September 14, 2020

Venus Might Host Life, New Discovery Suggests
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/venus-might-host-life-new-discovery-suggests/

There is something funky going on in the clouds of Venus. Telescopes have detected unusually high concentrations of the molecule phosphine—a stinky, flammable chemical typically associated with feces, farts and rotting microbial activity—in an atmospheric layer far above the planet’s scorching surface.

The finding is curious because here on Earth, phosphine is essentially always associated with living creatures, either as a by-product of metabolic processes or of human technology such as industrial fumigants and methamphetamine labs. Although toxic to many organisms, the molecule has been singled out as a potentially unambiguous signature of life because it is so difficult to make through ordinary geological or atmospheric action.

So, it might turn out that life on Earth is not as unique as we once thought.

YES, This is REAL NEWS:

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/14/912619891/a-possible-sign-of-life-right-next-door-to-earth-on-venus

https://www.nature.com/articles/2151259a0

https://news.mit.edu/2020/life-venus-phosphine-0914

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2254413-have-we-spotted-alien-life-floating-in-the-clouds-of-venus/

https://eos.org/articles/could-life-be-floating-in-venuss-clouds

https://physicsworld.com/a/has-evidence-of-life-been-found-in-the-clouds-of-venus/

https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/did-we-find-signs-of-alien-life-in-the-clouds-of-venus-heres-what-the-experts-say/

https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2015/

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2020/september/possible-signs-of-life-found-on-venus.html

Cool! It wouldn't surprise me, I'm not one to believe we're the only ones in the Universe.

women are from venus. they stunk it up then came here

As did the men who are from Mars!

this is a venus thread

actually tom all joking aside that is wicked cool.
to bad steve jobs' car couldn't do a drive by and check it out with some high tech gear

Give it time, they are already planning a visit for more data.

Thing is, the Universe is so vast there must be life elsewhere but what makes this so significant is the fact it is verifiable science.

I just skimmed the articles and the citation but it seems there is so much acid in the Venusian clouds, life as we know it couldn't exist there yet we measure significant amounts of phosphine to the point it can't be other than life generated.

We (as a species) have speculated about life on other planets and moons but this is the first time we have ever found actual evidence supporting the theories.

We didn't find life, we found evidence of life. Evidence of life where life as we understand it couldn't occur.
I imagine there will be some science books rewritten because what we thought we understood isn't reality.

The clouds are far more acidic than any environments where microbes make their home on Earth. And instead of water, the clouds on Venus contain droplets of concentrated sulfuric acid; the atmosphere is so bereft of water that it's many times drier than the driest desert on Earth.

We "Used To" think life required water. Now we find out that might not be so.

The 'actual report' is here... https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-1174-4
Sources are cited w/links

Fascinating. Thanks for sharing the info, Tom.

It is good but it is not life like human or dogs or anything only some microbs that are living in oxygen free environment.

Chances are the only place you will find humans or dogs are on this planet.
The significance of this is not the type of life but the fact life has occured someplace other than Earth.

If it is found to be PH3 from life in Venus' atmosphere it means in one star system two of eight planets are capeable of generating life.
If you ramp up the ratio to all the planets in the Universe that is a staggering number of planets capeable of generating life.

This means, life is not unique to this planet. It means life is abundant in the Universe. It means life can evolve over time.
It means, life on Earth is not so special afterall.

There are many star systems much older than Sol. It took life 4.5 billion years to reach its current manifestation on Earth. Its now likely there are planets inhabited by lifeforms ranging from PH3 producing organisms in a hostile atmosphere to organisms far exceeding this planets most advanced lifeforms populating the Universe.

It has social, religious and possibly even personal rammifications on how we fit in the grand scheme of reality. Before this discovery, Earth was the only life-bearing planet in a Universe of trillions of planets. A shining light of life in a dark reality.
Now we KNOW this isn't true.

If you read the report you would realize they still are not 100% positive the PH3 comes from living organisms. More data is needed to confirm the discovery. Its how science works. A sample return mission will clarify any doubts. However, scientific reasoning should not be easily dismissed.

I'm not sure about life on an early Venus, but there sure is no life now, not with temperatures and pressures as they are today.
People often talk about SETI and attempting to find life in the universe, and, sending messages to the stars. Surely these people must know the Inverse Square Law, where quantity (in this case, RF energy) is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source. Whereby the energy of few thousand Watts of RF Energy into a dish with lets say 39dB of gain is proportional to a couple of mega-Watts EIRP. 1000 miles away this mega-Watt is but a few picowatts of RF energy. At 20 million miles, less than 100th of a femtowatt, then attowatts. This far too low a signal to pull out of the noise a signal from the background random radiation, even if your computer were looking for patterns in the noise floor.
The only reason that the earth can intercept the 20W signals from the Voyager probes (now out of the solar system), is the many dishes joined together to create the deep space network that is a dish the size of a small country; even then the data rate is in bits per second, and, so narrow the frequency set in the Hydrogen line (21cms (1420.4075MHz)). Then, even with cryogenic cooling of state-of-the-art Germanium diode detectors, the network can just discern Voyager's signals. Hey, and that is not even one light-year away, let alone 4.5 light-years to Proxima Centauri. The earth's signals just disappear into the noise, so low, that even a quantum computer could never discern the signal from random space noise that would have millions of times more energy. So, the Little Green Men would never know we were or are here. Oh, then there is the return signal (should there be a reply) taking millions of years at the speed of light, only to land on deaf ears. Humanity died out long ago. 73 de Tony

You do know life doesn't and usually isn't intelligent life as we define it, right?
You also realize this thread is based on real scientific discovery, right?
Welcome to the forums tho.

hindu god of war mangal is mars !


bite your tongue please

The swirling clouds of Venus just “look“ like they are teaming with life.

