tikiman163 6y agoIt would be hilarious if we've been wondering why we're alone in the universe all this time just to find out we're not even the only planet in our solar system to support life.
- DonCopal 6y agoPaper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-1174-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-1174-4 PDF: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-1174-4.pdf https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-1174-4.pdf
- zrkrlc 6y agoDid anything interesting come out of the RAS' press release?