8 ms·

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.
    - wolfram74 6y ago
      I mean, I wouldn't call support for panspermia /boring/ exactly, but I agree that a wholly separate abiogenesis event would be pretty astounding.
      - eloff 6y ago
        It would mean primitive life must be everywhere in the universe of it happened twice on adjacent planets independently. Very, very unlikely outcome.
        rsynnott 6y ago
        Well, we don't know how unlikely it is. It increasingly looks like life showed up on earth almost as soon as it was geologically possible for it to show up, which, if true, would indicate either that abiogenesis is pretty easy or that panspermia is a thing.
        eloff 6y ago
        It would indicate that, but it's also somewhat expected if we're around to make that observation, which tempers how much information we can take away from it. However, happening on two adjacent planets would really affect our estimations of the likelihood of abiogenesis.
        Jweb_Guru 6y ago
        > It would indicate that, but it's also somewhat expected if we're around to make that observation, which tempers how much information we can take away from it. Life could have arisen on Earth much later than it did and we could still have been around to see it (or if not us, something like us) so the anthropic principle doesn't apply here. The fact that it arose so early is meaningful.
        eloff 6y ago
        It is, but it's also sample size of 1. So yes, it indicates something but the confidence interval is really wide. Still, like you point out it's not meaningless as some people do try to argue.
        baja_blast 6y ago
  - Jedd 6y ago
    Absolutely - let me retrospectively adjust the panspermia 'a few billion years ago' to include potentially quite recent cross-fertilisation. In any case it makes it much less interesting, as it implies same origin. Implies but does not prove, I should add, of course.
  - castis 6y ago
    If they matched, another possibility is that a stable life most easily forms a specific way, or this way only. Knowing for sure wouldn't be possible until more samples are found in the universe.
    - willis936 6y ago
      This is about as likely as guessing a 1024 bit encrypted key. “Match” means “match”. Not “similar structure and behavior”. If it is the same DNA then the only compelling explanation is that it is from the same origin.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - lawlessone 6y ago
        If it's DNA at all then it would be from the same origin? How likely is it that alien life would also use DNA?
        gmuslera 6y ago
        Even if it is DNA, if it encodes the same proteins in the same way than the life here would a be very improbable event. Think in an alien alphabet looking like ours, but also making the same sounds and some common words and meanings with the similar looking symbols.
        willis936 6y ago
        “Origin” in this case would be something in the very physically close and near term. Something that excludes the possibility of serious evolutionary change. Even relatively static species undergo mutations in the long term. So if something is an exact match it is evident that they came from the same time and place (within some reasonable window). The origin would implicitly be Earth in the 1960s.
      - castis 6y ago
        I meant match, similarly to saying curtains and carpets match.
- fiblye 6y ago
  Let's assume, by chance, there's some strain of bacteria that can not only survive but thrive in Venus's environment. This bacteria is introduced to an environment that has all it needs to spread quickly. There's absolutely nothing out there that it has to compete with. There's nothing out there consuming it or infecting it or otherwise inhibiting its growth other than a lack of whatever nutrient it consumes. Rabbits went from 0 to over 200 million in under 200 years in Australia, and that's with snakes and disease. Apparently they spread across the continent in just 50 years.[1] Rabbits generally reproduce at a small fraction of the rate of bacteria, although exceptions exist. Note: I'm not saying humans definitely introduced bacteria to Venus and that's the source. I'm saying if conditions are by some chance ideal, and these things are apparently thriving in the atmosphere, it shouldn't be hard to spread across the planet incredibly fast. [1] https://www.nationalgeographic.org/article/how-european-rabbits-took-over-australia/ https://www.nationalgeographic.org/article/how-european-rabb...
  - joshuahedlund 6y ago
    Seems from other comments[0] that the first indicators of these moving phosphene regions were detected a century ago, which would seem to rule out even rapid Soviet contamination? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24469567 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24469567
