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Before 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
by civilized 6y ago
Before 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.