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Phosphine detected in the atmosphere of Venus – an indicator of possible life?

497 points by istinetz 6y ago

bencollier49 6y ago
If life existed previously on Venus but no longer, how long could phosphine exist in the atmosphere without breaking down due to natural chemical processes?
- rg2004 6y ago
  In their video conference they said thousands of seconds.
  - bencollier49 6y ago
    Only in the upper cloud layers! Apparently underneath they haven't a clue, but I'm guessing it can't be aeons.
vikramkr 6y ago
Looks like there's some renewed importance to that rocketlab venus prove then! I wonder if they'll modify their mission parameters to look for signs of life now - part of the flexibility of doing interplanetary research as a private company is going to be that ability to modify the mission however you want without worrying about too many stakeholders, and this could be a great motivation to justify focusing that mission more on life
- thret 6y ago
  Imagine trying to justify sending a probe to Venus now and not looking for signs of life.
yreg 6y ago
Combined with the recent witnessing of evolution of multicellular life[0] the Great Filter seems more and more menacing. [0] - https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-witnessed-in-real-time-a-single-celled-algae-evolve-into-a-multicellular-organism https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-witnessed-in-re...
- bf404 6y ago
  I think it's important, in this case, to distinguish between simple multicellularity where identical cells form clumps (known to have evolved at least 25 times in eukaryotes, as well as in prokaryotes according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicellular_organism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicellular_organism - and which has been observed evolving in the lab before your linked paper), multicellularity that has cell differentiation (evolved in 6 groups), and multicellularity that has enough behavioural complexity that we might reasonably expect the emergence of intelligence (only in animals). I don't think simple multicellularity has ever been something that seemed like a likely candidate as a particularly strong filter (although you could argue that it's a weaker filter combined with others)
  - yreg 6y ago
    Can you please briefly explain what "multicellularity that has enough behavioural complexity" means? Do we know what were the necessary atributes of those early multicellular organisms without which animals wouldn't be possible?
    - bf404 6y ago
      That was perhaps misleading phrasing. Animals have both true multicellularity (shared with plants, fungi, and some other algae), and much higher behavioural complexity. Multicellularity is almost certainly necessary for behavioural complexity, but it obviously isn't sufficient, because as cool as plants and fungi are, you don't see any of them doing anything that one can imagine leading to intelligence in any form that we'd recognise. Now, broadly, I think (in my capacity as an armchair biologist) what we care about here is an nervous system, or something like it that is capable of fast communication and complex feedback loops that can be built into complex "computation". Interestingly, nervous systems aren't present in sponges, which are most likely the basal animal group (and which are immobile), but are present in all other animals. I'm therefore speculating that "able to develop a nervous system" could be the filter we care about for behavioural complexity. Being non-photosynthetic (so more advantage to being able to move around and find food), not having cell walls (so potentially more able to be motile, and form flexible structures), as well as just whether there are existing cellular pathways that control ion gradients in a way that can be co-opted for communication (which are present in sponges) all seem like plausible things that could predispose a multicellular organism to develop nerves, but if it is a filter, it could well also be that it's really hard to develop something as complicated as nerves, and an early animal got very lucky.
dang 6y ago
Url changed from http://astrobiology.com/2020/09/phosphine-detected-in-the-atmosphere-of-venus---an-indicator-of-possible-life.html http://astrobiology.com/2020/09/phosphine-detected-in-the-at..., which points to this. Edit: changed from http://nasawatch.com/archives/2020/09/phosphine-detec.html http://nasawatch.com/archives/2020/09/phosphine-detec.html to what appears to be the canonical source.
henearkr 6y ago
See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24463423 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24463423
- dmix 6y ago
  With a headline like that no wonder it got so many upvotes. I much prefer this one.
dandelany 6y ago
FYI - this story was supposed to be embargoed and only a few sources are leaking details. So tune in tomorrow (presumably) for some better sources! https://twitter.com/starstoofondly/status/1305325850892603394?s=21 https://twitter.com/starstoofondly/status/130532585089260339...
- henearkr 6y ago
  It ought to be released the 14 September morning, and still nothing: https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/latest-news https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/latest-news
  - aww_dang 6y ago
    Supposedly it should drop at 15:00GMT
    - henearkr 6y ago
      Oh, thanks a lot!!
- CyanBird 6y ago
  I am sooo incredibly hyped, this is it, it has to be life, no other paths to phosphine without life are known on that scale Also, it is probably panspermia from Eartg too!! Call me dull, but I see 0 chance what so ever that it developed natively. If it were Mars I would have believed it developed naturally... Here? Venus???!!! Panspermia all the way
  - henearkr 6y ago
    Venus was much more hospitable in the past. Then it underwent a huge greenhouse effect that turned its atmosphere into a hell. So maybe life could have had time to develop natively before this event, and then would have migrated to the habitable zone of the atmosphere later. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus#:~:text=It%20is%20speculated%20that%20the,levels%20of%20other%20greenhouse%20gases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus#:~:text=It....
pmlnr 6y ago
Stanislaw Lem wrote a book in 1951 with the idea that Venus had a full-on warmongering civilization in the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Astronauts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Astronauts (don't read the Plot on Wikipedia if you're planning to read the book)
- onion2k 6y ago
  Philip K Dick once wrote a letter to the FBI to inform them that Stansilaw Lem was not a person, but in fact a committee of communist writers.
  - DonHopkins 6y ago
    https://english.lem.pl/index.php/faq#P.K.Dick https://english.lem.pl/index.php/faq#P.K.Dick >What was that "Famous Philip K. Dick Letter" regarding Lem? >On September 2, 1974 Philip K. Dick sent the following letter to the FBI (Please keep in mind Mr. Dick was most probably suffering from schizophrenia): And Stanislaw Lem returned the complement by writing "Philip K. Dick: A Visionary Among the Charlatans" in 1975, which got him expelled from the SFWA in 1976. https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/5/lem5art.htm https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/5/lem5art.htm >ABSTRACT >Philip Dick does not lead his critics an easy life, since he does not so much play the part of a guide through his phantasmagoric worlds as give the impression of one lost in their labyrinth. He has stood all the more in need of critical assistance, but he has not received it. A characteristic of Dick ’s work, after its ambiguity as to genre, is its tawdriness, which is reminiscent of the goods offered at country fairs by primitive craftsmen who are at once clever and naive, possessed of more talent than self-knowledge. Dick has as a rule taken over a rubble of building materials from the run-of-the-mill American professionals of SF, frequently adding a true gleam of originality to worn-out concepts, and erecting with such materials constructions truly his own. The world gone mad, with a spasmodic flow of time and a network of causes and effects which wriggles as if nauseated, the world of frenzied physics, is unquestionably his invention. If Dick’s writings are neither of uniform quality nor fully realized, still it is only by brute force that they can be jammed into that pulp of materials, destitute of intellectual value and original structure, which makes up SF. Its fans are attracted by the worst in Dick—the typical dash of American SF, reaching to the stars, and the headlong pace of action moving from one surprise to the next—but they hold it against him that, instead of unraveling puzzles, he leaves the reader at the end on the battlefield, enveloped in an aura of mystery as grotesque as it is strange. Yet his bizarre blending of hallucinogenic and palingenetic techniques have not won him many admirers outside the ghetto walls, since outsiders are repelled by the shoddiness of the props he has adopted from the inventory of SF. Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8801011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8801011 https://english.lem.pl/index.php/faq#SWFA https://english.lem.pl/index.php/faq#SWFA >Why was Stanislaw Lem expelled from the SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of America) in 1976? >Lem has always been critical of most science fiction, which he considers ill thought out, poorly written, and interested more in adventure that ideas or new literary forms. (...) Those opinions provoked an unpleasant debate in the SFWA [the "Lem affair"]. Philip José Farmer and others were incensed by Lem's comments (...) and eventually brought about the removal of the honorary membership(...). Other members, such as Ursula K. Le Guin, then protested the removal (...) and the SFWA then offered Lem a regular membership, which he, of course, refused in 1976. Asked later about the "affair," he remarked, that his opinions of the state of science fiction were already known when he was offered an honorary membership (...). He also added he harboured no ill feelings towards the SFWA or U.S. writers in particular, "...but it would be a lie to say the whole incident has enlarged my respect for SF writers".