    - cowboysauce 6y ago
      Those regions contain an unknown substance that absorb UV light. There is currently no connection to this announcement. Though one of the possible causes of those regions is that they are caused by life in Venus’ atmosphere.
      - saberdancer 6y ago
        There is no connection but one of theories that was proposed for the unknown absorbers was that they are in fact microbes. So not only do we have no good explanation for phosphine, we do not have a good explanation for the unknown absorbers. Well, we do have one good explanation although it seemed unlikely and that is life. Given that this is second effect that could be explained with microbes I feel it adds that much more weight to the theory.
cptaj 6y ago
I think the organisms that might've been in those probes are not the kind that would either survive in Venus or produce phosphine
vikramkr 6y ago
While there might be eartg life that can live in those extreme environments, that type of life usually can't live at what we consider more comfortable temperatures and couldn't survive being on the probe while it was on earth being loaded into s rocket etc. That's why even though there is life that thrives in the cknditions inside an autoclave (pressure/steam cookers used to sterilize things in labs or medicine), you don't have to worry about them since they can only survive in those conditions.
- Zigurd 6y ago
  There is a possibly habitable layer (for non-extremophiles) in the atmosphere of Venus. Microbes live in Earth's atmosphere. This of course does not account for other differences such as the rate at which microbes are transported into Earth's atmosphere, and whether that possibly habitable layer on Venus is stable enough to sustain a population.
  - vikramkr 6y ago
    That is true and could be a way for anthropogenic panspermia to occur. My totally uneducated gut feeling is that the chemists and geologists are going to get more out of this finding than the biologists though. Theres a lot of cool rocks and an atmosphere full of SO2 (a pretty decent reducing agent) on venus - and abiogenic phosphenes are found in other parts of the solar system. Some chemical reaction with perhaps some recently expelled volcanic ash (there was recent evidence that it might still have active volcanic activity right?) seems more plausible than life, but hey, thats why we have experiments to see if the unlikely is true after all!
  - keanebean86 6y ago
    I know this would be tough and take a long time but we could have 2 extra planets with enough work. 1. Bombarded mars with junk (everything from the astroid belt and some rocks from the kuipler belt) to raise its mass to somewhat earth level. We'd have to be careful not to mess up Mars's orbit too much. 2. Slurp some of venus's thick atmosphere into a massive space tanker 3. Dump the atmosphere onto Mars++ 4. Let time and some engineered bacteria/plants clean up the mess That's my long term goal if I become immortal.
LostTrackHowM 6y ago
Wasn't there a sweet spot somewhere in the Venus atmosphere that's more Earth sauna like, than the hellish surface of Venus?
- 3pt14159 6y ago
  Last time I checked, which was about four years ago, the conditions on Venus 40km were such that humans could walk around outside with nothing more than an oxygen supply.
  - metalliqaz 6y ago
    that is true although there is also a ton of acid up there
    - Symmetry 6y ago
      At 50 km up only 7 ppm https://selenianboondocks.com/2013/11/venus-isru-what-do-we-have-to-work-with/ https://selenianboondocks.com/2013/11/venus-isru-what-do-we-... Which as far as I can tell isn't terrible if you don't breath it in and if you do the official allowed exposure time is 10 minutes for 5 ppm. I would recommend you wear goggles in addition to breathing equipment, though.
      - kortex 6y ago
        7 ppm of atomized H2SO4 will definitely sting a bit. That's roughly 7 g/m^3, TLV for sulfuric acid mist is 1 mg/m^3. Survivable but you would want to minimize time in it.
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        > Which as far as I can tell isn't terrible if you don't breath it in and if you do the official allowed exposure time is 10 minutes for 5 ppm. Presumably that's 5ppm under terrestrial conditions, Venus at 40km has substantially higher pressure, more than is explained by the higher temperature alone, so any given ppm is a greater number of molecules per cm³, right?
jjcon 6y ago
The idea that these regions may contain life (and the observations that suggest this) predate those probes. That doesn’t rule out a ‘contamination’. But considering this is just another observation in a long line of interesting data I think makes it less likely.

