3 ms·

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.
    • cygx 6y ago
      There are known abiotic pathways. They've been ruled out. There are unknown biotic pathways known to exist (from the press conference, biotic phosphane production on earth apparently still has some large question marks attached?). There might be unknown abiotic pathways ('unknown unknowns'). In principle, there could be some clever way to rule them out based on the constraints of the Venusian environment.