dmix 6y ago
I’m confused about one thing, would the (potential) organisms be floating/growing/dying entirely in the habitable region of the atmosphere or would it be rising from below?
- henearkr 6y ago
  Your guess is as good as anyone's at this point of our knowledge, but, if they are growing entirely suspended in atmosphere, I can imagine that, even though for most common elements (oxygen, nitrogen...) passive diffusion (like respiration) would suffice, for rarer nutrients these organisms would need some kind of "scooping" to gather and filter bigger swathes of air. Although these organisms may not exist at all, for all we know...
- Symmetry 6y ago
  There are bacteria that live entirely in Earth's stratosphere so floating bacteria wouldn't be out of the question. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090318094642.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090318094642.h... I can't see how bacteria could possibly evolve in the atmosphere but Venus is believed to have once had oceans.
  - nickhalfasleep 6y ago
    Could also have been brought to the upper atmosphere by a piece of earth blown off earlier. Would be epic to find it might even be shared earth DNA-based life. But it's most likely just unusual high temperature processes in the Venusian atmosphere.
  - Robotbeat 6y ago
    The question I have is how they could get access to micronutrients up there. On Earth, there's dust blown from dust storms, etc, but my read on Venus is that there's not a ton of circulation between the hellish surface and the upper atmosphere.
    - muttled 6y ago
      Volcanic activity throwing nutrients up there is what I've read.
gmueckl 6y ago
Alright, so there are traces of Phosphine in the atmosphere. But what makes the association with life a credible claim? There are a number of possible inorganic synthesis paths leading to that molecule. How can those be ruled out?
- mlnj 6y ago
  http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/phosphine-biosignature-gas-07957.html http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/phosphine-biosignature-gas... Something along the lines of: > To do this, they spent the last several years running many species of phosphorous — phosphine’s essential building block — through an exhaustive, theoretical analysis of chemical pathways, under increasingly extreme scenarios, to see whether phosphorous could turn into phosphine in any abiotic way. > The scientists found that phosphine has no significant false positives, meaning any detection of phosphine is a sure sign of life.
  - PopePompus 6y ago
    Phosphine was detected in Saturn's atmosphere at the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory (right next to the JCMT) decades ago (http://www.ericweisstein.com/research/papers/dps93/ http://www.ericweisstein.com/research/papers/dps93/). I don't recall anyone screaming "Life on Saturn" back then. I think this is being overhyped.
    - ncallaway 6y ago
      From the other thread about this, people were saying there are known abiotic chemical pathways to generate Phosphine on gas giants, so detection of Phosphine on Saturn and Jupiter is much less interesting. Apparently those know pathways don't work on rocky planets, which is why a detection on Venus is more interesting than a detection on Saturn. I still expect the outcome to eventually be: "we have found a new pathway to Phosphine, that's consistent with a rocky planet", but it definitely seems like a discovery that warrants attention and further study.
      - 6y ago
traveler01 6y ago
Considering how strong the tardigrades, wouldn't surprise me that much if we found life in this form in Venus.
- CyanBird 6y ago
  Oh, it most certainly isn't multicellular life, just bacterium floating in the high air currents of Venusian atmosphere synthesizing acids or light into energy and excreting phosphine and other things as a result
  - henearkr 6y ago
    Or multicellular life with buoyancy organs.
  - browserface 6y ago
    How do you know? In the past people would have said, there can be no life there at all. And now people think they have evidence. The universe is so vast, and we are blind to most of it, why should life be so sparse? It's the norm, not the exception, is that unlikely? How can you be so certain. Seems people so sure of life outside earth or not need it to be that way. Why can't people be okay with it just being ambiguous for now...
ssijak 6y ago
One of abiotic ways to explain this is that some complex and intelligent Venus lifeform is artificially making it to use it for something :)
narag 6y ago
So Venus smells like garlic. Anticlimatic.
- jacobush 6y ago
  Phosphine has no smell. “Pure phosphine is odorless“ (As per Wikipedia.)
- tiborsaas 6y ago
  Well, almost every food I cook starts with fry some garlic in oil. So it would feel home to me :)
- jvm_ 6y ago
  Smells like garlic, at 20 parts per billion, in 80-90% sulfuric acid... Probably not much smelling going in.
TigeriusKirk 6y ago
So obviously a mission to Venus to gather additional information should instantly become a top priority. Is there anything already in the works?
- ddevault 6y ago
  Such a mission has to be undertaken with care. You don't want to become the next Venusian extinction event by mistake.
  - willis936 6y ago
    Or almost as concerning: you don’t want to be genesis on Venus before you have some answers.
    - LostTrackHowM 6y ago
      Or alternatively, we deliberately infect it without athmosperic bacteria: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090318094642.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090318094642.h... Which would be terrible... but true to our history when discovering new world.
- walkingolof 6y ago
  Scott Manley have an interesting video on the problems with exploring Venus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DEvcJgBy0c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DEvcJgBy0c
- Robotbeat 6y ago
  Yes. RocketLab recently announced they'll be sending a mission to Venus. Privately funded, and the details will be announced shortly. https://www.reddit.com/r/RocketLab/comments/g8bxmy/rocket_labs_peter_beck_midair_recovery_photon/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RocketLab/comments/g8bxmy/rocket_la... In 2023: https://www.space.com/rocket-lab-private-venus-mission-2023.html https://www.space.com/rocket-lab-private-venus-mission-2023.... I have to wonder if they had contact with these MIT scientists pre-publication and that's what partially spurred this mission. (RocketLab and Photon seem like a REALLY good platform for low-cost, small planetary missions like this. You can launch a mission for the price of a paper conceptual study and without the constraints of being a secondary payload, which is problematic for planetary missions with their narrow launch windows.)
Jedd 6y ago
Naively - I'm assuming that if it is (single-celled) life, and when we get a sample of it, there's two broad categories of options. Either a) it's the same DNA - in which case some basic panspermia - some material bounced between Venus and Earth, in one or both directions, some billions of years ago, or b) it is demonstrably not the same structure as life on this planet, in which case statisticians get to have a field day.
- metalliqaz 6y ago
  Humans have sent space probes to Venus, and the Soviet ones weren't sterilized. It was thought there was no need, given the extreme environment there.
  - Daniel_sk 6y ago
    The chances of this happening are extremely low.
  - Jedd 6y ago
    My understanding is that a half century is not long enough for distance-detectable amounts of phosphine to have been generated by whatever tiny populations we may have accidentally sent over - or that we're likely to have accidentally shipped well-adapted thermophiles on the outside of Soviet probes.
    - metalliqaz 6y ago
      You very well may be correct. I have no way of calculating these things. But if the parent comment's DNA sample did actually match Earth-based organisms, you would have no choice but to assume contamination from human probes as the most likely explanation.
      - rsynnott 6y ago
