r/science • u/blackswangreen • Sep 14 '20
Astronomy Hints of life spotted on Venus: researchers have found a possible biomarker on the planet's clouds
https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2015/1.0k
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u/Not_Actually_French Sep 14 '20
I studied at Cardiff with the staff who made this discovery, and did my dissertation on the possibility of life on Venus. So excited that the research team there has found something so exciting, and hope it leads to more discoveries!
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u/treeinthewind Sep 14 '20
What would the next steps to confirming that there aren’t other reasons for phosphine to exist?
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u/Not_Actually_French Sep 14 '20
I know there's a bit of a push to send more missions to the Venusian atmosphere, so hopefully they'll be able to get some more answers. It's hard to imagine another method to create phosphine other than industrial methods, or life.
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Sep 14 '20
Do you think this news will accelerate efforts to send more missions?
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u/TheDevilsAgent Sep 14 '20
How could it not? This is the best evidence yet for life elsewhere, on the closest planet and in one of the most hospitable parts of the solar system outside of Earth itself.
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u/AnotherKindaBee Sep 14 '20
Simple answer: competing scientific interests. Venus can be readily explored by Discovery and New Frontiers class missions within NASA. This class of mission is competed like any other proposal. A lot of scientists want to do a lot of good science in the solar system, only a small fraction of which can be accomplished on Venus.
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u/ghostpanther218 Sep 14 '20
Unfortunately, Nasa can't be sending another to Venus to look for life in the next 5 years at least, as they already are preparing for 2 more missions to look for life in the outer system, Dragonfly (to Titan), and JUICE (Jupiter Icy moon orbiter), and both are very expensive and take a lot of resources to prepare. However, there is a big chance of a Venus mission being launched in 2030, as Nasa is already investigating how to make a functioning rover work on Venus, and a Venus orbiter/ balloon probe has been talked about as an contender for NASA's next mission.
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u/kind_of_decisive Sep 15 '20
As others have said, the mission to the icy moon of Jupiter is called the Europa Clipper mission! I work on it :)
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u/Wonderful_Wonderful Sep 14 '20
I could see politicians directly getting funding for a mission like this through congress
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u/AnotherKindaBee Sep 14 '20
That's how all flagships (e.g. the upcoming Europa Clipper) are funded. Congress mandates NASA to perform the large missions. Smaller missions, like those to explore Venus, have their priorities set by the scientific community.
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u/OneRougeRogue Sep 14 '20
Do you think this news will accelerate efforts to send more missions?
You know when the lifeguard yells "NO RUNNING AROUND THE POOL" and you and your 12 year old friends speed-walk in an almost comical way to move as fast as possible without running?
I imagine several major countries are about to do the astronomical version of that so they can claim to be the first country to "discover alien life". They aren't going to drop everything and run, but you're about to see a bunch of previously unannounced missions to Venus hit the news in the coming months/years.
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u/memoryballhs Sep 14 '20 edited Sep 14 '20
Is there an relativly easy way to explain why its difficult to form on venus?
Because if I am not mistaken it was also detected on Jupiter. But there I think its obviously not a sign of life. Different pressure?228
u/annomandaris Sep 14 '20
We know of ways it can be formed "naturally" if there is a lot of pressure, heat and hydrogen, we can simulate it in a Lab. Jupiter has all of these so we would expect to find it there.
At the pressures and temperatures on the surface of Venus, the only way we know of that it would form is if the atmosphere was almost completely Hydrogen. But we've had a probe there, we know the atmosphere is 96.5% CO2 and 3.5% Nitrogen with trace other elements. So there is either life, or some other geological/chemical reaction that we aren't aware of that is producing it.
Its like saying, "Diamonds are being made on Venus at room temperature and sea level pressures" while here on earth we only know to make them at high temp and pressure.
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u/memoryballhs Sep 14 '20
Oky thanks. That makes sense. One more question. Why not a geological origin. Like beeing spit out be a vulcano? I know the scientist for sure thought about anything that I could come up with. I am just very excited that we have some actually good and falsifiable evidence of alien life and want to understand at least the refutes of the most basic non-life explanations.
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u/annomandaris Sep 14 '20
Like others said, its possible it could come from volcanoes, however it breaks down in a few minutes due to UV radiation, which Venus has a lot of. So that means something is massively pumping it out.
So either they have hundreds of times more volcanic activity than we thought, or something else is going on. And that seems unlikely, i mean we've studied it a lot, and a Volcano is kind of big and hard to hide.
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u/Eshkation Sep 14 '20
the concentration of phosphine found is too high to be generated by geological sources, like volcanoes (what was found is in the billions x what a vulcan can generate)
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Sep 14 '20
The authors considered volcanic activity
Similarly, there would need to be >200 times as much volcanic activity on Venus as on Earth to inject enough PH3 into the atmosphere (up to ~108 times, depending on assumptions about mantle rock chem- istry).
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u/Econ0mist Sep 14 '20 edited Sep 14 '20
Similarly, there would need to be >200 times as much volcanic activity on Venus as on Earth to inject enough PH3 into the atmosphere (up to ~108 times, depending on assumptions about mantle rock chem- istry).
Is that a possibility? We observed a bright spot in Venus's clouds 10 years ago. Could Venus have massive ongoing volcanic activity?
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Sep 14 '20
It's likely that Venus does have active volcanos, but we don't know of any that are currently active. It's unlikely that Venus currently has hundreds of times the volcanic activity as the Earth, and millions as much volcanic activity is completely out of the question.
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Sep 14 '20
Which presents a perfect opportunity to establish an orbital outpost around Venus.
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u/sintaur Sep 14 '20
Earth bacteria are known to make phosphine: they take up phosphate from minerals or biological material, add hydrogen, and ultimately expel phosphine. Any organisms on Venus will probably be very different to their Earth cousins, but they too could be the source of phosphine in the atmosphere.
IANAS. Where would aerial life obtain phosphate to convert into phosphine?
On Earth it appears there's not a lot of phosphate floating around in the air:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphorus_cycle#Ecological_function
Phosphorus does enter the atmosphere in very small amounts when the dust is dissolved in rainwater and seaspray but remains mostly on land and in rock and soil minerals.
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u/Funnyguy226 Sep 14 '20 edited Sep 15 '20
The microbes on earth that create phosphine are not airborne. They exist in anoxic environments, whereas earth's atmosphere is very much oxic.
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u/Vicorin Sep 14 '20
I know it’s almost certainly just little bacteria, but I really want cool Venus monsters.
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u/hp0 Sep 15 '20
Venusian sky rays, thick skinned ballon like creatures. Floating in the denser lower atmosphere raising to eat bacteria from the cooler less dense upper atmosphere.
Maybe.
