Potential sign of alien life detected on inhospitable Venus
Source: Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists said on Monday they have detected in the harshly acidic clouds of Venus a gas called phosphine that indicates microbes may inhabit Earths inhospitable neighbor, a tantalizing sign of potential life beyond Earth.
The researchers did not discover actual life forms, but noted that on Earth phosphine is produced by bacteria thriving in oxygen-starved environments. The international scientific team first spotted the phosphine using the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii and confirmed it using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescope in Chile.
I was very surprised - stunned, in fact, said astronomer Jane Greaves of Cardiff University in Wales, lead author of the research published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
The existence of extraterrestrial life long has been one of the paramount questions of science. Scientists have used probes and telescopes to seek biosignatures - indirect signs of life - on other planets and moons in our solar system and beyond.
Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-space-exploration-venus/potential-sign-of-alien-life-detected-on-inhospitable-venus-idUSKBN2652GO
underpants
(182,826 posts)From what Ive heard.
If it was Mars itd be males.
Im not sure about Uranus brooklynite.
getagrip_already
(14,764 posts)underpants
(182,826 posts)Is. That. what you thought. that was?
sdfernando
(4,935 posts)brown or pink?????
JustABozoOnThisBus
(23,350 posts)Seriously. Depends.
JohnnyRingo
(18,636 posts)As evidenced by the abundance of Trump 2020 signs.
Just kidding. Thanx for posting.
NNadir
(33,525 posts)Two of us noted that it's likely to go the way that arsenate DNA went.
Extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof. The existence of phosphine does not constitute extraordinary proof.
Loki Liesmith
(4,602 posts)that it goes the way of arsenic life.
NNadir
(33,525 posts)A lot of these media driven extraordinary claims go this way.
I personally thought the "arsenate" paper in 2011 was credible, but looking back on it, I should have been more skeptical.
Then there was "cold fusion," which was taken seriously because one of the scientists was a very prominent electrochemist.
One cannot prove a negative, of course, but one can systematically evaluate all other possibilities, including the obvious ones.
The atmosphere of Venus is known to be extremely acidic. Recently there is considerable evidence that Venus' volcanoes are active.
The reaction with phosphides with acids generates phosphine. Before jumping to an extreme conclusion, that life exists on a high temperature planet with an extremely acidic atmosphere, thus being a place where any biological molecule would be very much prone to hydrolysis, one should immediately wonder if crustal turn over has uplifted geologic phosphides.
These are known on Earth: Negevite, the pyrite-type NiP2, a new terrestrial phosphide (Britvin et al., American Mineralogist (2020) 105 (3): 422427)
It is always better to rule out the simplest explanations before launching into a claim of an extreme explanation.
One can always be wrong - I can be and have been wrong - but I'm 99% certain that this is more cold fusion and arsenate DNA.
Science reporting in the general media is basically awful. I often joke that one cannot get a degree in journalism if one has passed a college level science course.
SnowCritter
(810 posts)N/T
rictofen
(236 posts)Mrs. Overall
(6,839 posts)Orthon lives!
PoindexterOglethorpe
(25,862 posts)My Son the Astronomer about this.
Warpy
(111,270 posts)life will evolve to exploit it. I'm not surprised by this, the theory has been around for a long time.
As they've found bacteria on earth that live in deep rock and seemingly feed on the rock itself, we might find life is a lot more common out there than we suspected, even life we are equipped to recognize as such.
BlueWavePsych
(2,635 posts)We have such a limited definition of life.
OhZone
(3,212 posts)Now watch someone launch a probe quickly and gather the next plague of 2020.
cstanleytech
(26,293 posts)have to be solved before that will ever happen among them being that there actually has to be microbes to gather which I find unlikely.
Le Roi de Pot
(744 posts)scipan
(2,351 posts)Until now, phosphine has been detected only on three other worlds in the solar system. On Earth, it is found in swamps and marshlands, and in the intestines of some animals. On Jupiter and Saturn, the gas is forged within the planets violent storms, under extreme conditions that arent known to exist anywhere else. Sousa-Silva and the other researchers mimicked similar processes on Venus using computer simulations. They sent jolts of lightning coursing through the atmosphere and meteorites crashing through the clouds. They simulated the scraping of crust against crust, even though Venus doesnt have plate tectonics, because they couldnt think of anything else that could produce enough energy to force phosphine into existence.
The researchers managed to produce phosphine in these scenarios in tiny amounts, not enough to be detected from Earth. Which is how Sousa-Silva and the team found themselves seriously considering the explanation that scientists keep at the very bottom of the list because its usually the least likely. As the saying goes, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Im skeptical, Sousa-Silva said. I hope that the whole scientific community is just as skeptical, and I invite them to come and prove me wrong, because were at the end of our expertise.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/09/venus-life-phosphine-microbes/616342/
cstanleytech
(26,293 posts)evolved and or was transported to Venus.
roamer65
(36,745 posts)cstanleytech
(26,293 posts)Danascot
(4,690 posts)Penguins significantly increased phosphine formation and phosphorus contribution in maritime Antarctic soils
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep07055
JustABozoOnThisBus
(23,350 posts)Isn't the surface temp estimated around 800 degrees F?
Igel
(35,317 posts)And uniformly hot, which is a bit of weirdness.
LudwigPastorius
(9,155 posts)That's the only way they could survive the heat, acid, and crushing pressure.
Of course, if we do find penguins living on Venus, that might be proof that alien species are using starships powered by Infinite Improbability Drives.
Renew Deal
(81,861 posts)But living on the ground is not because of the intense pressure.