        > you would have no choice but to assume contamination from human probes as the most likely explanation. You would have considerable choice; it would be quite obvious whether they'd been on a separate evolutionary trajectory for billions of years or not. That's still the boring outcome, though; not related to us at all would be far more interesting.
niemenmaa 6y ago
Royal Astronomical Society's press release will be held at 4 pm (according to twitter time zone is GMT+1) https://twitter.com/RoyalAstroSoc/status/1305454796225351682 https://twitter.com/RoyalAstroSoc/status/1305454796225351682 Press conference live stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IIj3e5BFp0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IIj3e5BFp0
- memetomancer 6y ago
  Press conference summary: Phosphine confirmed, abiotic pathways ruled out, need to send a spacecraft to learn more.
  - cygx 6y ago
    abiotic pathways ruled out To the best of the reasearchers' knowledge: All known pathways to produce phosphane couldn't explain the observation (they were talking several orders of magnitude off). Abiotic 'exotic' chemistry is still an option (ie the 'unknown unknown' hasn't been ruled out).
    - tantalor 6y ago
      You don't need to state the obvious. It's impossible to rule out an "unknown unknown" by definition, because if you did then it wouldn't be "unknown" anymore.
      - cygx 6y ago
        No-go theorems exist (conservation of energy for example, hence no perpetual motion machines). Instead, they tediously had to exclude any process they could think of one by one.
        formerly_proven 6y ago
        > No-go theorems exist That's K-K, not U-U.
siraben 6y ago
Searches for "venus phosphine" and "venus life" are peaking.[0] [0] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=now%207-d&geo=US&q=venus%20phosphine,venus%20life https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=now%207-d&geo=...
amgreg 6y ago
Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24463423 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24463423
taf2 6y ago
Could be life we sent there from earth via probes in the 70s?
- saberdancer 6y ago
  Doubtful. On Venus, we have detected "unknown absorbers" that absorb portion of UV and visible light, these absorbers are seen in the form of clouds for 100 or so years. It's possible this detection is connected with those unknown absorbers and if so, it predates any human spacecraft. Not only that, but it is doubtful that any kind of life would survive spaceflight and entry into an environment so vastly different than earth. If there is life on Venus, it is probably more extreme than extremophiles on Earth. Venera probes were not coated in phosphine producing extremophile bacteria.
  - Symmetry 6y ago
    The environment in the Venusian atmosphere isn't actually particularly extreme high up. At 50km up you could walk around outside your vessel in shorts and a breathing mask. I'ts just CO2 instead of N2/O2 and has about 1/10th the amount of water vapor as on Earth. And a little acid but well within industrial safety limits.
    - Symmetry 6y ago
      To be clear, you don't want to breath the acid for more than 10 minutes but we're stipulating a breathing mask here.
    - ta8908695 6y ago
      From the press releases today, the clouds of Venus are upwards of 80% sulfuric acid, and on earth the highest concentration of acid we've observed things living in is 5%. All of the expert testimony I heard described Venus as far to acidic for any life on Earth [0] [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1u-jlf_Olo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1u-jlf_Olo
      - 6y ago
benji_is_me 6y ago
The paper was just now released in nature's astronomy.[1] [1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-1174-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-1174-4
- foobar1962 6y ago
  The article abstract uses the phrase “in situ cloud and soil sampling” which is a delicious understatement.
city41 6y ago
Big Picture Science's new episode is about this. They interviewed the researchers who made the discovery https://radio.seti.org/episodes/life-on-venus https://radio.seti.org/episodes/life-on-venus
sparsely 6y ago
It's worth considering that: * we have an N of 1 when it comes to understanding under what conditions life can appear * when life first appeared on earth, conditions were such that almost no currently existing creatures could survive that being said, it does seem more likely that this will result in some new chemistry or a better understanding of conditions on venus than anything else
plutonorm 6y ago
Is it aliens?
Mizza 6y ago
An astronomer on Reddit did a good layman's breakdown here: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/iskmro/link_to_the_royal_astronomical_societys_not_so/g58l9r0/ https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/iskmro/link_to_the_r... A PDF of the full paper is here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-1174-4.pdf https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-1174-4.pdf "Astronomer here! Here is what is going on! For many years, astronomers have speculated that the most likely way to find evidence of extraterrestrial life is via biosignatures, which are basically substances that provide evidence of life. Probably the most famous example of this would be oxygen- it rapidly oxidizes in just a few thousand years, so to have large quantities of oxygen in an atmosphere you need something to constantly be putting it there (in Earth's case, from trees). Another one that's been suggested as a great biosignature is phosphine- a gas we can only make on Earth in the lab, or via organic matter decomposing (typically in a water-rich environment, which Venus is not). So, to be abundantly clear, the argument here is to the best of our knowledge you should only get this concentration of phosphine if there is life. What did this group discover? Is the signal legit? These scientists basically pointed a submillimeter radio telescope towards Venus to look for a signature of phosphine, which was not even a very technologically advanced radio telescope for this sort of thing, but they just wanted to get a good benchmark for future observations. And... they found a phosphine signature. They then pointed another, better radio telescope at it (ALMA- hands down best in the world for this kind of observation) and measured this signal even better. I am a radio astronomer myself, and looking at the paper, I have no reason to think this is not the signature from phosphine they say it is. They spend a lot of time estimating other contaminants they might be picking up, such as sulfur dioxide, but honestly those are really small compared to the phosphine signal. There's also a lot on the instrumentation, but they do seem to understand and have considered all possible effects there. Can this phosphine be created by non-life? The authors also basically spend half the paper going through allllll the different possible ways to get phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus. If you go check "extended data Figure 10" in the paper they go through all of the options, from potential volcanic activity to being brought in from meteorites to lightning... and all those methods are either impossible in this case, or would not produce you the concentration levels needed to explain the signature by several orders of magnitude (like, literally a million times too little). As I said, these guys were very thorough, and brought on a lot of experts in other fields to do this legwork to rule options out! And the only thing they have not been able to rule out so far is the most fantastic option. :) The point is, either we don’t get something basic about rocky planets, or life is putting this up there. (Mind, the way science goes I am sure by end of the week someone will have thought up an idea on how to explain phosphine in Venus's atmosphere. Whether that idea is a good one remains to be seen.) To give one example, It should be noted at this point that phosphine has apparently been detected in comets- specifically, it’s thought to be behind in the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko by the Rosetta mission- paper link. Comets have long been known to have a ton of organic compounds and are water rich- some suggest life on Earth was seeded by comets a long time ago- but it’s also present in the coma of comets as they are near the sun, which are very different conditions than the Venusian atmosphere. (It’s basically water ice sublimating as it warms up in a comet, so an active process is occurring in a water-rich environment to create phosphine.) However, the amounts created are nowhere near what is needed for the amounts of phosphine seen in Venus, we do not have water anywhere near the levels on Venus to make these amounts of phosphine, and we have detailed radar mapping to show us there was no recent cometary impact of Venus. As such, it appears highly unlikely that what puts phospine into Venus’s atmosphere is the same as what puts it into a comet’s coma. Research into this also indicates that, surprise surprise, cometary environments are very different than rocky ones, and only life can put it in the atmosphere of a rocky planet. How can life exist on Venus? I thought it was a hell hole! The surface of Venus is indeed not a nice place to live- a runaway greenhouse effect means the surface is hot enough to