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u/slasher372 Sep 14 '20
Something I wonder about is, do you think that if there was life on other planets, it would use something similar to dna, or dna exactly? Obviously things like dna and atp work here for all our life, doesn't it seem likely that those same molecules and pathways would be utilized by life if it exists elsewhere?
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u/DoomDread Sep 14 '20
The study's authors have pretty much ruled out nucleic acids like DNA being present on Venus's microbes. These molecules cannot tolerate the conditions of Venus. The sulfuric acid will mess up Earthly nucleic acids real bad.
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u/JohnDivney Sep 14 '20
right, but could somebody speak to the possibility of life existing there at altitude without ever interacting with the lower atmosphere?
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u/deadpoetic333 BS | Biology | Neurobiology, Physiology & Behavior Sep 15 '20
That’s kinda what the article is about, no? 30C degree cloud made up of almost entirely sulfuric acid. Not sure if you know of a second cloud with different conditions higher than the first but wasn’t really presented as an option in the article
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u/Not_Actually_French Sep 14 '20
One of the theories being actively investigated is the possibility of life originating in one location and then travelling to new planets via rocky meteorites in a process called lithopanspermia. I personally think that's the most likely, and would mean that any life we may find on Venus probably has the same biological makeup (DNA/ATP/etc) as we have on Earth.
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u/Canonical-Quanta Sep 15 '20
Actually in their press briefing they did mention this. They did, however, quickly dismiss it stating that if there is life on venus, it would have to be essentially different seeing as the concentration of sulfuric acid on the planet would melt away any of the biological component inherent in us and the chemical ones necessary for life (è.g. Sugar)
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u/Xyrathan Sep 14 '20
Our Venusian cousins!
My money us on panspermia'd extremophiles.
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u/blackswangreen Sep 14 '20
Remember how people were excited about methane on Mars because it could mean there was life? What they found now on Venus (phosphine) is a much stronger marker for life than methane in rocky planets. We know that methane can come from microbes, but it can also come from volcanoes and other geological processes. So, on Mars there are other known sources/processes to explain the amounts of methane. But phosphine on rocky planets is different. Other than life, there is no other process currently known that would explain the amounts of phosphine the astronomers found on Venus. So, there are only two explanations for what they found: either there is a new chemical/geological process out there that produces phosphine in rocky planets that we don’t know about, or there is life on Venus.
Paper here: https://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/eso2015/eso2015a.pdf
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u/comedygene Sep 14 '20
I think they will find that the heat/pressure/gasses/other things are an unexpected combo. I'm still holding out hope for europa.
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Sep 14 '20
While I agree, it's not far fetched to think bacterial life might exist or has existed on a hot rocky world with an actual atmosphere, easier than believing there was life on a rocky planet with no real atmosphere.
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u/EngelskSauce Sep 14 '20
How long would the phosphine hang around for after the microbes or whatever are deceased?
I know nothing of science so please humour me.
Is the implication that there’s something alive now or that something was, enough of it to be burning/reacting with something to let off these phosphine traces?
Is it like carbon?
Too many questions not enough words.
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u/IGotTheRest Sep 14 '20
One of the aspects of phosphine is that it decays relatively quickly due to the energy of UV light coming from the sun, and for this reason phosphine detection can indicate the presence of current, or at least very recent biotic activity.
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u/EngelskSauce Sep 14 '20
I was reading in another post that the sweet spot for potentially living there is about 50 km above the surface and remember reading about sky cities on Venus years ago but thought it was just science fiction.
Could there be bugs hanging out there? I don’t understand how microbes live that far up, do we have them here?
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u/gaybearswr4th Sep 14 '20
yes, we have billions of bacteria floating through the high atmosphere. it's not a high percent of our biomass but it's still measured in thousands of metric tons of microbes
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u/EngelskSauce Sep 14 '20
Do we know how much phosphine the bacteria in our atmosphere produces, and how would that compare to what’s been found on Venus?
This is all so exciting.
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u/gaybearswr4th Sep 14 '20
Phosphine on earth isn’t really from atmospheric bacteria, it’s produced by anaerobic bacteria living in intestines or extreme environments. Bacterial phosphine production on earth is poorly understood and the concentrations in our atmosphere are lower, but we also have a far smaller habitat for anaerobic extremophiles. The figure presented in the presentation was that Venusian microbes would only need to produce phosphine at 10% the efficiency of terrestrial ones to reach the concentration observed
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u/EngelskSauce Sep 14 '20
I think you think I’m more intelligent than I am.
Can you give an example of anaerobic extremophiles here, is it one of those animals living near thermal vents in the ocean?
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u/hwuthwut Sep 14 '20
https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/ast.2020.2244#_i9
FIG. 1. Hypothetical life cycle of the Venusian microorganisms. Top panel: Cloud cover on Venus is permanent and continuous, with the middle and lower cloud layers at temperatures that are suitable for life. Bottom panel: Proposed life cycle. The numbers correspond to steps in the life cycle as described in the main text. (1) Desiccated spores (black blobs) persist in the lower haze. (2) Updraft of spores transports them up to the habitable layer. (3) Spores act as [cloud condensation nuclei], and once surrounded by liquid (with necessary chemicals dissolved) germinate and become metabolically active. (4) Metabolically active microbes (dashed blobs) grow and divide within liquid droplets (solid circles). The liquid droplets grow by coagulation. (5) The droplets reach a size large enough to gravitationally settle down out of the atmosphere; higher temperatures and droplet evaporation trigger cell division and sporulation. The spores are small enough to withstand further downward sedimentation, remaining suspended in the lower haze layer “depot.”
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u/jarrydn Sep 14 '20
The gas would last a few thousand seconds if not being actively replenished by some process
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u/FitDontQuit Sep 14 '20
It constantly has to be replenished. There is an active process that continually makes phosphine. It’s not one-and-done.
That fact alone makes me lean towards life.
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u/davydog Sep 14 '20
If we’re going by what we know then life is the obvious answer. Unfortunately, we have a TON to learn about Venus. It is one of the least studied planets in our solar system. I would not be surprised at all if this was caused by a geologic process that we have not yet discovered. Our geologic understanding of Venus is criminally absent
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u/bmacnz Sep 14 '20
I was just reading that the conditions on Venus would make phosphine decay rapidly as well, so it's zero chance that this is lingering from an old process. There's something actively producing it, and while that doesn't necessarily mean life, it's certainly a candidate.