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.
  - wolfram74 6y ago
    I mean, I wouldn't call support for panspermia /boring/ exactly, but I agree that a wholly separate abiogenesis event would be pretty astounding.
    - eloff 6y ago
      It would mean primitive life must be everywhere in the universe of it happened twice on adjacent planets independently. Very, very unlikely outcome.
      - rsynnott 6y ago
        Well, we don't know how unlikely it is. It increasingly looks like life showed up on earth almost as soon as it was geologically possible for it to show up, which, if true, would indicate either that abiogenesis is pretty easy or that panspermia is a thing.
        eloff 6y ago
        It would indicate that, but it's also somewhat expected if we're around to make that observation, which tempers how much information we can take away from it. However, happening on two adjacent planets would really affect our estimations of the likelihood of abiogenesis.
        Jweb_Guru 6y ago
        > It would indicate that, but it's also somewhat expected if we're around to make that observation, which tempers how much information we can take away from it. Life could have arisen on Earth much later than it did and we could still have been around to see it (or if not us, something like us) so the anthropic principle doesn't apply here. The fact that it arose so early is meaningful.
        eloff 6y ago
        It is, but it's also sample size of 1. So yes, it indicates something but the confidence interval is really wide. Still, like you point out it's not meaningless as some people do try to argue.
        baja_blast 6y ago
- Jedd 6y ago
  Absolutely - let me retrospectively adjust the panspermia 'a few billion years ago' to include potentially quite recent cross-fertilisation. In any case it makes it much less interesting, as it implies same origin. Implies but does not prove, I should add, of course.
- castis 6y ago
  If they matched, another possibility is that a stable life most easily forms a specific way, or this way only. Knowing for sure wouldn't be possible until more samples are found in the universe.
  - willis936 6y ago
    This is about as likely as guessing a 1024 bit encrypted key. “Match” means “match”. Not “similar structure and behavior”. If it is the same DNA then the only compelling explanation is that it is from the same origin.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - lawlessone 6y ago
      If it's DNA at all then it would be from the same origin? How likely is it that alien life would also use DNA?
      - gmuslera 6y ago
        Even if it is DNA, if it encodes the same proteins in the same way than the life here would a be very improbable event. Think in an alien alphabet looking like ours, but also making the same sounds and some common words and meanings with the similar looking symbols.
      - willis936 6y ago
        “Origin” in this case would be something in the very physically close and near term. Something that excludes the possibility of serious evolutionary change. Even relatively static species undergo mutations in the long term. So if something is an exact match it is evident that they came from the same time and place (within some reasonable window). The origin would implicitly be Earth in the 1960s.
    - castis 6y ago
      I meant match, similarly to saying curtains and carpets match.
fiblye 6y ago
Let's assume, by chance, there's some strain of bacteria that can not only survive but thrive in Venus's environment. This bacteria is introduced to an environment that has all it needs to spread quickly. There's absolutely nothing out there that it has to compete with. There's nothing out there consuming it or infecting it or otherwise inhibiting its growth other than a lack of whatever nutrient it consumes. Rabbits went from 0 to over 200 million in under 200 years in Australia, and that's with snakes and disease. Apparently they spread across the continent in just 50 years.[1] Rabbits generally reproduce at a small fraction of the rate of bacteria, although exceptions exist. Note: I'm not saying humans definitely introduced bacteria to Venus and that's the source. I'm saying if conditions are by some chance ideal, and these things are apparently thriving in the atmosphere, it shouldn't be hard to spread across the planet incredibly fast. [1] https://www.nationalgeographic.org/article/how-european-rabbits-took-over-australia/ https://www.nationalgeographic.org/article/how-european-rabb...
- joshuahedlund 6y ago
  Seems from other comments[0] that the first indicators of these moving phosphene regions were detected a century ago, which would seem to rule out even rapid Soviet contamination? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24469567 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24469567
  - cowboysauce 6y ago
    Those regions contain an unknown substance that absorb UV light. There is currently no connection to this announcement. Though one of the possible causes of those regions is that they are caused by life in Venus’ atmosphere.
    - saberdancer 6y ago
      There is no connection but one of theories that was proposed for the unknown absorbers was that they are in fact microbes. So not only do we have no good explanation for phosphine, we do not have a good explanation for the unknown absorbers. Well, we do have one good explanation although it seemed unlikely and that is life. Given that this is second effect that could be explained with microbes I feel it adds that much more weight to the theory.