melt lead, it rains sulfuric acid, and the Russian probes that landed there in didn't last more than a few hours. (No one has bothered since the 1980s.) However, if you go about 50 km up Venus's atmosphere is the most Earth-like there is in the Solar System, and this is where this signal is located. What's more, unlike the crushing pressure and hot temperatures on the surface, you have the same atmospheric pressure as on Earth, temps varying from 0-50 C, and pretty similar gravity to here. People have suggested we could even build cloud cities there. And this is the region this biosignature is coming from- not the surface, but tens of km up in the pretty darn nice area to float around in. Plus, honestly, you know what I’m happy about that will come out of this? More space exploration of Venus! It is a fascinating planet that is criminally under-studied despite arguably some of the most interesting geology and atmosphere there is that we know of. (My favorite- Venus’s day is longer than its year, and it rotates “backwards” compared to all the other planets. But we think that’s not because of the way it formed, but because some gigantic planet-sized object hit it in the early days and basically flipped it upside down and slowed its spin. Isn’t that so cool?!) But we just wrote it off because the surface is really tough with old Soviet technology, and NASA hasn’t even sent a dedicated mission in over 30 years despite it being literally the closest planet to us. I imagine that is going to change fast and I am really excited for it- bring on the Venus drones! So, aliens? I mean, personally if you're asking my opinion as a scientist... I think I will always remember this discovery as the first step in learning how common life is in the universe. :) To be clear, the "problem" with a biosignature is it does not tell you what is putting that phosphine into the Venusian atmosphere- something microbial seems a good bet (we have great radar mapping of Venus and there are def no cloud cities or large artificial structures), but as to what, your guess is as good as mine. We do know that billions of microbes live high up in the Earth's atmosphere, feeding as they pass through clouds and found as high as 10km up. So I see no reason the same can't be happening on Venus! (It would be life still pretty darn ok with sulfuric acid clouds everywhere, mind, but we have extremophiles on Earth in crazy environments too so I can’t think of a good reason why it’s impossible). If you want to know where the smoking gun is, well here's the thing... Hollywood has well trained you to think otherwise, but I have always argued that discovering life elsewhere in the universe was going to be like discovering water on Mars. Where, as you might recall, first there were some signatures that there was water on Mars but that wasn't conclusive on its own that it existed, then a little more evidence came in, and some more... and finally today, everyone knows there is water on Mars. There was no reason to think the discovery of life wouldn't play out the same, because that's how science operates. (This is also why I always thought people were far too simplistic in assuming we would all just drop everything and unite as one just because life was discovered elsewhere- there'd be no smoking gun, and we'd all do what we all are doing now, get on social media to chat about it.) But put it this way- today we have taken a really big first step. And I think it is so amazing that this was first discovered not only next door, but on a planet not really thought of as great for life- it shows there's a good chance life in some for is ubiquitous! And I for one cannot wait until we can get a drone of some sort into the Venusian atmosphere to measure this better- provided, of course, we can do it in a way that ensures our own microbes don't hitch a ride. TL;DR- if you count microbes, which I do, we are (probably) not alone. :D "
greesil 6y ago
So weird, phosphine is potentially the output of some life-based chemistry happening, but phophine has a lot of hydrogen. Hydrogen is something that Venus does not have a lot of. I haven't seen this addressed anywhere in the discussion yet.
- sacred_numbers 6y ago
  Venus may not have a lot of hydrogen, but it does have some, especially in the form of water vapor. The amount of phosphine is also pretty tiny, about 20 parts per billion, compared to about 20 parts per million for water vapor.
- ta8908695 6y ago
  Venus has a permanent cloud layer of almost entirely sulfuric acid (H2SO4) so there is hydrogen available it just requires chemistry to get it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus
crazydoggers 6y ago
The Planetary Society has a measured and insightful analysis. https://www.planetary.org/articles/venus-phosphine-biosignature https://www.planetary.org/articles/venus-phosphine-biosignat...
TootsMagoon 6y ago
Life does not need to be RNA/DNA based.
jungletime 6y ago
Does Earth's atmosphere ever spill out into outer space? Is it possible for an asteroid to pass through our outer atmosphere, and then fly on to hit Venus? In some ways humans are simpler than the cells they are made off. Yeah, you may know how to drive a car, but can you synthesize DNA? I find it fascinating that complexity goes up, when you zoom into a human. And cells exhibit all these behaviours. There was this video I watched once, where a white blood cell was chasing a bacteria around. And it looked like a game of pacman. I would have never expected that a cell has some sort of self awareness, and is able to navigate its environment.
- jack_pp 6y ago
  I'm pretty sure driving a car requires more complexity than synthesizing DNA. Humans make up a very small percentage of all life on earth and only we can drive cars while most other life can make DNA
- lisper 6y ago
  Cells don't have self-awareness. You need brains for that. Just because something acts purposeful and goal-directed doesn't make it self-aware, unless you think a Roomba is self-aware. But you're right, cells are must more complex than our intuition often gives them credit for. But the time you get to a bacterium, fully 50% of the basic biomechanics of life are already in place. In fact, you can think of yourself as little more than a colony of specialized "bacteria" that self-organized into a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, not at all unlike the way humans self-organize into groups (tribes, city-states, nation-states, corporations) that are greater than the sum of their parts.
- metalliqaz 6y ago
  It is not possible for an asteroid to do that. If a space rock hit our atmosphere, it would either burn up or rapidly lose speed and crash to the ground. I know the white blood cell animation you are talking about. White blood cells are not self-aware. It might be helpful to picture cells (and even large animals) not as the discrete objects that are seen by the naked eye, but rather as a cloud of "stuff". In the middle is the meat; on the outside is various liquids, particles, and gases that leak out. So, the white blood cell isn't keeping an eye on the bacteria and chasing it. It's increasing contact with the "stuff" that it recognizes as foreign.
xwdv 6y ago
How fast can we get a probe there?
ricksunny 6y ago
I wonder if the phosphine could be primordial - left over from ancient microbial life there rather than existing microbial life.
- squidlogic 6y ago
  It could also be from earth. There is scientific evidence establishing that diatoms and other microorganisms are wafted up into Earth’s upper stratosphere and beyond 25–100 km above Earth’s surface.[1] From there, passing dust particles will transport a few of these microorganisms to the upper atmosphere of Venus. Another transport route would be large meteoroids bombarding Earth with sufficient force to export Earth rocks and soil into interplanetary space. [1]Alexa R. Van Eaton, Margaret A. Harper, and Colin J. N. Wilson, “High-Flying Diatoms: Widespread Dispersal of Microorganisms in an Explosive Volcanic Eruption,” Geology 41, no. 11 (November 2013): 1187–90, doi:10.1130/G24829.1; Milton Wainwright et al., “Isolation of a Diatom Frustule Fragment from the Lower Stratosphere (22–27 Km)-Evidence for a Cosmic Origin,” Journal of Cosmology 2013, volume 22 (August 9, 2013): 10183–10188.
- MrEldritch 6y ago
  It seems very unlikely - the researchers estimate a lifetime for phosphine of just thousands of years in the more temperate parts of the atmosphere, and just thousands of seconds nearer to the surface.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
velikovsky 6y ago
I was right when I predicted that venus was hot. Also when it was found to have a retrograde rotation. Now my life predictions turned out true...
DonCopal 6y ago
I find it interesting that the first detection of phosphine on Venus was in 2017 and later confirmed with another telescope in 2019. Does this mean that the scientists basically need to keep it a secret from 2017 until now, even if it's such an exciting news? How do they prevent "leaks"?
oxymoran 6y ago
Data: Navy releases videos of UFO’s that defy our understanding of physics along with numerous highly credible eyewitness accounts Science: must be drones or swamp gas or something Data: Phosphine on Venus Science: we have found life off of Earth! This is why nobody trusts ya’ll anymore.