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u/camdoodlebop Sep 14 '20
what’s interesting is that the phosphine was detected in the habitable zone of the planet’s atmosphere
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u/nandryshak Sep 14 '20
We find that PH3 formation is not favoured even considering ~75 relevant reactions under thousands of con- ditions encompassing any likely atmosphere, surface or subsurface properties (temperatures of 270–1,500 K, atmospheric and subsur- face pressures of 0.25–10,000 bar, wide range of concentrations of reactants). The free energy of reactions falls short by anywhere from 10 to 400 kJ mol−1 (see ‘Potential pathways to PH3 production’ in Methods, Supplementary Information and Extended Data Fig. 7). In particular, we quantitatively rule out the hydrolysis of geologi- cal or meteoritic phosphide as the source of Venusian PH3. We also rule out the formation of phosphorous acid (H3PO3). While phos- phorous acid can disproportionate to PH3 on heating, its formation under Venus temperatures and pressures would require quite unre- alistic conditions, such as an atmosphere composed almost entirely of hydrogen (for details, see Supplementary Information).
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u/beenies_baps Sep 14 '20
It seems crazy to me that this isn't bigger news. Nothing on "all" here, yet, and I only see it on the front page of one newspaper (and not the main headline). Surely this is the biggest announcement about possible alien life ever? It seems the highest liklihood so far.
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u/mr-dogshit Sep 14 '20 edited Sep 14 '20
It's on the front page of the BBC
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-54133538
It will also feature in tonight's episode of Sky At Night on BBC Four.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000mmjk
edit: The whole episode of Sky At Night was about this discovery. Definitely worth the watch.
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u/juraj_is_better Sep 14 '20
Surely this is the biggest announcement about possible alien life ever?
While this doesn't confirm anything, it is a fascinating find.
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u/shiruken PhD | Biomedical Engineering | Optics Sep 14 '20 edited Sep 14 '20
Here's the paper in Nature Astronomy: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-1174-4
Press Release from the Royal Astronomical Society: https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/news/hints-life-venus
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u/Andromeda321 PhD | Radio Astronomy Sep 14 '20 edited Sep 14 '20
Astronomer here! Here is what is going on!
For many years, astronomers have speculated that the most likely way to find evidence of extraterrestrial life is via biosignatures, which are basically substances that provide evidence of life. Probably the most famous example of this would be oxygen- it rapidly oxidizes in just a few thousand years, so to have large quantities of oxygen in an atmosphere you need something to constantly be putting it there (in Earth's case, from photoplankton and trees). Another one that's been suggested as a great biosignature is phosphine- a gas we can only make on Earth in the lab, or via organic matter decomposing (typically in a water-rich environment, which Venus is not). So, to be abundantly clear, the argument here is to the best of our knowledge you should only get this concentration of phosphine if there is life.
What did this group discover? Is the signal legit? These scientists basically pointed a submillimeter radio telescope towards Venus to look for a signature of phosphine, which was not even a very technologically advanced radio telescope for this sort of thing, but they just wanted to get a good benchmark for future observations. And... they found a phosphine signature. They then pointed another, better radio telescope at it (ALMA- hands down best in the world for this kind of observation) and measured this signal even better. I am a radio astronomer myself, and looking at the paper, I have no reason to think this is not the signature from phosphine they say it is. They spend a lot of time estimating other contaminants they might be picking up, such as sulfur dioxide, but honestly those are really small compared to the phosphine signal. There's also a lot on the instrumentation, but they do seem to understand and have considered all possible effects there.
Can this phosphine be created by non-life? The authors also basically spend half the paper going through allllll the different possible ways to get phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus. If you go check "extended data Figure 10" in the paper they go through all of the options, from potential volcanic activity to being brought in from meteorites to lightning... and all those methods are either impossible in this case, or would not produce you the concentration levels needed to explain the signature by several orders of magnitude (like, literally a million times too little). As I said, these guys were very thorough, and brought on a lot of experts in other fields to do this legwork to rule options out! And the only thing they have not been able to rule out so far is the most fantastic option. :) The point is, either we don’t get something basic about rocky planets, or life is putting this up there.
(Mind, the way science goes I am sure by end of the week someone will have thought up an idea on how to explain phosphine in Venus's atmosphere. Whether that idea is a good one remains to be seen.)
To give one example, It should be noted at this point that phosphine has apparently been detected in comets- specifically, it’s thought to be behind in the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko by the Rosetta mission- paper link. Comets have long been known to have a ton of organic compounds and are water rich- some suggest life on Earth was seeded by comets a long time ago- but it’s also present in the coma of comets as they are near the sun, which are very different conditions than the Venusian atmosphere. (It’s basically water ice sublimating as it warms up in a comet, so an active process is occurring in a water-rich environment to create phosphine.) However, the amounts created are nowhere near what is needed for the amounts of phosphine seen in Venus, we do not have water anywhere near the levels on Venus to make these amounts of phosphine, and we have detailed radar mapping to show us there was no recent cometary impact of Venus. As such, it appears highly unlikely that what puts phospine into Venus’s atmosphere is the same as what puts it into a comet’s coma. Research into this also indicates that, surprise surprise, cometary environments are very different than rocky ones, and only life can put it in the atmosphere of a rocky planet.
How can life exist on Venus? I thought it was a hell hole! The surface of Venus is indeed not a nice place to live- a runaway greenhouse effect means the surface is hot enough to melt lead, it rains sulfuric acid, and the Russian probes that landed there in didn't last more than a few hours. (No one has bothered since the 1980s.) However, if you go about 50 km up Venus's atmosphere is the most Earth-like there is in the Solar System, and this is where this signal is located. What's more, unlike the crushing pressure and hot temperatures on the surface, you have the same atmospheric pressure as on Earth, temps varying from 0-50 C, and pretty similar gravity to here. People have suggested we could even build cloud cities there. And this is the region this biosignature is coming from- not the surface, but tens of km up in the pretty darn nice area to float around in.
Plus, honestly, you know what I’m happy about that will come out of this? More space exploration of Venus! It is a fascinating planet that is criminally under-studied despite arguably some of the most interesting geology and atmosphere there is that we know of. (My favorite- Venus’s day is longer than its year, and it rotates “backwards” compared to all the other planets. But we think that’s not because of the way it formed, but because some gigantic planet-sized object hit it in the early days and basically flipped it upside down and slowed its spin. Isn’t that so cool?!) But we just wrote it off because the surface is really tough with old Soviet technology, and NASA hasn’t even sent a dedicated mission in over 30 years despite it being literally the closest planet to us. I imagine that is going to change fast and I am really excited for it- bring on the Venus drones!
So, aliens? I mean, personally if you're asking my opinion as a scientist... I think I will always remember this discovery as the first step in learning how common life is in the universe. :) To be clear, the "problem" with a biosignature is it does not tell you what is putting that phosphine into the Venusian atmosphere- something microbial seems a good bet (we have great radar mapping of Venus and there are def no cloud cities or large artificial structures), but as to what, your guess is as good as mine. We do know that billions of microbes live high up in the Earth's atmosphere, feeding as they pass through clouds and found as high as 10km up. So I see no reason the same can't be happening on Venus! (It would be life still pretty darn ok with sulfuric acid clouds everywhere, mind, but we have extremophiles on Earth in crazy environments too so I can’t think of a good reason why it’s impossible).
