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On 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-biol

On 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 ago
  Yes, these present microbes would be ones that managed to evolve to live in the atmosphere after the surface was no longer habitable.
  - perihelions 6y ago
    That makes sense! I misunderstood your comment.
- mNovak 6y ago
  Perhaps 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.
  - ianai 6y ago
    If we’re seeing it’s presence through the atmosphere then it’s being irradiated by sunlight.
Tossrock 6y ago
Conveniently, BepiColumbo is already scheduled to do a flyby next month for a gravity assist en route to Mercury, with some brief atmospheric science while there. Probably impossible to alter the trajectories at this point, but it sure would be tempting to stay and do some more in depth observation...
- tectonic 6y ago
  Definitely doesn't have the delta-v or aerobraking shield necessary :)
OJFord 6y ago
> I expect scientists will be working hard to propose non-biological processes that could explain these results. (Serious question, and I don't mean 'good' or 'bad'.) Would that be a negative result, or positive? Or does the phrase have no meaning without reference to what you're looking at; so it'd be simultaneously a negative result for life on Venus, and a positive result for abiotic phosphine production processes?
- rsynnott 6y ago
  Disappointing for the biologists, exciting for the chemists or maybe geologists, I suppose.
peglasaurus 6y ago
"I expect scientists will be working hard to propose non-biological processes that could explain these results." If scientists don't attempt to explain a dramatic claim using other mundane explanations I'd be very suspicious of calling them scientists. Occam's razor is a useful tool. Be very suspicious if dramatic claims aren't tested. Otherwise I have a bridge for sale... "I also expect some new Venus probes real soon now." Maybe. You should also expect a lot more telescopes of all descriptions and varieties to be pointing at Venus. Multiple compute clusters are likely digging through old and new imaging data even as I write this.
glenstein 6y ago
>we may have instead found evidence of a new abiotic form of phosphine synthesis I think this will be the critical thing to effectively communicate publicly. Given what we know about phosphine synthesis, a subject I presume most people aren't super familiar with, how confident are we that a new abiotic process is possible? Or is it so unlikely that life is a more plausible explanation? Those aren't rhetorical questions. I wonder about the relative plausibility of one vs the other.
- nprz 6y ago
  From a co-author of the paper: > This means either this is life, or it’s some sort of physical or chemical process that we do not expect to happen on rocky planets. We really went through all possible pathways that could produce phosphine on a rocky planet. If this is not life, then our understanding of rocky planets is severely lacking. https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dUWrpm80WHsJ:https://earthsky.org/%3Fp%3D343883+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dUWrpm...
  - ericmay 6y ago
    What’s great here is that this means it’s potentially a profound and important scientific observation either way! Obviously one is a bit more profound than the other, but nevertheless.
  - monkeydreams 6y ago
    > If this is not life, then our understanding of rocky planets is severely lacking. While I would love for this to be true, ignorance requires fewer assumptions than life at any level of complexity.
    - gfodor 6y ago
      Why would it be surprising to find bacteria next door? If life is common in the universe, this would be exactly what you’d expect. And there is plenty of reason to think life is common in the universe.
elorant 6y ago
Incidentally, I just submitted the following a few hours ago: http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/phosphine-biosignature-gas-07957.html http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/phosphine-biosignature-gas...
- DennisP 6y ago
  Just so people don't miss this, it's about some scientists who spent several years looking for abiotic forms of phosphine synthesis, couldn't find any that could produce significant amounts, and concluded that phosphine is a really good biosignature.
awb 6y ago
From a quora post by the same author of the tweets: > Astronomers will think of all the ways to justify Phosphine without life and I welcome that. Please do, because we are at the end of our possibilities to show abiotic processes that can make Phosphine > there very well could be an abiotic source but that alone would be an amazing discovery. However we must deploy Occam’s Razor and suggest the simplest explanation and the evidence suggests the simple explanation is biological sources, life. Wouldn't a better announcement be "Phosphine detected in Venus atmosphere". Maybe it's compelling evidence for life, but claiming "Signs of Life Detected" seems a bit premature, no? And from the link on the author's Twitter bio: > Over the long, winding arc of his career, Brian has built and run payments and tech businesses, worked in media, including the promotion of top musicians, and explored a variety of other subjects along the way. Not exactly who I thought would be announcing the discovery of life beyond our planet.
