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Space Science

Venus Might Host Life, New Discovery Suggests (scientificamerican.com) 55

Posted by msmash from the unraveling-mysteries dept.
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. From a report: 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. Swathed in sulfuric acid clouds and possessing oppressive surface pressures and temperatures hot enough to melt lead, Venus is a hellish world. But the particular cloud layer where the phosphine is present happens to be relatively balmy, with ample sunlight and Earth-like atmospheric pressure and temperature. The results will have to be carefully vetted by the scientific community. Yet they seem likely to spark renewed interest in exploring our sister planet next door.

"It's a really puzzling discovery because phosphine doesn't fit in our conception of what kinds of chemicals should be in Venus's atmosphere," says Michael Wong, an astrobiologist at the University of Washington. Planetary scientist Sanjay Limaye of the University of Wisconsin-Madison agrees. "The bottom line is we don't know what's going on," he says. (Neither Wong nor Sanjay were involved in the work.) After the sun and moon, Venus is the brightest object visible to the naked eye in Earth's sky. For thousands of years, people told stories about the glittering jewel that appeared around sunrise and sunset. Venus's brilliance is what made it attractive to Jane Greaves, a radio astronomer at Cardiff University in England. She typically focuses her attention on distant newborn planetary systems but wanted to test her molecular identification abilities on worlds within our cosmic backyard. In 2017 Greaves observed Venus with the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, searching for bar code-like patterns of lines in the planet's spectrum that would indicate the presence of different chemicals. While doing so, she noticed a line associated with phosphine. The data suggested the molecule was present at around 20 parts per billion in the planet's atmosphere, a concentration between 1,000 and a million times greater than that in Earth's atmosphere. "I was stunned," Greaves says. Further reading: The original paper in the journal Nature Astronomy; and the case for life on Venus.
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Venus Might Host Life, New Discovery Suggests More

Venus Might Host Life, New Discovery Suggests

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  • Floating cities on Venus when?

    • Floating cities on Venus when?

      Soon!!

      https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citation... [nasa.gov]

      Although if there's already life on Venus, all bets are off until we understand what it is.

      • I would have guessed that with this new study, Venus becomes a prime target for more missions. Many missions are selected based on the possible conditions for life or unique weather systems. This just adds to the allure and mystery of Venus much in the way of ancient Martian oceans.

        Have to maintain some kind of sterilization but considering the Soviets have already landed on the surface, that may be already too late. Even at 99.9% sterilization, all it takes is a few surviving generations.

        Either way, more e

        • Even at 99.9% sterilization, all it takes is a few surviving generations.

          At 450C and 90 atmospheres pressure, there wouldn't be any surviving generations.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      Soon [wikipedia.org].

    • If it's not worth doing to build floating cities here, why would it be worth doing on Venus?

      • The atmosphere is thicker on Venus such that breathable air is a lifting gas. For colonization, Venus provides a lot that Mars doesn't. Radiation shielding from the core, temperate climate at certain altitudes, and equivalent gravity. It has a lot going for it.

        In the words of Geoffrey Landis; soon!! [slashdot.org]. His paper on the subject is doubly exciting considering the possibility of life. Although, that could be its own barrier to do anything (colonizers disrupting the native populations, again). But I like to think

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by GoTeam ( 5042081 )
          Since Venus is closer to the sun, I'd be a bit worried that the magnetic field is significantly weaker than Earths.

          • Better than Mars in that regard. But the upper atmosphere itself would help provide shielding as well. For radiation, Venus is safer than Mars or the Moon. Although, the possibility of caves and whatnot come to mind.

            It's not perfect but only Earth is perfect for humans.

  • Awesome! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Jhon ( 241832 )

    Maybe we can harvest that life to create some type of AI we can plug in to Slashdot and prevent dup articles?

    https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]

  • That means the life forms are polluting their planet and don't believe in climate change. Let them rot on their 'stinky' planet.

    • That means the life forms are polluting their planet and don't believe in climate change. Let them rot on their 'stinky' planet.

      On the contrary, they're the ones behind the climate there and the current climate change here, because they know what they like and how to get it.

  • Meh. We've just confirmed someone's Clicking Bad http://clickingbad.nullism.com... [nullism.com] planetary meth lab.

  • Not so fast (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ecuador ( 740021 ) on Monday September 14, 2020 @10:45AM (#60504732) Homepage

    Well, the fact that we have detected phosphine on Jupiter since the 1970s (1975 paper attributing the GRS to phosphine [sciencemag.org], and also on Saturn, I wouldn't say the "it's aliens" explanation is the most likely.
    I mean throwing in there that on Earth it is produced by biological processes might make a scientific article get picked up by the media, but the only thing the authors are saying is that they don't know how it got produced on Venus...