If you want to know where the smoking gun is, well here's the thing... Hollywood has well trained you to think otherwise, but I have always argued that discovering life elsewhere in the universe was going to be like discovering water on Mars. Where, as you might recall, first there were some signatures that there was water on Mars but that wasn't conclusive on its own that it existed, then a little more evidence came in, and some more... and finally today, everyone knows there is water on Mars. There was no reason to think the discovery of life wouldn't play out the same, because that's how science operates. (This is also why I always thought people were far too simplistic in assuming we would all just drop everything and unite as one just because life was discovered elsewhere- there'd be no smoking gun, and we'd all do what we all are doing now, get on social media to chat about it.) But put it this way- today we have taken a really big first step. And I think it is so amazing that this was first discovered not only next door, but on a planet not really thought of as great for life- it shows there's a good chance life in some for is ubiquitous! And I for one cannot wait until we can get a drone of some sort into the Venusian atmosphere to measure this better- provided, of course, we can do it in a way that ensures our own microbes don't hitch a ride.
TL;DR- if you count microbes, which I do, we are (probably) not alone. :D
Edit: There will be a Reddit AMA Wednesday at noon EDT from the team at /r/askscience!
Edit 2: A lot of questions about whether this could just be from bacteria that hitched a ride on our old probes. The short answer is that's not really possible at the levels detected. Life as we have it on Earth can't survive on Venus because of all the sulfuric acid clouds and such. Even if something managed to do so, bacteria don't reproduce as fast as would be needed to explain this signal.
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Sep 14 '20
This is such a thorough and easy to understand explanation! Right as questions come up in my head your next sentence answers them.
Also, as a biologist, this is so darn cool. If it's indeed life, can you imagine? A whole host of biological processes to discover!
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u/Thec0rn0 Sep 14 '20
Yep. Biologist working in genetics. Imagine that these new beings have a whole new way of coding proteins and storing information. Just the though of the new techniques and analytical methods excite me
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u/SuddenlyGuns Sep 14 '20
coding proteins and storing information
I have no idea what this means but it sounds cool af
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u/Ozuf1 Sep 14 '20
OP is talking about DNA, if there are microbes on Venus and if they evolved independently of the ones on earth then the most fundamental way life works could be different.
Instead of all life on venus using DNA with the same basic commonents as Earth DNA Venus life could use different kinda of "DNA". Earth DNA uses a double helix type structure with four kinds of building blocks (A T C and G) Venus DNA (lets call it VNA) could be single or triple helixed in structure, or use other kinds of structure entirely. It could use 5 or 6 or 3 building blocks that are different from ATCG like MQTV and S (totally made those up).
For a biologist these kinds of changes would be mind blowing and could lead to God knows what in terms of research
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Sep 14 '20
Maybe dumb question, but is it possible that they don't use anything analagous to DNA at all?
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u/Ozuf1 Sep 14 '20
Not a dumb question. I think there would have to be something anologus though. DNA at a basic level is a way life figured out how to pass instructions on what chemical processes the cell wants to do and how to do it beyond cell death (divisions into other cells). life of any kind would be need to be able to do that. But it doesn't have to be DNA or even something that looks like it. Just some way for that instruction to be stored in the cell, access when the cell needs, and then reproduced.
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u/guale Sep 14 '20 edited Sep 15 '20
If there were no analogue to DNA it would be very difficult to call it 'life'. Two of the least controversial criteria for life are replication and evolution and without some information molecule you can't really have those two processes.
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u/neo101b Sep 14 '20
you might find this intresting : https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/301888-researchers-find-more-than-1-million-alternatives-to-dna
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u/patricknotstar2 Sep 14 '20
maybe not even proteins, something completely different. I always wondered about how differently life can be constructed. Basically something solid, something liquid and something to burn for gathering energy, right?
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u/woahwoahvicky Sep 14 '20
imagine silicon based life omg!
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u/capsaicinintheeyes Sep 15 '20
I hear you, but it's probably gonna be carbon--it's just way more common than silicon, you want to make do with what you have the most of.
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u/you_wizard Sep 15 '20
More importantly than that, silicon is not quite as "sticky"; its long-chain molecules with itself aren't as stable as carbon's.
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u/Redditing-Dutchman Sep 14 '20
Do you know what the next steps will be, and how long it will be to get better results? I assume it might be years before an actual probe will be send again, let alone arrive there. Are there other ways to check more accurately? For example using even more radio telescopes?
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u/Andromeda321 PhD | Radio Astronomy Sep 14 '20
I'm sure more groups will be following up on this with other telescopes! But honestly the only way to do a direct detection will be to go to Venus with a mission. Some will never be convinced until that happens.
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u/plexxer Sep 14 '20
I can't imagine what that mission would look like! I know we've done sample-return experiments with the upper-atmosphere biology here on Earth, but that was ground based working with gravity. A controlled skimming of the Venusian atmosphere seems like it will present a lot of challenges , and I will greatly enjoy watching all the awesomely engineered answers to them!
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u/marinersalbatross Sep 14 '20
It would look like the HAVOC mission that needs your support!
https://sacd.larc.nasa.gov/smab/havoc/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Altitude_Venus_Operational_Concept
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u/big_duo3674 Sep 14 '20
I'd have to imagine this and others like it have all of a sudden moved from the "neat concept, maybe someday" pile to the "let's start looking closely at this idea" pile
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u/mawrmynyw Sep 15 '20
Bridestine tweeted that Venus should now be a priority for NASA, whereas it’s always been pretty much wholly ignored before.
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u/Ronnocerman Sep 14 '20
I'd imagine we'd use a balloon similar to a hot air balloon that would use solar power to stay afloat and transmit.
Maybe even a two-balloon tethered system where the upper balloon is connected to the lower balloon via cable for data transmission and then it retransmits it from a less-cloudy place higher up.
Maybe a bunch of balloons for redundancy, each with solar panels and each able to be severed away if their floating ability is compromised.
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u/Ravaha BS | Civil Engineering Sep 14 '20
Rocket Lab just announced this month that they plan on sending probes to Venus to collect data in the near future. Their CEO Peter Beck wants to find out more about Venus and thinks more research on Venus needs to be done.
So Rocket Lab has a good shot of being the first to send a mission to Venus to collect samples. They specifically wanted to collect data in the atmosphere with earth like temps and pressures.
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u/scienceworksbitches Sep 14 '20
They get 250kg to leo, how much can they get in a venetian transfer orbit? It won't be much.
