Possible evidence found for life on Venus - Astronomy Now

September 14, 2020.

Includes video with the Royal Astronomical Society's press briefing.

"The best evidence for life beyond Earth has been found in the most surprising of places – the atmosphere of Venus.

A team led by Jane Greaves, who is a professor at Cardiff University, has detected the presence of phosphine gas in Venus’ clouds. The intriguing thing about phosphine, which is a molecule formed of three hydrogen atoms and one phosphorous atom, is that on Earth its only natural source is from some anaerobic (i.e., non-oxygen breathing) microbial lifeforms. No known geological mechanism or non-biological chemical reaction produces it on our planet, although it is produced deep inside gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn where hydrogen is plentiful and the temperature and pressure extremely high."

astronomynow.com...

a reply to: Planetarian

already a thread on this topic.

a reply to: Planetarian

Lets embed the video for you.



Still I regard the old Viking Chicken soup test as evidence of life on Mars though that may have just been a chemical reaction.

As to this evidence of possible life in Venus it is as they say more than possible that Venus was actually once very earth like indeed but warmer, not as hot as it is today, it has two continental highlands and a world ocean basin lowland, it is possible and indeed probable that it once had liquid water on it's surface perhaps even until much more recently than we may think (the ocean boiled away into the atmosphere then the water lost most of it's hydrogen to space but there is still enough for it to constantly rain on Venus a rain that never reaches the ground a rain of concentrated acid, the surface is so hot lead would melt and radar topography showed a thin metallic snow on some of it's highest mountains, strange hell like world today), the sun was also colder as we now believe our own planet was once an ice planet from about 2.2 or 2.3 billion years ago to about 550 million years ago (though it had mostly warmed by the Cambrian explosion of about 650 million years BC).

This mean's that Venus may have been life compatible for literally billions of years, so too could Mars with a once thicker atmosphere and just maybe also a stronger magnetic field.

Meanwhile for the better part of two billion years (though probably less if there were substantial interglacial periods during the snow ball earth epoch) the earth was probably less suitable for life, at least multi cellular life (unless the theory is bunk? though chemosynthetic life or hardy life capable of surviving the extreme cold may have flourished, probably only microbial though this does not rule out Cambrien explosion (now actually debunked by older multicellular complex fossils having been found proving complex life forms existed on earth prior to the Cambrien epoch) type events upon the earth or indeed during the snow ball earth period during one of it's presumable many interglacial periods or before it over 2 billion years ago).
en.wikipedia.org...

I've also seen the suggestion that as the Russians sent many probes to Venus, it's also just possible that microbes hitched a ride on them and found the upper atmosphere there hospitable. Thus, we colonized Venus without realizing it.

So Venusian tardigrades.

originally posted by: ketsuko
I've also seen the suggestion that as the Russians sent many probes to Venus, it's also just possible that microbes hitched a ride on them and found the upper atmosphere there hospitable. Thus, we colonized Venus without realizing it.

So Venusian tardigrades.

I was talking to a scientist buddy about that today,and he reckons there hasn't been enough time for any microbes which may have hitched a ride from earth with the soviets to propagate the amount of phosphine they are detecting.
Which is a shame as I like the word "Venusitards."

a reply to: Silcone Synapse

The only way to really know would be to sample the atmosphere to try to capture whatever and bring it back. Alternatively, some sort of remote probe that would be capable of conducting at least minimal remote testing from orbit, but it would still have to have some way to secure samples.

a reply to: ketsuko
I hope if they ever get samples,they will test it on the ISS before bringing it back to earth-It could turn out to be really dangerous.
Or maybe it will be beneficial to us in some way,but best to be very careful about bringing it to earth,especially if it does turn out to be life of some kind.

No known geological mechanism or non-biological chemical reaction produces it on our planet, although it is produced deep inside gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn where hydrogen is plentiful and the temperature and pressure extremely high.

And there ya go...
I like articles that debunk themselves.
The glorified headline makes it seem some group(s) is desperate for funding.

a reply to: Gothmog

The question would then be if it was always there and we just never looked or if it suddenly appeared signalling something interesting going on with Venus ... or if the first hypothesis is correct.

a reply to: ketsuko

The question would then be if it was always there and we just never looked.

We never looked. Until 2017, with a telescope on Mauna Kea. The observation was then confirmed by a telescope in Chile.

Greaves is a radio astronomer who had worked in the ’80s at Hawaii's James Clerk Maxwell Telescope. In early 2017, she called up Jessica Dempsey, the telescope's site director, and asked if she could do something crazy. Then she presented her plan.

news.yahoo.com...

a reply to: Phage

Seems to me that's the sort of thing someone would have done before now - looked at the chemical composition of the atmosphere like that. Just because you don't expect to see certain things is no reason to not look if you can. Either way, the hard data would be valuable to science and you would actually know.

a reply to: ketsuko

looked at the chemical composition of the atmosphere like that.

They have. They just never looked for phosphine before. Or do you think that they should just always look for "everything?" That's not really practical, looking for very small concentrations of a particular chemical. But it's probably going to be done more often now, for phosphine anyhow.