497 points by istinetz 6y ago

If life existed previously on Venus but no longer, how long could phosphine exist in the atmosphere without breaking down due to natural chemical processes?

rg2004 6y ago
In their video conference they said thousands of seconds.
- bencollier49 6y ago
  Only in the upper cloud layers! Apparently underneath they haven't a clue, but I'm guessing it can't be aeons.

vikramkr 6y ago

Looks like there's some renewed importance to that rocketlab venus prove then! I wonder if they'll modify their mission parameters to look for signs of life now - part of the flexibility of doing interplanetary research as a private company is going to be that ability to modify the mission however you want without worrying about too many stakeholders, and this could be a great motivation to justify focusing that mission more on life

thret 6y ago
Imagine trying to justify sending a probe to Venus now and not looking for signs of life.

yreg 6y ago

Combined with the recent witnessing of evolution of multicellular life[0] the Great Filter seems more and more menacing. [0] - https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-witnessed-in-real-time-a-single-celled-algae-evolve-into-a-multicellular-organism https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-witnessed-in-re...

bf404 6y ago
I think it's important, in this case, to distinguish between simple multicellularity where identical cells form clumps (known to have evolved at least 25 times in eukaryotes, as well as in prokaryotes according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicellular_organism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicellular_organism - and which has been observed evolving in the lab before your linked paper), multicellularity that has cell differentiation (evolved in 6 groups), and multicellularity that has enough behavioural complexity that we might reasonably expect the emergence of intelligence (only in animals). I don't think simple multicellularity has ever been something that seemed like a likely candidate as a particularly strong filter (although you could argue that it's a weaker filter combined with others)
- yreg 6y ago
  Can you please briefly explain what "multicellularity that has enough behavioural complexity" means? Do we know what were the necessary atributes of those early multicellular organisms without which animals wouldn't be possible?
  - bf404 6y ago
    That was perhaps misleading phrasing. Animals have both true multicellularity (shared with plants, fungi, and some other algae), and much higher behavioural complexity. Multicellularity is almost certainly necessary for behavioural complexity, but it obviously isn't sufficient, because as cool as plants and fungi are, you don't see any of them doing anything that one can imagine leading to intelligence in any form that we'd recognise. Now, broadly, I think (in my capacity as an armchair biologist) what we care about here is an nervous system, or something like it that is capable of fast communication and complex feedback loops that can be built into complex "computation". Interestingly, nervous systems aren't present in sponges, which are most likely the basal animal group (and which are immobile), but are present in all other animals. I'm therefore speculating that "able to develop a nervous system" could be the filter we care about for behavioural complexity. Being non-photosynthetic (so more advantage to being able to move around and find food), not having cell walls (so potentially more able to be motile, and form flexible structures), as well as just whether there are existing cellular pathways that control ion gradients in a way that can be co-opted for communication (which are present in sponges) all seem like plausible things that could predispose a multicellular organism to develop nerves, but if it is a filter, it could well also be that it's really hard to develop something as complicated as nerves, and an early animal got very lucky.

dang 6y ago

Url changed from http://astrobiology.com/2020/09/phosphine-detected-in-the-atmosphere-of-venus---an-indicator-of-possible-life.html http://astrobiology.com/2020/09/phosphine-detected-in-the-at..., which points to this. Edit: changed from http://nasawatch.com/archives/2020/09/phosphine-detec.html http://nasawatch.com/archives/2020/09/phosphine-detec.html to what appears to be the canonical source.

henearkr 6y ago

See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24463423 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24463423

dmix 6y ago
With a headline like that no wonder it got so many upvotes. I much prefer this one.

dandelany 6y ago

FYI - this story was supposed to be embargoed and only a few sources are leaking details. So tune in tomorrow (presumably) for some better sources! https://twitter.com/starstoofondly/status/1305325850892603394?s=21 https://twitter.com/starstoofondly/status/130532585089260339...

henearkr 6y ago
It ought to be released the 14 September morning, and still nothing: https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/latest-news https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/latest-news
- aww_dang 6y ago
  Supposedly it should drop at 15:00GMT
  - henearkr 6y ago
    Oh, thanks a lot!!
CyanBird 6y ago
I am sooo incredibly hyped, this is it, it has to be life, no other paths to phosphine without life are known on that scale Also, it is probably panspermia from Eartg too!! Call me dull, but I see 0 chance what so ever that it developed natively. If it were Mars I would have believed it developed naturally... Here? Venus???!!! Panspermia all the way
- henearkr 6y ago
  Venus was much more hospitable in the past. Then it underwent a huge greenhouse effect that turned its atmosphere into a hell. So maybe life could have had time to develop natively before this event, and then would have migrated to the habitable zone of the atmosphere later. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus#:~:text=It%20is%20speculated%20that%20the,levels%20of%20other%20greenhouse%20gases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus#:~:text=It....

pmlnr 6y ago

Stanislaw Lem wrote a book in 1951 with the idea that Venus had a full-on warmongering civilization in the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Astronauts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Astronauts (don't read the Plot on Wikipedia if you're planning to read the book)

onion2k 6y ago
Philip K Dick once wrote a letter to the FBI to inform them that Stansilaw Lem was not a person, but in fact a committee of communist writers.
- DonHopkins 6y ago
  https://english.lem.pl/index.php/faq#P.K.Dick https://english.lem.pl/index.php/faq#P.K.Dick >What was that "Famous Philip K. Dick Letter" regarding Lem? >On September 2, 1974 Philip K. Dick sent the following letter to the FBI (Please keep in mind Mr. Dick was most probably suffering from schizophrenia): And Stanislaw Lem returned the complement by writing "Philip K. Dick: A Visionary Among the Charlatans" in 1975, which got him expelled from the SFWA in 1976. https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/5/lem5art.htm https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/5/lem5art.htm >ABSTRACT >Philip Dick does not lead his critics an easy life, since he does not so much play the part of a guide through his phantasmagoric worlds as give the impression of one lost in their labyrinth. He has stood all the more in need of critical assistance, but he has not received it. A characteristic of Dick ’s work, after its ambiguity as to genre, is its tawdriness, which is reminiscent of the goods offered at country fairs by primitive craftsmen who are at once clever and naive, possessed of more talent than self-knowledge. Dick has as a rule taken over a rubble of building materials from the run-of-the-mill American professionals of SF, frequently adding a true gleam of originality to worn-out concepts, and erecting with such materials constructions truly his own. The world gone mad, with a spasmodic flow of time and a network of causes and effects which wriggles as if nauseated, the world of frenzied physics, is unquestionably his invention. If Dick’s writings are neither of uniform quality nor fully realized, still it is only by brute force that they can be jammed into that pulp of materials, destitute of intellectual value and original structure, which makes up SF. Its fans are attracted by the worst in Dick—the typical dash of American SF, reaching to the stars, and the headlong pace of action moving from one surprise to the next—but they hold it against him that, instead of unraveling puzzles, he leaves the reader at the end on the battlefield, enveloped in an aura of mystery as grotesque as it is strange. Yet his bizarre blending of hallucinogenic and palingenetic techniques have not won him many admirers outside the ghetto walls, since outsiders are repelled by the shoddiness of the props he has adopted from the inventory of SF. Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8801011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8801011 https://english.lem.pl/index.php/faq#SWFA https://english.lem.pl/index.php/faq#SWFA >Why was Stanislaw Lem expelled from the SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of America) in 1976? >Lem has always been critical of most science fiction, which he considers ill thought out, poorly written, and interested more in adventure that ideas or new literary forms. (...) Those opinions provoked an unpleasant debate in the SFWA [the "Lem affair"]. Philip José Farmer and others were incensed by Lem's comments (...) and eventually brought about the removal of the honorary membership(...). Other members, such as Ursula K. Le Guin, then protested the removal (...) and the SFWA then offered Lem a regular membership, which he, of course, refused in 1976. Asked later about the "affair," he remarked, that his opinions of the state of science fiction were already known when he was offered an honorary membership (...). He also added he harboured no ill feelings towards the SFWA or U.S. writers in particular, "...but it would be a lie to say the whole incident has enlarged my respect for SF writers".