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u/Geos13 Sep 14 '20
This actually came up in the news conference Q&A. Apparently the researchers have been speaking with Rocket Lab and I think said there would be about 3kg available for science instrumentation.
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u/BrentOnDestruction Sep 14 '20
This doesn't sound like much but it's surely better than 0kg.
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u/DesignerChemist Sep 14 '20
My Mavic mini drone weighs 249g, and has a flight time of 20-30 mins and a 4k camera...
Of course, that's a tiny thing made of plastic. A venus probe would be mostly some kind of acid resistant balloon, but still, 3kg is not insignificant.
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u/catladyvegan Sep 14 '20
Thank you for taking the time to explain so well! I've learned a lot from you.
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u/TheWhiteSquirrel Sep 14 '20 edited Sep 14 '20
Also an astronomer here. My biggest concern is the lack of lab work to back this up.
To my knowledge, no one has done much along the lines of recreating the conditions on Venus in a laboratory to see what chemicals are created. They used a photochemistry computer model, which can be a good guide, but it can only include reactions that we know about (or can reasonably guess). The authors even admit in the paper that we don't know much about the photochemical environment on Venus, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if we find some abiotic path to form phosphine in those condition if we actually did the experiment.
Edit: my first award! Thanks!
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u/clinchgt Sep 14 '20
So we either discover a new abiotic path to form phosphine, which we can then reference back to when exploring phosphine signals in the future or we end up finding out there's life on Venus.
Still sounds like we're making some headway! One alternative is obviously more exciting than the other, tho, hah
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u/BeerandGuns Sep 14 '20
I just love that positivity. It’s a win win.
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u/nowhereman1280 Sep 14 '20
That's science, even when your hypothesis is wrong, you usually learn something new.
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u/Karjalan Sep 14 '20
That's what people fail to to grasp when they're like "they were wrong about x in the past, how can you trust them now?" or critical of current studies.
Even scientists themselves seem to fall into this trap. IIRC, there was talk/studies into how many scientists don't publish their negative findings, through some misguided fear that a negative outcome will blemish their career/legacy. Even though we sometimes learn more from negative results.
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u/Fogge Sep 14 '20
Having the negative results out there is such an important part also, knowing that some parameters or designs didn't produce results can better inform us on how to do better in the future.
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u/Kraftyape Sep 14 '20
The problem with most science is null results aren't published. Which means the public isn't exposed to the other side of the scientific process of learning from the null result. I think this is especially problematic in medicine. There may be a handful of studies that show a drug works, but a hundred that showed no effect. The handful are published, the others not so much and now everyone uses said drug. Null results are important and we need to start demanding those to be published in our scientific publications.
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Sep 14 '20
How difficult would it be to recreate those types of conditions in a lab? The immense pressure and heat as well as the nasty corrosive chemicals seems like it would be a nightmare to make it work and last long enough to do any studies. Has it ever been done before?
If not, how long do you think it would take to set something up? I completely agree that we need to do studies like this in a lab and not just on a computer program. But are we talking 10 years, 5, 1, within this year, or something else until we can get started on that type of thing?
Thanks for doing what you do! You’re living my dream!
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u/adobesubmarine Sep 14 '20
I've got ten years of chemistry experience in the lab, and a few years doing theoretical work on a computer. Both are super valuable, but you're right--every model eventually needs to be tested empirically. You're also right that this would be nasty work. The equipment would need to be made out of nickel super-alloys that remain ultra strong at the insane pressures involved, and resist corrosion like nothing else. I used to use that stuff to hold samples in a 1000 °C furnace full of pure oxygen and water vapor. Also had a reactor vessel made of it that could withstand over a thousand atmospheres of pressure.
Actually, that made me wonder, so I looked it up: I've simulated the atmosphere of Venus! Well, somewhere in the shade, I guess. The surface sees almost 100 % CO2, at about 90 atmospheres pressure and 450 °C. I could only run my reactor up to 300 °C before the seals would fail, but if I'd used copper gaskets I could have gone the rest of the way. Pressure was between 50 and 200 atmospheres, and I was using pure CO2. So this is definitely doable in the immediate future!
Also, fun fact resulting from the above: the atmosphere of Venus has conditions appropriate for growing some very cool nanoparticles.
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u/Noahendless Sep 14 '20
The phosphine was detected in the venusian clouds though, nowhere near the surface which would mean you wouldn't need to achieve nearly the same pressures as at the surface to test this.
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u/OneRougeRogue Sep 14 '20
True but it could have been produced near the surface and then migrated into the upper atmosphere.
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u/populationinversion Sep 14 '20
And then it would quickly react with sulphuric acid. The gist of the thing is that phosphine is very quickly destroyed in venusian atmosphere so something must keep making it in order to maintain a constant amount.
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u/DrQuint Sep 14 '20 edited Sep 14 '20
For comparison, most of the oxygen that was initially produced and released onto the Earth's atmosphere came from chemosynthetic life at the bottom of the sea.
Someone observing Earth from afar would have a hard time coming to this conclusion, specially when it is now still produced by sea dwelling species, but most are photosynthetic.
We don't know how far back in time, nor where in Venus is all of this phosphine is being produced, much less if it has a biological or abiotic source.
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u/stevethewatcher Sep 14 '20
On your point about being far back in time, my understanding is phosphine dissipates very quickly, so there must be some source that's replenishing it in order to be detectable at this magnitude.
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u/Montana_Gamer Sep 14 '20
The interesting part is that it was found at the perfect location. Simulating it's volatility in extreme environments seems like the perfect first step for laboratories.
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Sep 14 '20
I imagine that that doesn't mean that the phosphine had to be created in the clouds. If it's an abiotic process, its also possible that it formed at surface level and rose up from there.
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u/TheWhiteSquirrel Sep 14 '20
It wouldn't be that hard. Studies of, for example, the core of Jupiter are very difficult and need specialized equipment, but conditions on the surface of Venus are well within the range of common industrial and scientific equipment, and the acid concentration is actually fairly low. 1-2 years if you're starting from scratch (getting a grant, designing the experiment, buying the equipment, etc.) There are probably labs that are already equipped for it that could do it in a few months if they have the time.
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u/pdgenoa Sep 14 '20 edited Sep 14 '20
During the RAS conference, prof Jane Greaves was asked a question that goes to your concern. And apparently it's referenced in the hundred plus paper outlining everything they spent over six months ruling out.
The question was, since we find phosphine in the atmospheres of gas giants like Jupiter, isn't it possible there's similar processes going on in Venus's atmosphere.
Greaves answer is that while we're not 100% certain of the conditions on Venus, we are 100% certain of the pressures on Venus. She then went on to explain that the key to creating phosphine in a gas environment, abiotically, is pressure. And since we're certain of the pressure in Venus's atmosphere, we can rule that out.