cptaj 6y ago

I think the organisms that might've been in those probes are not the kind that would either survive in Venus or produce phosphine

vikramkr 6y ago

While there might be eartg life that can live in those extreme environments, that type of life usually can't live at what we consider more comfortable temperatures and couldn't survive being on the probe while it was on earth being loaded into s rocket etc. That's why even though there is life that thrives in the cknditions inside an autoclave (pressure/steam cookers used to sterilize things in labs or medicine), you don't have to worry about them since they can only survive in those conditions.

Zigurd 6y ago
There is a possibly habitable layer (for non-extremophiles) in the atmosphere of Venus. Microbes live in Earth's atmosphere. This of course does not account for other differences such as the rate at which microbes are transported into Earth's atmosphere, and whether that possibly habitable layer on Venus is stable enough to sustain a population.
- vikramkr 6y ago
  That is true and could be a way for anthropogenic panspermia to occur. My totally uneducated gut feeling is that the chemists and geologists are going to get more out of this finding than the biologists though. Theres a lot of cool rocks and an atmosphere full of SO2 (a pretty decent reducing agent) on venus - and abiogenic phosphenes are found in other parts of the solar system. Some chemical reaction with perhaps some recently expelled volcanic ash (there was recent evidence that it might still have active volcanic activity right?) seems more plausible than life, but hey, thats why we have experiments to see if the unlikely is true after all!
- keanebean86 6y ago
  I know this would be tough and take a long time but we could have 2 extra planets with enough work. 1. Bombarded mars with junk (everything from the astroid belt and some rocks from the kuipler belt) to raise its mass to somewhat earth level. We'd have to be careful not to mess up Mars's orbit too much. 2. Slurp some of venus's thick atmosphere into a massive space tanker 3. Dump the atmosphere onto Mars++ 4. Let time and some engineered bacteria/plants clean up the mess That's my long term goal if I become immortal.

LostTrackHowM 6y ago

Wasn't there a sweet spot somewhere in the Venus atmosphere that's more Earth sauna like, than the hellish surface of Venus?

3pt14159 6y ago
Last time I checked, which was about four years ago, the conditions on Venus 40km were such that humans could walk around outside with nothing more than an oxygen supply.
- metalliqaz 6y ago
  that is true although there is also a ton of acid up there
  - Symmetry 6y ago
    At 50 km up only 7 ppm https://selenianboondocks.com/2013/11/venus-isru-what-do-we-have-to-work-with/ https://selenianboondocks.com/2013/11/venus-isru-what-do-we-... Which as far as I can tell isn't terrible if you don't breath it in and if you do the official allowed exposure time is 10 minutes for 5 ppm. I would recommend you wear goggles in addition to breathing equipment, though.
    - kortex 6y ago
      7 ppm of atomized H2SO4 will definitely sting a bit. That's roughly 7 g/m^3, TLV for sulfuric acid mist is 1 mg/m^3. Survivable but you would want to minimize time in it.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > Which as far as I can tell isn't terrible if you don't breath it in and if you do the official allowed exposure time is 10 minutes for 5 ppm. Presumably that's 5ppm under terrestrial conditions, Venus at 40km has substantially higher pressure, more than is explained by the higher temperature alone, so any given ppm is a greater number of molecules per cm³, right?

jjcon 6y ago

The idea that these regions may contain life (and the observations that suggest this) predate those probes. That doesn’t rule out a ‘contamination’. But considering this is just another observation in a long line of interesting data I think makes it less likely.