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I agree. As much as I would like there to be microbial life in the atmosphere of Venus producing this excess phosphine, I suspect that there is some abiotic pr

I agree. As much as I would like there to be microbial life in the atmosphere of Venus producing this excess phosphine, I suspect that there is some abiotic process happening that we don't understand as yet. Also, I didn't have "finding alien life" on my 2020 bingo card. :P In any case, even if this should turn out to be a previously unknown, abiotic chemical process, it is still a significant discovery. It's just not time to run out and say "we found aliens!" yet.

tuna-piano 6y ago
Layperson, but my intuition is the same. Also, as far as I understand it, phosphine is seen on other planets (gas giants?). If phosphine is seen on these planets, is it really a stretch to think anything but similar explanations? Is there a TLDR for why we understand that phosphine can be on other planets without life but not on Venus without life?
- ta8964586 6y ago
  The temperature and pressure near the center of gas giants is crazy high. For Jupiter [0]: > The temperature at the core boundary is estimated to be 36,000 K (35,700 °C; 64,300 °F) and the interior pressure is roughly 3,000–4,500 GPa. It's similar to why you wouldn't be surprised to find diamonds deep underground in a mine, but if you found tiny diamonds forming in clouds that would be a major revelation. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter#Physical_characteristics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter#Physical_characteristi...
- pmiller2 6y ago
  As I understand it, the big deal about this discovery wasn't the presence of phosphine, but the amount of phosphine they found. The authors of the original paper went through all of the well-known scenarios for generating phosphine abiotically, and reasoned that the concentrations these would produce were too small for them to be the cause. That left either a biological mechanism (most likely microbial life in the atmosphere), or some unknown abiotic mechanism. Edit: Fixed typo, phosphate -> phosphine.

tuna-piano 6y ago

Layperson, but my intuition is the same. Also, as far as I understand it, phosphine is seen on other planets (gas giants?). If phosphine is seen on these planets, is it really a stretch to think anything but similar explanations? Is there a TLDR for why we understand that phosphine can be on other planets without life but not on Venus without life?

ta8964586 6y ago
The temperature and pressure near the center of gas giants is crazy high. For Jupiter [0]: > The temperature at the core boundary is estimated to be 36,000 K (35,700 °C; 64,300 °F) and the interior pressure is roughly 3,000–4,500 GPa. It's similar to why you wouldn't be surprised to find diamonds deep underground in a mine, but if you found tiny diamonds forming in clouds that would be a major revelation. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter#Physical_characteristics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter#Physical_characteristi...
pmiller2 6y ago
As I understand it, the big deal about this discovery wasn't the presence of phosphine, but the amount of phosphine they found. The authors of the original paper went through all of the well-known scenarios for generating phosphine abiotically, and reasoned that the concentrations these would produce were too small for them to be the cause. That left either a biological mechanism (most likely microbial life in the atmosphere), or some unknown abiotic mechanism. Edit: Fixed typo, phosphate -> phosphine.