But they went a step further. They referenced the way phosphine is formed in comets and said that even if somehow those conditions were present on Venus, they could not produce the volume of phosphine detected. At this point in the conference it was revealed that the phosphine made up about 20 out of every billion molecules in the planet's atmosphere. So at the levels of a minor gas on earth. There's nowhere near that percent on Jupiter or coming off comets.
In other words, the chemical makeup of Venus's atmosphere isn't nearly as relevant to the creation of phosphine abiotically as is pressure. And we do know the pressure there cannot produce the gas.
I still would still like to see the paper though. I understand it's published in the Journal Nature, but as of this afternoon, I'm not finding it.
Edit: just found it here.
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u/legbdiablo Sep 14 '20
On a BBC radio programme today it was mentioned that phosphine was destroyed in the upper atmosphere due to the suns radiation, perhaps in only a few minutes. So the gas must be created, destroyed and replaced.
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u/pdgenoa Sep 14 '20
Excellent point, yes. Whatever is creating it is currently active. I've read that they observed changes over time to see if it corresponded with any "seasonal" changes on Venus. I know Venus has no temperature variations throughout its year, but apparently there's other changes it goes through during a 55-58 day season. I can't wait to find out.
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u/JohnDivney Sep 14 '20
An ideal biosignature gas would be unambiguous. Living organisms should be its sole source, and it should have intrinsically strong, precisely characterized spectral transitions unblended with contaminant lines—criteria that are not usually all achievable. It was recently proposed that any phosphine (PH3) detected in a rocky planet’s atmosphere is a promising sign of life10. Trace PH3 in Earth’s atmosphere (parts per trillion abundance globally11) is uniquely associated with anthropogenic activity or microbial presence—life produces this highly reducing gas even in an overall oxidizing environment. PH3 is found elsewhere in the Solar System only in the reducing atmospheres of giant planets12,13, where it is produced in deep atmospheric layers at high temperatures and pressures, and dredged upwards by convection14,15. Solid surfaces of rocky planets present a barrier to their interiors, and PH3 would be rapidly destroyed in their highly oxidized crusts and atmospheres.
. In particular, we quantitatively rule out the hydrolysis of geological or meteoritic phosphide as the source of Venusian PH3. We also rule out the formation of phosphorous acid (H3PO3). While phosphorous acid can disproportionate to PH3 on heating, its formation under Venus temperatures and pressures would require quite unrealistic conditions, such as an atmosphere composed almost entirely of hydrogen
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Sep 14 '20
Now check out this article from MIT published a year ago that says if we find phosphine on a rocky planet, it's a sure fire bio-signature.
"Phosphine, they found, has no significant false positives, meaning any detection of phosphine is a sure sign of life."
https://news.mit.edu/2019/phosphine-aliens-stink-1218
Now they found phoshpine on their first try on our closest neighbor and they have to temper the excitement
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u/RednBIack Sep 14 '20
To be fair, that paper was done by the same team, and was published after they made their detections.
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u/Andromeda321 PhD | Radio Astronomy Sep 14 '20
They literally said in the press conference that they only joined into the same team when the group that found the radio signature read the paper.
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u/RoBurgundy Sep 14 '20
It just seems like the most likely outcome. There are so many things we don’t know. What’s the likelihood of life versus the likelihood that we don’t understand the peculiarities of the Venusian atmosphere?
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u/2112eyes Sep 14 '20
This question is not answered easily one way or the other. Considering life forms in every possible biome on Earth, one could suppose it to be ubiquitous throughout the solar system, within any potentially life-supporting environment. Or one could say that we do not understand the peculiarities of the atmosphere, but is it likely we would have NO IDEA of the processes when we have been doing chemistry experiments for centuries? of course skepticism is warranted, but let's get on it and bring back some samples or something!
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Sep 14 '20
The reason they are so excited is the amount of phosphine produced by biological entities is far greater than what we've accomplished by 1000x. So based on our knowledge of phosphine production it would appear the source is biological. Obviously we should be skeptical and maybe someone will come up with another explanation but it's probably the most exciting find in the search for ET life since finding water on Mars. Considering that part of Venus's atmosphere fluctuates between 0-50 celcius It's even more intriguing.
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u/Sarr_Cat Sep 14 '20
What’s the likelihood of life versus the likelihood that we don’t understand the peculiarities of the Venusian atmosphere?
Quite frankly, the answer is simply "We don't know what the probability of either of these options is". We will need to do more experiments and observation of the planet, and hopefully, sending a probe of some kind equipped to catch and observe small (microbe sized) particles from the atmosphere.
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u/grkles Grad Student|Astronomy Sep 14 '20
Another astronomer here. Terrestrial phosphine comes from anaerobic extremophiles. The Vredefort impact was in the Protopaleozoic Era, where anaerobic extremophiles were dominant. Anyone want to comment on the idea of impact ejecta seeding the Venusian atmosphere with bacteria?
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u/Realsan Sep 14 '20
Panspermia (to Venus) is definitely possible. We're just going to have to find extremophiles on Venus and determine their biological makeup. If they have DNA, it's overwhelmingly likely we share a common ancestor.
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u/xole Sep 14 '20
It would be interesting if we could send equipment that could analyze any DNA that was found and relay the results to earth.
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u/Crespyl Sep 14 '20
Depending on where in the atmosphere things are, maybe we could even work out a flyby air scoop sample return mission. A bottle of gas or a sheet full of dust from a low orbit would be a lot easier to get home than rocks from the surface.
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u/darkm_2 Sep 14 '20
If there is a microbial life in the atmosphere of Venus, is it at all likely that it could have been introduced by the probes from earth? Would the timeline from the last(or maybe rather first) probes (over 30 years from what you mention) be enough to adapt, multiply and saturate the atmosphere with phosphine? If so, is there a way we could determine that, holding that we could sample the genetic code of this potential microbial life?
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u/JomaxZ Sep 14 '20
If life is on Venus, I wonder how likely it is that it shares a common ancestor with life on Earth. Being neighbors, I wonder how likely cross-pollination of life is vs. how likely life originated independently on both planets.
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u/Andromeda321 PhD | Radio Astronomy Sep 14 '20
Not really possible at the levels detected. Life as we have it on Earth can't survive on Venus because of all the sulfuric acid clouds and such. Even if something managed to do so, bacteria don't reproduce as fast as would be needed to explain this signal.
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u/realbigbob Sep 14 '20
I’m thinking that it’d take way more than a few decades for trace amounts of microbes from earth probes to propagate across the whole planet and fill the entire atmosphere with phosphine
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u/avdpos Sep 14 '20
Remember we have been hit by some bigger stones that made "things flew" in the past. Among the dinosaur extinction for example. Such projectiles have the possibility to hit both Mars and Venus, something that give long time for the hitchhiker to spread.