dmix 6y ago

I’m confused about one thing, would the (potential) organisms be floating/growing/dying entirely in the habitable region of the atmosphere or would it be rising from below?

henearkr 6y ago
Your guess is as good as anyone's at this point of our knowledge, but, if they are growing entirely suspended in atmosphere, I can imagine that, even though for most common elements (oxygen, nitrogen...) passive diffusion (like respiration) would suffice, for rarer nutrients these organisms would need some kind of "scooping" to gather and filter bigger swathes of air. Although these organisms may not exist at all, for all we know...
Symmetry 6y ago
There are bacteria that live entirely in Earth's stratosphere so floating bacteria wouldn't be out of the question. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090318094642.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090318094642.h... I can't see how bacteria could possibly evolve in the atmosphere but Venus is believed to have once had oceans.
- nickhalfasleep 6y ago
  Could also have been brought to the upper atmosphere by a piece of earth blown off earlier. Would be epic to find it might even be shared earth DNA-based life. But it's most likely just unusual high temperature processes in the Venusian atmosphere.
- Robotbeat 6y ago
  The question I have is how they could get access to micronutrients up there. On Earth, there's dust blown from dust storms, etc, but my read on Venus is that there's not a ton of circulation between the hellish surface and the upper atmosphere.
  - muttled 6y ago
    Volcanic activity throwing nutrients up there is what I've read.

gmueckl 6y ago

Alright, so there are traces of Phosphine in the atmosphere. But what makes the association with life a credible claim? There are a number of possible inorganic synthesis paths leading to that molecule. How can those be ruled out?

mlnj 6y ago
http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/phosphine-biosignature-gas-07957.html http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/phosphine-biosignature-gas... Something along the lines of: > To do this, they spent the last several years running many species of phosphorous — phosphine’s essential building block — through an exhaustive, theoretical analysis of chemical pathways, under increasingly extreme scenarios, to see whether phosphorous could turn into phosphine in any abiotic way. > The scientists found that phosphine has no significant false positives, meaning any detection of phosphine is a sure sign of life.
- PopePompus 6y ago
  Phosphine was detected in Saturn's atmosphere at the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory (right next to the JCMT) decades ago (http://www.ericweisstein.com/research/papers/dps93/ http://www.ericweisstein.com/research/papers/dps93/). I don't recall anyone screaming "Life on Saturn" back then. I think this is being overhyped.
  - ncallaway 6y ago
    From the other thread about this, people were saying there are known abiotic chemical pathways to generate Phosphine on gas giants, so detection of Phosphine on Saturn and Jupiter is much less interesting. Apparently those know pathways don't work on rocky planets, which is why a detection on Venus is more interesting than a detection on Saturn. I still expect the outcome to eventually be: "we have found a new pathway to Phosphine, that's consistent with a rocky planet", but it definitely seems like a discovery that warrants attention and further study.
    - 6y ago

traveler01 6y ago

Considering how strong the tardigrades, wouldn't surprise me that much if we found life in this form in Venus.

CyanBird 6y ago
Oh, it most certainly isn't multicellular life, just bacterium floating in the high air currents of Venusian atmosphere synthesizing acids or light into energy and excreting phosphine and other things as a result
- henearkr 6y ago
  Or multicellular life with buoyancy organs.
- browserface 6y ago
  How do you know? In the past people would have said, there can be no life there at all. And now people think they have evidence. The universe is so vast, and we are blind to most of it, why should life be so sparse? It's the norm, not the exception, is that unlikely? How can you be so certain. Seems people so sure of life outside earth or not need it to be that way. Why can't people be okay with it just being ambiguous for now...

ssijak 6y ago

One of abiotic ways to explain this is that some complex and intelligent Venus lifeform is artificially making it to use it for something :)

narag 6y ago

So Venus smells like garlic. Anticlimatic.

jacobush 6y ago
Phosphine has no smell. “Pure phosphine is odorless“ (As per Wikipedia.)
tiborsaas 6y ago
Well, almost every food I cook starts with fry some garlic in oil. So it would feel home to me :)
jvm_ 6y ago
Smells like garlic, at 20 parts per billion, in 80-90% sulfuric acid... Probably not much smelling going in.

TigeriusKirk 6y ago

So obviously a mission to Venus to gather additional information should instantly become a top priority. Is there anything already in the works?

ddevault 6y ago
Such a mission has to be undertaken with care. You don't want to become the next Venusian extinction event by mistake.
- willis936 6y ago
  Or almost as concerning: you don’t want to be genesis on Venus before you have some answers.
  - LostTrackHowM 6y ago
    Or alternatively, we deliberately infect it without athmosperic bacteria: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090318094642.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090318094642.h... Which would be terrible... but true to our history when discovering new world.
walkingolof 6y ago
Scott Manley have an interesting video on the problems with exploring Venus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DEvcJgBy0c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DEvcJgBy0c
Robotbeat 6y ago
Yes. RocketLab recently announced they'll be sending a mission to Venus. Privately funded, and the details will be announced shortly. https://www.reddit.com/r/RocketLab/comments/g8bxmy/rocket_labs_peter_beck_midair_recovery_photon/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RocketLab/comments/g8bxmy/rocket_la... In 2023: https://www.space.com/rocket-lab-private-venus-mission-2023.html https://www.space.com/rocket-lab-private-venus-mission-2023.... I have to wonder if they had contact with these MIT scientists pre-publication and that's what partially spurred this mission. (RocketLab and Photon seem like a REALLY good platform for low-cost, small planetary missions like this. You can launch a mission for the price of a paper conceptual study and without the constraints of being a secondary payload, which is problematic for planetary missions with their narrow launch windows.)

Jedd 6y ago

Naively - I'm assuming that if it is (single-celled) life, and when we get a sample of it, there's two broad categories of options. Either a) it's the same DNA - in which case some basic panspermia - some material bounced between Venus and Earth, in one or both directions, some billions of years ago, or b) it is demonstrably not the same structure as life on this planet, in which case statisticians get to have a field day.

metalliqaz 6y ago
Humans have sent space probes to Venus, and the Soviet ones weren't sterilized. It was thought there was no need, given the extreme environment there.
- Daniel_sk 6y ago
  The chances of this happening are extremely low.
- Jedd 6y ago
  My understanding is that a half century is not long enough for distance-detectable amounts of phosphine to have been generated by whatever tiny populations we may have accidentally sent over - or that we're likely to have accidentally shipped well-adapted thermophiles on the outside of Soviet probes.
  - metalliqaz 6y ago
    You very well may be correct. I have no way of calculating these things. But if the parent comment's DNA sample did actually match Earth-based organisms, you would have no choice but to assume contamination from human probes as the most likely explanation.
    - rsynnott 6y ago
      > you would have no choice but to assume contamination from human probes as the most likely explanation. You would have considerable choice; it would be quite obvious whether they'd been on a separate evolutionary trajectory for billions of years or not. That's still the boring outcome, though; not related to us at all would be far more interesting.