- tannhauser23 6y ago
  Did you read the article? There's going to be a paper published tomorrow in Nature and the MIT scientists who wrote it will be doing a press conference. This Brian guy is just amplifying the news - he's not the author of the study.
  - awb 6y ago
    Yes, I read the article. The discovery does sound compelling. I'm commenting on his amplification strategy ("Signs of Life discovered on Venus") rather than just presenting the facts ("Phosphine detected in Venus atmosphere"). I prefer my science news without a hype man but the author seems to take quite the initiative on Quora: "However we must deploy Occam's Razor and suggest the simplest explanation and the evidence suggests the simple explanation is biological sources, life." https://www.quora.com/Was-life-discovered-in-the-clouds-of-Venus-in-2020/answer/Brian-Roemmele https://www.quora.com/Was-life-discovered-in-the-clouds-of-V... It's pretty sensationalized and coordinated like a PR campaign. If you watch the video on his Twitter feed, the scientists themselves seem to focus on the science and don't claim to have "discovered life on Venus", so they do seem well intentioned. And their discovery certainly does sound interesting and potentially significant.
jxcl 6y ago
I have been reading Orbital Index since October 2019, you guys do a great job, thanks so much! I wish to continue to be subscribed to your newsletter.
metalliqaz 6y ago
why is there a scrollbar on orbitalindex?
- Izkata 6y ago
  Looks like broken CSS or broken scrolljacking. If you hit "stop" before everything finishes loading, there is indeed content: * A subscription box * A big empty box with a big horizontal scrollbar * The most recent issue of the newsletter (also accessible from the archive without this trick) (with this trick it also starts with HTML and CSS dumped to the page instead of interpreted) * A link back to the archive * A second subscription box
eloff 6y ago
This is the most likely possibility, but it's tantalizing nonetheless. I wonder if lightning could produce phosphene? There if lightning on Venus in sulfuric acid clouds with a similar strength to Earth. https://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/venus-20071128.html https://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/venus-20071... On the off chance it is life, it might be a relative. Earth and Venus are close enough together for asteroid impacts to throw debris to each other. And bacteria is strangely resistant to the conditions of outer space. See the panspermia hypothesis.
alpineidyll3 6y ago
There's about eleven bajillion abiotic routes to phosphine. The authors of this paper are totally crazy-go-nuts riding the hype train. Phosphine can be made from elemental phosphorus by simple acid catalysis. The atmosphere of venus is highly acidic. Venus is so close to earth that space spectroscopy could find a bunch of actually complex molecules that would imply life, if they were there. Phosphine is literally the simplest compound of phosphorus, a common element.
- brylie 6y ago
  > Phosphine can be made from elemental phosphorus by simple acid catalysis. Can you point me to a resource that describes phosphine occurring in nature from an abiotic process? The Wikipedia article on Phosphine[1] describes an acid-based route to create Phosphine industrially, but notes that: > The acid route requires purification and pressurizing. While Venus would seemingly have the needed atmospheric pressure, what about the conditions for purification? > The most likely source is reduction of phosphate in decaying organic matter, possibly via partial reductions and disproportionations, since environmental systems do not have known reducing agents of sufficient strength to directly convert phosphate to phosphine [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphine
  - alpineidyll3 6y ago
    -Earth's atmosphere is at present heavily oxidizing and so phosphine is not common here. Phosphine will always be oxidized to phosphate (which is everywhere on earth and much of it abiotic). You can make phosphine from entirely abiotic common elements and salts literally hundreds of ways. It's almost exactly like saying how many abiotic syntheses of water (OH2) are there (all combustions for starters...) I have a PhD in chemistry from Berkeley and collaborated with nasa astrochemists. I'm not just reading wikipedia FYI ;P
    - Rooki 6y ago
      It's a shame they didn't have you on the team researching and writing this paper then. Could have saved everyone a lot of time!
jerome-jh 6y ago
Bacteria should rejoy: friends in Mars & Venus, possibly Titan!
henearkr 6y ago
The aim to publishing this paper is probably that: first of all to invite as many as possible scientists to propose new abiotic pathways that would have been overlooked. The sensationalism is probably an excellent way to pick their skepticism, so get more people to find counter-arguments.