Just like how polished stone slabs with hydrothermal cracks just look like they bear ancient wisdom and hold compelling memories they wish they could express.

Again, ya didn't read the thread.
The swirling clouds of Venus "Look" like a hostile soup of death to scientists.
This is what makes this discovery so significant.

There should NOT be evidence of life in the swirling clouds of Venus, yet evidence has been detected that there is life.

A small amount of PH3 can be caused by natural processes or panspermia but there is too great of a concentration of PH3 there for it to be anything other than life.

The swirling clouds of Venus is the last place we should detect signs of life.
Its an extremely hostile environment. Extremely acidic and water barren.
Its the fact signs have been detected that is significant.

A similar significance of finding life in volcanic pools at Yellowstone or around black smokers in the deep oceans.
On Earth, ya kinda expect it. The biosphere is teeming with life.
But, on another planet as hostile as Venus, ya don't expect to find evidence of life. In fact, its less likely to find evidence of life at Venus than any other planet besides Earth.

If it is life, that determination will instigate one of two possibilities.
If the life is incipient or via panspermia.

If it is found to be incipient; we will want to know what conditions caused the life to form there, then thrive enough to create that much PH3.

If it is determined to be panspermia; this would indicate high volumes of life floating in interplanetary space and increases the chances of finding life at even more celestial locations. Likely the clouds of gas giants or frozen into one of their moons.

PH3 is normally not focused upon when looking at spectrography from other planets. The significance of this discovery was also the fact someone 'looked' where they usually don't and found something they were not expecting.
Depending on the outcome of further investigation, we may need to look at other planets again to see what their PH3 levels look like.

We 'used to' think to have life there 'must be' liquid water present. The discovery of significant PH3 in the swirling clouds of Venus means we were 'wrong' about that assumption.
What else are we wrong about?

The next question is how much heat plays in it all.
If we find similar results at Jupiter, heat may not be as significant a factor as we think.
Granted, Venus is closer to the Sun, and hotter. The swirling clouds of Venus also catch higher doses of direct radiation than Earth. Is that significant to the PH3?

Is the organics which create these high concentrations of PH3 on the outer surface of the clouds or deeper within?

In the immediate future there will be further spectroscopy and possibly a sample return mission. As we 'learn' more about the reality it will allow us to focus on a larger platform for determining what constitutes the conditions for life.
It may one day allow us to 'find' life at many distant locations, possibly even looking at spectrographs from other star systems.
The implication of this discovery has many possible benefits to mankind's quest to understand the reality in which we exist.

It was more that I didn’t write very well than I didn’t read the thread. I meant TO ME it lookslike there is life brewing in Venus, based on the astronomic photographs of the clouds.

All cells on earth have potassium in the cytoplasmic fluid. Fish have sodium – potassium pumps in their cell membranes to exchange potassium for sodium and keep the balance and the salt out of the cell. Potassium brines occur in hydrothermal veins, not in the sea. Therefore, this may have been where life started.

Any geothermal water springs through carbonate rocks would have carbonate as a buffer to maintain a neutral pH from sulfuric acid seeping in from the atmosphere. Just like oxygen, which is a corrosive gas that primitive anaerobic lifeforms cannot survive in, sulfuric acid provides a proton gradient as a source of chemical energy for metabolic processes. Also, there is a cold layer at roughly negative 100°C at 75 miles above ground surface. That means there are are more hospitable temperatures in between.

It is fascinating to me in any case. I expect the world is too distracted from other hot topics to pay too much attention to the discovery as they would otherwise. But it’s not going away. I’ve heard scientist said it could be life or it could be a spectroscope instrument error. Perhaps it could be extracellular metabolic processes. But the scientists know more than me in that department, so I will take their word that it is probably life.

Yeah, I went and read a bit more in depth, the original citation.
There are still a lot of questions. More data is needed to say definitely if it is or isn't PH3 from organic process.

But... in all of history there has never been a more promising potential for confirmed extra-planetary life and that fact alone is substantial.

Many people 'believe' the vast space of the Universe must contain other life but its all been 'belief'. This discovery stands a chance of changing 'belief' into 'reality'. A fundamental change of man's place in things.

Life, may not be as 'special' in the Universe as many think?
What does that do to many ideas of 'self'?
What does it do to many 'beliefs'?

If life 'can' form on two distinctly different planets in a single star system, how likely is it humans are the dominant life form in the Universe?
There are many, many much older planets existing than Earth and Venus.
Gotta remember we are experiencing life 4.5 billion years in the making.
Try to imagine life at 6 billion years or more?
To other life, we might be considered 'primitive life forms'.

This news causes an explosion of potential for change in the human equation.
So many possible changes with unpredictable ramifications because we have never actually been faced with such a reality.

I don't believe we're the only ones either... but Venus? Venus is 465C!
That would explain why I ain't living there: I'm fair skinned.

The heat isn't as much of a factor in this as you might think.
Venusian clouds are significantly cooler.
The really wacky stuff is the fact those clouds are made up of very highly acidic acid and no water.
Imagine your skin if you lived in an ocean of super acidic sulfuric acid.

Does it also mean life is eternal and that my life on earth will continue on Venus where I evolved from and then visit planet earth again (may be as a dog) after spending 1 billion years on Venus? perhaps make sure to bring along some baking soda to neutralise the acidity (if PH3) on Venus:)))

Update: Science 27 Nov 2020:
Vol. 370, Issue 6520, pp. 1021
DOI: 10.1126/science.370.6520.1021

Potential signs of life on Venus are fading fast
By Paul Voosen


View Full Text
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6520/1021.full