niemenmaa 6y ago

Royal Astronomical Society's press release will be held at 4 pm (according to twitter time zone is GMT+1) https://twitter.com/RoyalAstroSoc/status/1305454796225351682 https://twitter.com/RoyalAstroSoc/status/1305454796225351682 Press conference live stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IIj3e5BFp0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IIj3e5BFp0

memetomancer 6y ago
Press conference summary: Phosphine confirmed, abiotic pathways ruled out, need to send a spacecraft to learn more.
- cygx 6y ago
  abiotic pathways ruled out To the best of the reasearchers' knowledge: All known pathways to produce phosphane couldn't explain the observation (they were talking several orders of magnitude off). Abiotic 'exotic' chemistry is still an option (ie the 'unknown unknown' hasn't been ruled out).
  - tantalor 6y ago
    You don't need to state the obvious. It's impossible to rule out an "unknown unknown" by definition, because if you did then it wouldn't be "unknown" anymore.
    - cygx 6y ago
      No-go theorems exist (conservation of energy for example, hence no perpetual motion machines). Instead, they tediously had to exclude any process they could think of one by one.
      - formerly_proven 6y ago
        > No-go theorems exist That's K-K, not U-U.

siraben 6y ago

Searches for "venus phosphine" and "venus life" are peaking.[0] [0] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=now%207-d&geo=US&q=venus%20phosphine,venus%20life https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=now%207-d&geo=...

amgreg 6y ago

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24463423 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24463423

taf2 6y ago

Could be life we sent there from earth via probes in the 70s?

saberdancer 6y ago
Doubtful. On Venus, we have detected "unknown absorbers" that absorb portion of UV and visible light, these absorbers are seen in the form of clouds for 100 or so years. It's possible this detection is connected with those unknown absorbers and if so, it predates any human spacecraft. Not only that, but it is doubtful that any kind of life would survive spaceflight and entry into an environment so vastly different than earth. If there is life on Venus, it is probably more extreme than extremophiles on Earth. Venera probes were not coated in phosphine producing extremophile bacteria.
- Symmetry 6y ago
  The environment in the Venusian atmosphere isn't actually particularly extreme high up. At 50km up you could walk around outside your vessel in shorts and a breathing mask. I'ts just CO2 instead of N2/O2 and has about 1/10th the amount of water vapor as on Earth. And a little acid but well within industrial safety limits.
  - Symmetry 6y ago
    To be clear, you don't want to breath the acid for more than 10 minutes but we're stipulating a breathing mask here.
  - ta8908695 6y ago
    From the press releases today, the clouds of Venus are upwards of 80% sulfuric acid, and on earth the highest concentration of acid we've observed things living in is 5%. All of the expert testimony I heard described Venus as far to acidic for any life on Earth [0] [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1u-jlf_Olo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1u-jlf_Olo
    - 6y ago

benji_is_me 6y ago

The paper was just now released in nature's astronomy.[1] [1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-1174-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-1174-4

foobar1962 6y ago
The article abstract uses the phrase “in situ cloud and soil sampling” which is a delicious understatement.

city41 6y ago

Big Picture Science's new episode is about this. They interviewed the researchers who made the discovery https://radio.seti.org/episodes/life-on-venus https://radio.seti.org/episodes/life-on-venus

sparsely 6y ago

It's worth considering that: * we have an N of 1 when it comes to understanding under what conditions life can appear * when life first appeared on earth, conditions were such that almost no currently existing creatures could survive that being said, it does seem more likely that this will result in some new chemistry or a better understanding of conditions on venus than anything else

plutonorm 6y ago

Is it aliens?

Mizza 6y ago

An astronomer on Reddit did a good layman's breakdown here: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/iskmro/link_to_the_royal_astronomical_societys_not_so/g58l9r0/ https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/iskmro/link_to_the_r... A PDF of the full paper is here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-1174-4.pdf https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-1174-4.pdf "Astronomer here! Here is what is going on! For many years, astronomers have speculated that the most likely way to find evidence of extraterrestrial life is via biosignatures, which are basically substances that provide evidence of life. Probably the most famous example of this would be oxygen- it rapidly oxidizes in just a few thousand years, so to have large quantities of oxygen in an atmosphere you need something to constantly be putting it there (in Earth's case, from trees). Another one that's been suggested as a great biosignature is phosphine- a gas we can only make on Earth in the lab, or via organic matter decomposing (typically in a water-rich environment, which Venus is not). So, to be abundantly clear, the argument here is to the best of our knowledge you should only get this concentration of phosphine if there is life. What did this group discover? Is the signal legit? These scientists basically pointed a submillimeter radio telescope towards Venus to look for a signature of phosphine, which was not even a very technologically advanced radio telescope for this sort of thing, but they just wanted to get a good benchmark for future observations. And... they found a phosphine signature. They then pointed another, better radio telescope at it (ALMA- hands down best in the world for this kind of observation) and measured this signal even better. I am a radio astronomer myself, and looking at the paper, I have no reason to think this is not the signature from phosphine they say it is. They spend a lot of time estimating other contaminants they might be picking up, such as sulfur dioxide, but honestly those are really small compared to the phosphine signal. There's also a lot on the instrumentation, but they do seem to understand and have considered all possible effects there. Can this phosphine be created by non-life? The authors also basically spend half the paper going through allllll the different possible ways to get phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus. If you go check "extended data Figure 10" in the paper they go through all of the options, from potential volcanic activity to being brought in from meteorites to lightning... and all those methods are either impossible in this case, or would not produce you the concentration levels needed to explain the signature by several orders of magnitude (like, literally a million times too little). As I said, these guys were very thorough, and brought on a lot of experts in other fields to do this legwork to rule options out! And the only thing they have not been able to rule out so far is the most fantastic option. :) The point is, either we don’t get something basic about rocky planets, or life is putting this up there. (Mind, the way science goes I am sure by end of the week someone will have thought up an idea on how to explain phosphine in Venus's atmosphere. Whether that idea is a good one remains to be seen.) To give one example, It should be noted at this point that phosphine has apparently been detected in comets- specifically, it’s thought to be behind in the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko by the Rosetta mission- paper link. Comets have long been known to have a ton of organic compounds and are water rich- some suggest life on Earth was seeded by comets a long time ago- but it’s also present in the coma of comets as they are near the sun, which are very different conditions than the Venusian atmosphere. (It’s basically water ice sublimating as it warms up in a comet, so an active process is occurring in a water-rich environment to create phosphine.) However, the amounts created are nowhere near what is needed for the amounts of phosphine seen in Venus, we do not have water anywhere near the levels on Venus to make these amounts of phosphine, and we have detailed radar mapping to show us there was no recent cometary impact of Venus. As such, it appears highly unlikely that what puts phospine into Venus’s atmosphere is the same as what puts it into a comet’s coma. Research into this also indicates that, surprise surprise, cometary environments are very different than rocky ones, and only life can put it in the atmosphere of a rocky planet. How can life exist on Venus? I thought it was a hell hole! The surface of Venus is indeed not a nice place to live- a runaway greenhouse effect means the surface is hot enough to melt lead, it rains sulfuric acid, and the Russian probes that landed there in didn't last more than a few hours. (No one has bothered since the 1980s.) However, if you go about 50 km up Venus's atmosphere is the most Earth-like there is in the Solar System, and this is where this signal is located. What's more, unlike the crushing pressure and hot temperatures on the surface, you have the same atmospheric pressure as on Earth, temps varying from 0-50 C, and pretty similar gravity to here. People have suggested we could even build cloud cities there. And this is the region this biosignature is coming from- not the surface, but tens of km up in the pretty darn nice area to float around in. Plus, honestly, you know what I’m happy about that will come out of this? More space exploration of Venus! It is a fascinating planet that is criminally under-studied despite arguably some of the most interesting geology and atmosphere there is that we know of. (My favorite- Venus’s day is longer than its year, and it rotates “backwards” compared to all the other planets. But we think that’s not because of the way it formed, but because some gigantic planet-sized object hit it in the early days and basically flipped it upside down and slowed its spin. Isn’t that so cool?!) But we just wrote it off because the surface is really tough with old Soviet technology, and NASA hasn’t even sent a dedicated mission in over 30 years despite it being literally the closest planet to us. I imagine that is going to change fast and I am really excited for it- bring on the Venus drones! So, aliens? I mean, personally if you're asking my opinion as a scientist... I think I will always remember this discovery as the first step in learning how common life is in the universe. :) To be clear, the "problem" with a biosignature is it does not tell you what is putting that phosphine into the Venusian atmosphere- something microbial seems a good bet (we have great radar mapping of Venus and there are def no cloud cities or large artificial structures), but as to what, your guess is as good as mine. We do know that billions of microbes live high up in the Earth's atmosphere, feeding as they pass through clouds and found as high as 10km up. So I see no reason the same can't be happening on Venus! (It would be life still pretty darn ok with sulfuric acid clouds everywhere, mind, but we have extremophiles on Earth in crazy environments too so I can’t think of a good reason why it’s impossible). If you want to know where the smoking gun is, well here's the thing... Hollywood has well trained you to think otherwise, but I have always argued that discovering life elsewhere in the universe was going to be like discovering water on Mars. Where, as you might recall, first there were some signatures that there was water on Mars but that wasn't conclusive on its own that it existed, then a little more evidence came in, and some more... and finally today, everyone knows there is water on Mars. There was no reason to think the discovery of life wouldn't play out the same, because that's how science operates. (This is also why I always thought people were far too simplistic in assuming we would all just drop everything and unite as one just because life was discovered elsewhere- there'd be no smoking gun, and we'd all do what we all are doing now, get on social media to chat about it.) But put it this way- today we have taken a really big first step. And I think it is so amazing that this was first discovered not only next door, but on a planet not really thought of as great for life- it shows there's a good chance life in some for is ubiquitous! And I for one cannot wait until we can get a drone of some sort into the Venusian atmosphere to measure this better- provided, of course, we can do it in a way that ensures our own microbes don't hitch a ride. TL;DR- if you count microbes, which I do, we are (probably) not alone. :D "