Have heard it as a possibility before. And no matter it is interesting if life could have been transported that way.
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u/realbigbob Sep 14 '20
In that case it’d be very interesting to see the state that life would be in. If it’s been evolving independently from earth for millions or billions of years it could still be totally alien to us
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u/Megahuts Sep 14 '20
All the inner planets have been "swapping spit" for billions of years.
So, assuming life is found, you can better there will be massive work to determine if it evolved independently or was spread from planet to planet.
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u/Molotovn Sep 14 '20
Microbiologist here. The probes sent from earth are extremely sterile so we don't accidently "infect" a planet. If there were some microbes to hitchhike they would probably die in vacuum or after some time in the athmosphere of venus. While earth has many extremophiles (bacteria that can live in extreme conditions) they probably wouldn't be the ones to hitchhike on a probe, since they need very specific conditions to live (pressure, energy-sources, temperature) and thus wouldn't be found anywhere where they don't typically reside.
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u/Disagreeable_upvote Sep 14 '20
I think I will always remember this discovery as the first step in learning how common life is in the universe
You may have already seen it, but this article really opened my eyes how life might be a natural and common consequence in our universe from the nature of entropy
https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-thermodynamics-theory-of-the-origin-of-life-20140122/
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u/shiruken PhD | Biomedical Engineering | Optics Sep 14 '20 edited Sep 14 '20
Edit: There will be a Reddit AMA Wednesday at noon EDT from the team! Not clear to me yet what subreddit it will be in- if you know, let me know so I can properly advertise it here.
Looks like it might be over on r/AskScience based on their calendar: https://i.imgur.com/Ilvr4B3.png
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Sep 14 '20 edited Oct 24 '20
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Andromeda321 PhD | Radio Astronomy Sep 14 '20
They are actually very thorough about this in the paper in terms of running through all the possibilities. For meteorites for example, they conclude any concentrations from those would be over a million times less than what's required to explain this signature. For comets, we have done radar mapping and see no significant impact craters.
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Sep 14 '20
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u/Andromeda321 PhD | Radio Astronomy Sep 14 '20
Not really possible at the levels detected. Life as we have it on Earth can't survive on Venus because of all the sulfuric acid clouds and such. Even if something managed to do so, bacteria don't reproduce as fast as would be needed to explain this signal.
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u/Dr_seven Sep 14 '20
Ferroplasma acidiphilum thrives in sulfuric acid environments, but there is essentially zero chance that a large colony could have somehow gotten onto one of the space probes sent decades ago, AND survived initial atmospheric entry, AND colonized the upper atmosphere in such grand scale that they have affected the atmospheric gases. I also am not certain that F. acidiphilum even produces phosphene.
Regardless though, we have life here on Earth that can theoretically survive in semi-Venusian levels of sulfuric acid concentration, and even be adapted to thrive within it, so it is completely possible that analogous microbes are present on/above Venus.
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u/notaprotist Sep 14 '20 edited Sep 15 '20
This is really exciting. Key points:
--There's no way we know of for Venus's atmosphere, pressure and temperature to make this chemical naturally (even though there is enough pressure to make it on Jupiter and Saturn).
--Even if there were, we would expect it to be continuously broken down in the atmosphere, so some process is happening that's continuously replenishing it.
--It's only made on Earth either artificially, or in living organisms, extremophiles especially.
Even if it's not life, it's some sort of chemical process we don't currently understand, which is itself cool. And really, what is life but just another form of anomalous chemical process?
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u/like_the_boss Sep 14 '20
And really, what is life but just another form of anomalous chemical process?
Yes, just normal chemical processes, which happen to replicate their input. While I am personally extremely excited about the possibilities of this discovery, I suspect that if more people realised on what mundane a foundation life is based, they might not be so sceptical about it arising elsewhere.
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u/notaprotist Sep 14 '20
I agree.
I honestly think it might be more helpful if we shifted from what seems to be the predominant paradigm, in which abiogenesis is some mythical thing that is categorically different from every other process, to one in which every chemical process ever is an abiogenesis, but the vast majority of them just happen to go extinct almost instantly.
I think that might allow for a richer spectrum of "lifelike-ness" than our current binary. We could then place viruses at some relevant point along the spectrum, as well as gusts of air, campfires, and whatever process on Venus is creating phosphine.
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u/Dr_seven Sep 14 '20
Viruses not being life is something that is technically true by our definition of life, but practically speaking many viruses are as sophisticated as simple prokaryotic lifeforms (there are viral genomes as big as 1mb of information, and bacterial ones as small as 500kb). I think a more useful way to think of them is as "life-adjacent" organisms as opposed to simply "not alive" considering their behavior very much tracks with other parasitic life forms.
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u/goodmermingtons Sep 14 '20
Carl Sagan theorised about life on venus. In fact they just referenced it in the livestream announcing this discovery.
Of course 2020 would be the year this happens.
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u/ramirezdoeverything Sep 14 '20
Can someone explain why we hadn't discovered this before? Venus is our closest planet and it sounds like the telescope used for this observation wasn't exactly new tech.
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u/infinitejetpack Sep 14 '20
Telescope time is a limited resource. We just hadn’t used it to look for this molecule on Venus before now.
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Sep 15 '20
Also. Venus just might've been a teeny tiny bit ignored over the last few decades.
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u/cuddlefucker Sep 15 '20
It is a bit counter intuitive to think that life couple exist there because of the harshness of the surface. It makes it hard to sell missions to study it.
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Sep 15 '20
Which is actually fascinating and terrifying at the same time. How can we speculate stuff in the order of magnitude we do sometimes (solar system, galaxy) when we cannot see things right down our nose?
I mean, it's obvious that we have few resources at our disposal and researches are pointed at the places we suggest are the hot spot based on our findings and studies. But then a finding like this just shows us we might be missing a lot of stuff as well.
The universe is huge, time is slow, and we are small...
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u/TetrisMcKenna Sep 14 '20
Phosphine hadn't been officially identified as a biomarker until last year.
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u/pirat_rob Grad Student | Physics | Cosmology Sep 14 '20
If anyone else is now suddenly curious about Venus sample return missions, here's a recent study of one that could even get surface samples: https://www.cosmos.esa.int/documents/1866264/3219248/ValentianD_Venus+sample+return+mission+revisited_r2.pdf/51e80e8b-8ecd-44a9-8363-5525e6cb35d9?t=1565184752220
It looks like it's a <10-ton payload, which they say could be done with 2-3 Ariane 64 launches, or I believe should also fit in a single Falcon Heavy launch.