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 ago
Yes, these present microbes would be ones that managed to evolve to live in the atmosphere after the surface was no longer habitable.
- perihelions 6y ago
  That makes sense! I misunderstood your comment.
mNovak 6y ago
Perhaps 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.
- ianai 6y ago
  If we’re seeing it’s presence through the atmosphere then it’s being irradiated by sunlight.

Tossrock 6y ago

Conveniently, BepiColumbo is already scheduled to do a flyby next month for a gravity assist en route to Mercury, with some brief atmospheric science while there. Probably impossible to alter the trajectories at this point, but it sure would be tempting to stay and do some more in depth observation...

tectonic 6y ago
Definitely doesn't have the delta-v or aerobraking shield necessary :)

OJFord 6y ago

> I expect scientists will be working hard to propose non-biological processes that could explain these results. (Serious question, and I don't mean 'good' or 'bad'.) Would that be a negative result, or positive? Or does the phrase have no meaning without reference to what you're looking at; so it'd be simultaneously a negative result for life on Venus, and a positive result for abiotic phosphine production processes?

rsynnott 6y ago
Disappointing for the biologists, exciting for the chemists or maybe geologists, I suppose.

peglasaurus 6y ago

"I expect scientists will be working hard to propose non-biological processes that could explain these results." If scientists don't attempt to explain a dramatic claim using other mundane explanations I'd be very suspicious of calling them scientists. Occam's razor is a useful tool. Be very suspicious if dramatic claims aren't tested. Otherwise I have a bridge for sale... "I also expect some new Venus probes real soon now." Maybe. You should also expect a lot more telescopes of all descriptions and varieties to be pointing at Venus. Multiple compute clusters are likely digging through old and new imaging data even as I write this.

glenstein 6y ago

>we may have instead found evidence of a new abiotic form of phosphine synthesis I think this will be the critical thing to effectively communicate publicly. Given what we know about phosphine synthesis, a subject I presume most people aren't super familiar with, how confident are we that a new abiotic process is possible? Or is it so unlikely that life is a more plausible explanation? Those aren't rhetorical questions. I wonder about the relative plausibility of one vs the other.

nprz 6y ago
From a co-author of the paper: > This means either this is life, or it’s some sort of physical or chemical process that we do not expect to happen on rocky planets. We really went through all possible pathways that could produce phosphine on a rocky planet. If this is not life, then our understanding of rocky planets is severely lacking. https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dUWrpm80WHsJ:https://earthsky.org/%3Fp%3D343883+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dUWrpm...
- ericmay 6y ago
  What’s great here is that this means it’s potentially a profound and important scientific observation either way! Obviously one is a bit more profound than the other, but nevertheless.
- monkeydreams 6y ago
  > If this is not life, then our understanding of rocky planets is severely lacking. While I would love for this to be true, ignorance requires fewer assumptions than life at any level of complexity.
  - gfodor 6y ago
    Why would it be surprising to find bacteria next door? If life is common in the universe, this would be exactly what you’d expect. And there is plenty of reason to think life is common in the universe.

elorant 6y ago

Incidentally, I just submitted the following a few hours ago: http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/phosphine-biosignature-gas-07957.html http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/phosphine-biosignature-gas...

DennisP 6y ago
Just so people don't miss this, it's about some scientists who spent several years looking for abiotic forms of phosphine synthesis, couldn't find any that could produce significant amounts, and concluded that phosphine is a really good biosignature.

awb 6y ago

From a quora post by the same author of the tweets: > Astronomers will think of all the ways to justify Phosphine without life and I welcome that. Please do, because we are at the end of our possibilities to show abiotic processes that can make Phosphine > there very well could be an abiotic source but that alone would be an amazing discovery. However we must deploy Occam’s Razor and suggest the simplest explanation and the evidence suggests the simple explanation is biological sources, life. Wouldn't a better announcement be "Phosphine detected in Venus atmosphere". Maybe it's compelling evidence for life, but claiming "Signs of Life Detected" seems a bit premature, no? And from the link on the author's Twitter bio: > Over the long, winding arc of his career, Brian has built and run payments and tech businesses, worked in media, including the promotion of top musicians, and explored a variety of other subjects along the way. Not exactly who I thought would be announcing the discovery of life beyond our planet.