greesil 6y ago

So weird, phosphine is potentially the output of some life-based chemistry happening, but phophine has a lot of hydrogen. Hydrogen is something that Venus does not have a lot of. I haven't seen this addressed anywhere in the discussion yet.

sacred_numbers 6y ago
Venus may not have a lot of hydrogen, but it does have some, especially in the form of water vapor. The amount of phosphine is also pretty tiny, about 20 parts per billion, compared to about 20 parts per million for water vapor.
ta8908695 6y ago
Venus has a permanent cloud layer of almost entirely sulfuric acid (H2SO4) so there is hydrogen available it just requires chemistry to get it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus

crazydoggers 6y ago

The Planetary Society has a measured and insightful analysis. https://www.planetary.org/articles/venus-phosphine-biosignature https://www.planetary.org/articles/venus-phosphine-biosignat...

TootsMagoon 6y ago

Life does not need to be RNA/DNA based.

jungletime 6y ago

Does Earth's atmosphere ever spill out into outer space? Is it possible for an asteroid to pass through our outer atmosphere, and then fly on to hit Venus? In some ways humans are simpler than the cells they are made off. Yeah, you may know how to drive a car, but can you synthesize DNA? I find it fascinating that complexity goes up, when you zoom into a human. And cells exhibit all these behaviours. There was this video I watched once, where a white blood cell was chasing a bacteria around. And it looked like a game of pacman. I would have never expected that a cell has some sort of self awareness, and is able to navigate its environment.

jack_pp 6y ago
I'm pretty sure driving a car requires more complexity than synthesizing DNA. Humans make up a very small percentage of all life on earth and only we can drive cars while most other life can make DNA
lisper 6y ago
Cells don't have self-awareness. You need brains for that. Just because something acts purposeful and goal-directed doesn't make it self-aware, unless you think a Roomba is self-aware. But you're right, cells are must more complex than our intuition often gives them credit for. But the time you get to a bacterium, fully 50% of the basic biomechanics of life are already in place. In fact, you can think of yourself as little more than a colony of specialized "bacteria" that self-organized into a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, not at all unlike the way humans self-organize into groups (tribes, city-states, nation-states, corporations) that are greater than the sum of their parts.
metalliqaz 6y ago
It is not possible for an asteroid to do that. If a space rock hit our atmosphere, it would either burn up or rapidly lose speed and crash to the ground. I know the white blood cell animation you are talking about. White blood cells are not self-aware. It might be helpful to picture cells (and even large animals) not as the discrete objects that are seen by the naked eye, but rather as a cloud of "stuff". In the middle is the meat; on the outside is various liquids, particles, and gases that leak out. So, the white blood cell isn't keeping an eye on the bacteria and chasing it. It's increasing contact with the "stuff" that it recognizes as foreign.

xwdv 6y ago

How fast can we get a probe there?

ricksunny 6y ago

I wonder if the phosphine could be primordial - left over from ancient microbial life there rather than existing microbial life.

squidlogic 6y ago
It could also be from earth. There is scientific evidence establishing that diatoms and other microorganisms are wafted up into Earth’s upper stratosphere and beyond 25–100 km above Earth’s surface.[1] From there, passing dust particles will transport a few of these microorganisms to the upper atmosphere of Venus. Another transport route would be large meteoroids bombarding Earth with sufficient force to export Earth rocks and soil into interplanetary space. [1]Alexa R. Van Eaton, Margaret A. Harper, and Colin J. N. Wilson, “High-Flying Diatoms: Widespread Dispersal of Microorganisms in an Explosive Volcanic Eruption,” Geology 41, no. 11 (November 2013): 1187–90, doi:10.1130/G24829.1; Milton Wainwright et al., “Isolation of a Diatom Frustule Fragment from the Lower Stratosphere (22–27 Km)-Evidence for a Cosmic Origin,” Journal of Cosmology 2013, volume 22 (August 9, 2013): 10183–10188.
MrEldritch 6y ago
It seems very unlikely - the researchers estimate a lifetime for phosphine of just thousands of years in the more temperate parts of the atmosphere, and just thousands of seconds nearer to the surface.

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velikovsky 6y ago

I was right when I predicted that venus was hot. Also when it was found to have a retrograde rotation. Now my life predictions turned out true...

DonCopal 6y ago

I find it interesting that the first detection of phosphine on Venus was in 2017 and later confirmed with another telescope in 2019. Does this mean that the scientists basically need to keep it a secret from 2017 until now, even if it's such an exciting news? How do they prevent "leaks"?

oxymoran 6y ago

Data: Navy releases videos of UFO’s that defy our understanding of physics along with numerous highly credible eyewitness accounts Science: must be drones or swamp gas or something Data: Phosphine on Venus Science: we have found life off of Earth! This is why nobody trusts ya’ll anymore.