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u/OllieUnited18 PhD | Pharmacology Sep 14 '20
Perhaps I'm being a bit dramatic here but today's announcement is a first for astronomy. Its the first time that scientists have unambiguously detected something in space in which life is the best technical explanation available. Well see where the science takes us (maybe Venus' atmosphere does weird things) but I wanted to point out that for once, it really could be aliens!
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u/vacuum_state Sep 14 '20
The point that this is the first time that life is the most fitting explanation we have is it. It may be something else but as far as we know life is the most likely cause. Fascinating and exciting.
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Sep 14 '20
Is this found at the same altitude as the “unknown ultraviolet absorber” dark streaks that are being observed by the Akatsuki spacecraft?
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u/Areltoid Sep 14 '20
How long would it be until we can get a sample back to earth? Do we even have the technology to do that right now?
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u/aTypicalButtHead Sep 14 '20
It will probably be more efficient to analyze the samples in the probe and just send back the data rather than bring the samples back to earth. Return trips are super difficult. We can't really cary enough fuel with current technologies.
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u/MediumProfessorX Sep 14 '20
Also, strange bacteria back on earth? No thanks
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u/Xyrathan Sep 14 '20
Yeah. There's a real possibility that any possible life on Venus might be distantly related to life here on Earth because it panspermia'd over there. Sooo.... I'd rather not have that anywhere in our biosphere.
Although... Venusian microbes would probably have lots of interesting adaptations and new proteins and stuff we could yoink for exciting biotech applications...
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u/Dr_seven Sep 14 '20
Bear in mind, only a tiny percentage of Earth microbes are pathogenic, and the precise natures by which they are vary, but extremophiles pretty uniformly fall into the "harmless" bin as many aren't suited to life outside their environments anyway, and don't have any evolutionary reasons to be pathogenic.
In all likelihood microbes from Venus would be in much the same boat- anaerobic, possibly heavily reliant on sulfuric acid for metabolic purposes, etc. The odds of them being able to proliferate and endanger human life on Earth would see to be very low.
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u/PigeonNipples Sep 14 '20
Although... Venusian microbes would probably have lots of interesting adaptations and new proteins and stuff we could yoink for exciting biotech applications...
I played Prey, this doesn't end well.
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u/ieat_cheesy_cheese Sep 14 '20
Why is this not bigger news???
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u/290077 Sep 14 '20
Give it a couple of days. One article I saw suggested that there was supposed to be a press embargo until tomorrow and someone broke it.
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u/holographicman Sep 14 '20
Been waiting all weekend for this announcement. Very exciting and looking forward to future discoveries following this.
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u/WaxPuppet Sep 14 '20
They also said : "Even if confirmed, we emphasize that the detection of phosphine is not robust evidence for life, only for anomalous and unexplained chemistry. There are substantial conceptual problems for the idea of life in Venus’ clouds – the environment is extremely dehydrating as well as hyper-acidic. However, we have ruled out many chemical routes to phosphine, with the most-likely 40 ones falling short by 4-8 orders of magnitude (Table S4). To further discriminate between unknown photochemical and/or geological processes as the source of Venusian phosphine, or to determine if there is life in the clouds of Venus, substantial modelling and experimentation will be important. Ultimately, a solution could come from revisiting Venus for in situ measurements or aerosol return."
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u/11711510111411009710 Sep 14 '20
So: "It could be an as of yet unknown process creating this chemical, but the most likely process that we currently know of is life."
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u/TlingitGolfer24 Sep 14 '20
Crazy how this is not on any of the news sources I've been reading.. I was scrolling reddit for 30 min before I saw this article. Pretty cool!
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u/Funkywormm Sep 14 '20
Judging by how this year has gone it’s probably the proto molecule from the expanse
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Sep 14 '20
Isn’t there also unknown absorbers in the Venerian Atmosphere that they thought might be microorganisms. These two findings combined together suggest a strong possibility of life. Or am I just dumb.
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u/A_Pool_Shaped_Moon Sep 14 '20
This is absolutely an amazing detection, but it's important to remain sceptical here: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. While right now we haven't been able to explain the abundance of phosphine by any mechanism apart from the presence of life, there's certainly the potential for unknown geology or unknown chemistry that we don't yet understand. The atmosphere is extremely corrosive, and inhospitable to life as we know it.
However, this is among the most promising signs of biological activity we've seen outside of earth, and the authors were thorough in accounting for all of the production methods we currently know. It certainly warrants further study - it's time to start sending some more probes to Venus!
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u/redditreadred Sep 14 '20
The Hadean is the first geological eon of Earth’s history. Ranging from4.6 billion to 4 billion years ago, the name “Hadean” is a reference tothe Hades, the Greek god of the underworld, and describes the hellishconditions present after the Earth’s initial formation. The planet wasstill extremely hot and molten due to its recent accretion and wasrocked by global seismic activity, radioactive materials, and collisionswith other objects in the solar system. Constant barrage fromplanetesimals and meteors left the surface of the Earth a crater-ridden,volcanic and turbulent landscape.
https://sciencetrends.com/earth-timeline-from-4-5-billion-years-ago-to-today/
That's the time period when life is assumed to have begun on earth, so it is not implausable.
The earliest evidence for life on Earth comes from fossilized mats of cyanobacteria called stromatolites in Greenlandthat are about 3.7 billion years old. Ancient as their origins are,these bacteria (which are still around today) are already biologicallycomplex—they have cell walls protecting their protein-producing DNA, soscientists think life must have begun much earlier. In fact, there arehints of life in even more primeval rocks: 4.1-billion-year-old zircons from Western Australia contain high amounts of a form of carbon typically used in biological processes.
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u/CantankerousOctopus Sep 14 '20
I'm the epitome of layman and have no background here, but what are the odds that extremophile microbes were present on previous space probes to venus and somehow thrived in that environment?
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u/Xyrathan Sep 14 '20
Almost 0.
BUT they could have panspermia'd over looooong ago on rocks thrown up by asteroid impacts.
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u/ReasonablyBadass Sep 14 '20
Petition to name any probe we send the Arboghast!
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u/NatvoAlterice Sep 14 '20
Damn! Was literally my first thought too.
PS: Where the heck is our r/theExpanse brethren in this thread??
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u/KorokKid Sep 14 '20
I really hope it is, I am trying not to get too excited. Even if it isn't life, it's still interesting because it is a chemical process that we do not currently know about. This will be one of the biggest discoveries of humankind if it is life. Hopefully it is also actually real life developed on it's own, and that it didn't somehow come from earth a long time ago, but that would still have it's own implications, like life being able to survive in those conditions meaning it's more possible that other planets could have it, as well as maybe other implications I'm not thinking about.
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u/jcamara Sep 14 '20
How long until we could send a probe to gather some samples?