tannhauser23 6y ago
Did you read the article? There's going to be a paper published tomorrow in Nature and the MIT scientists who wrote it will be doing a press conference. This Brian guy is just amplifying the news - he's not the author of the study.
- awb 6y ago
  Yes, I read the article. The discovery does sound compelling. I'm commenting on his amplification strategy ("Signs of Life discovered on Venus") rather than just presenting the facts ("Phosphine detected in Venus atmosphere"). I prefer my science news without a hype man but the author seems to take quite the initiative on Quora: "However we must deploy Occam's Razor and suggest the simplest explanation and the evidence suggests the simple explanation is biological sources, life." https://www.quora.com/Was-life-discovered-in-the-clouds-of-Venus-in-2020/answer/Brian-Roemmele https://www.quora.com/Was-life-discovered-in-the-clouds-of-V... It's pretty sensationalized and coordinated like a PR campaign. If you watch the video on his Twitter feed, the scientists themselves seem to focus on the science and don't claim to have "discovered life on Venus", so they do seem well intentioned. And their discovery certainly does sound interesting and potentially significant.

jxcl 6y ago

I have been reading Orbital Index since October 2019, you guys do a great job, thanks so much! I wish to continue to be subscribed to your newsletter.

metalliqaz 6y ago

why is there a scrollbar on orbitalindex?

Izkata 6y ago
Looks like broken CSS or broken scrolljacking. If you hit "stop" before everything finishes loading, there is indeed content: * A subscription box * A big empty box with a big horizontal scrollbar * The most recent issue of the newsletter (also accessible from the archive without this trick) (with this trick it also starts with HTML and CSS dumped to the page instead of interpreted) * A link back to the archive * A second subscription box

eloff 6y ago

This is the most likely possibility, but it's tantalizing nonetheless. I wonder if lightning could produce phosphene? There if lightning on Venus in sulfuric acid clouds with a similar strength to Earth. https://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/venus-20071128.html https://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/venus-20071... On the off chance it is life, it might be a relative. Earth and Venus are close enough together for asteroid impacts to throw debris to each other. And bacteria is strangely resistant to the conditions of outer space. See the panspermia hypothesis.

alpineidyll3 6y ago

There's about eleven bajillion abiotic routes to phosphine. The authors of this paper are totally crazy-go-nuts riding the hype train. Phosphine can be made from elemental phosphorus by simple acid catalysis. The atmosphere of venus is highly acidic. Venus is so close to earth that space spectroscopy could find a bunch of actually complex molecules that would imply life, if they were there. Phosphine is literally the simplest compound of phosphorus, a common element.

brylie 6y ago
> Phosphine can be made from elemental phosphorus by simple acid catalysis. Can you point me to a resource that describes phosphine occurring in nature from an abiotic process? The Wikipedia article on Phosphine[1] describes an acid-based route to create Phosphine industrially, but notes that: > The acid route requires purification and pressurizing. While Venus would seemingly have the needed atmospheric pressure, what about the conditions for purification? > The most likely source is reduction of phosphate in decaying organic matter, possibly via partial reductions and disproportionations, since environmental systems do not have known reducing agents of sufficient strength to directly convert phosphate to phosphine [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphine
- alpineidyll3 6y ago
  -Earth's atmosphere is at present heavily oxidizing and so phosphine is not common here. Phosphine will always be oxidized to phosphate (which is everywhere on earth and much of it abiotic). You can make phosphine from entirely abiotic common elements and salts literally hundreds of ways. It's almost exactly like saying how many abiotic syntheses of water (OH2) are there (all combustions for starters...) I have a PhD in chemistry from Berkeley and collaborated with nasa astrochemists. I'm not just reading wikipedia FYI ;P
  - Rooki 6y ago
    It's a shame they didn't have you on the team researching and writing this paper then. Could have saved everyone a lot of time!

jerome-jh 6y ago

Bacteria should rejoy: friends in Mars & Venus, possibly Titan!

henearkr 6y ago

The aim to publishing this paper is probably that: first of all to invite as many as possible scientists to propose new abiotic pathways that would have been overlooked. The sensationalism is probably an excellent way to pick their skepticism, so get more people to find counter-arguments.