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Whateverthisis ( 7004192 )
      Ahhh, but there are some studies that were conducted to determine if phosphene is a good indicator of life, given that it can be produced by anaerobic life. In general it appears to have very few false positives, as only incredibly extreme environments seem to be able to produce it without life being present.

      Venus is pretty radical in it's environment so it's possible that similar processes are doing this as to what causes phosphene to come together, but according to this study it takes really extreme non

    • I have read the Nature paper (it is open access). They have analyzed the dynamic balance of all known reactions that could produce PH3, and the have found that something must be making PH3 in excess of what would the know processes do.

      There is one huge difference between Venus and Jupiter - Jupiter's atmosphere is reducing, Venus' atmosphere is oxidizing. The sulphuric acid in the venusian atmosphere quickly reacts with any PH3 generated, so there must be a process that generates PH3 at least as fast as it

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by starless ( 60879 )

      This was brought up in the press conference. Apparently on the gas giants it's generated by hydrogen under very high pressures.
      But on Venus there's no free hydrogen, let alone under very high pressure.

    • It requires a silly amount of energy to make phosphine chemically. Energy that isn't thought to exist on terrestrial planets.
      In Jupiter for example, it's thought to form below the 800K layer in the atmosphere. Quite a bit hotter than Venus.
      That doesn't mean it's aliens by any means, but phosphine in Venus' atmosphere (if it proves to really be there) is very strange.

      but the only thing the authors are saying is that they don't know how it got produced on Venus...

      No, they also say that life is the only currently known process by which it can be made on a planet less energetic than a gas giant.

  • Anyone know why they are making the leap that it has something to do with life? It's a hydride like methane or ammonia. Hydrides are super common and occur naturally all the time.

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday September 14, 2020 @11:38AM (#60504918)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences...astronomers... or *gasp* astrophysicists... I'd still want to hear an explanation from a chemist.

        "it’s some sort of physical or chemical process that we do not expect to happen on rocky planets" -- How much data do we really have on rocky planets? How many have we been to and had a look around? I wouldn't put much stock in expectations.

    • It has to do with the chemical balance. In the atmosphere of Venus any phosphine created reacts with sulphuric acid, so there must be a process which continuously generates phosphine. The Nature paper is open access and the authors appear to have done a very thorough job. I recommend that you go and read their paper.

  • Have we checked the polarization? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Immerman ( 2627577 ) on Monday September 14, 2020 @10:57AM (#60504784)

    Seems like it would be really easy to search an atmosphere for airborne life - just look for polarization twisting in light shown through the atmosphere. Any time you have an imbalance of left- and right-handed molecules you'll get polarization twisting in one direction. And while inanimate chemcial reactions produce equal numbers of left- and right-handed molecules, life (on Earth, but it seems very likely as a general principle) produces one-handed molecules, since using both chiralities would essentially involve simultaneously evolving perfect mirror-image copies of every bio-mechanical system in its cells.

    • Phosphine is too simple to be chiral.

      • Phosphine is - but if there's life, there should be a lot of much more complex molecules present as well. The beautiful thing about polarization twisting as a life detector is that you don't even need to know what molecules are causing it, if it's present, it's a pretty good bet that life is too.

        It probably works the other direction as well - it's very unlikely that the net effect of all the twisting by life-produced molecules would be zero. Especially since the intensity of the twisting effect varies wit

    • You should be heading the search for extra-terrestrial life.

    • but it seems very likely as a general principle

      Based on what information can you make that claim?

      • The explanation came immediately afterward:

        using both chiralities would essentially involve simultaneously evolving perfect mirror-image copies of every bio-mechanical system in its cells.

        Not only is that improbable, it's highly inefficient - roughly doubling the complexity of the cellular apparatus without significantly changing the functionality. Intelligence might be able to design ambidextrous proteins that gain useful functionality from incorporating both handedness - but that greatly increases the complexity, which greatly reduces the chances of it arising spontaneously in crude proto-life systems.

        And note that it wouldn't be sufficient for _

  • Pack of flatulent meth-heads just moved in down the street.

  • The Venusian life forms are Slashdot moderators who are spamming the front page with stories about themselves today.

  • In other news (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Scientists still haven't detected any signs of life among slashdot editors:

    The Case for Life on Venus [slashdot.org]
    Posted by EditorDavid on Sun Sep 13, '20 07:36 PM from the burning-like-a-silver-flame dept

  • 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.

    METH LABS ON VENUS

  • dream on, sci am, it won't sell more magazines. just clickbait.

  • It seems to me it would be fairly easy to put a microscope into a balloon probe and examine the atmosphere at a range of the most likely heights. I just wonder how much power and weight is required for a scope powerful enough to examine something comparable to the small end of Earth bacteria?

    The possible bacteria in the Allan Hills 84001 Mars meteorite is small, suggesting early life and/or "space life" is smaller than average Earth life. So it may require an electron microscope.

  • My money is on methamphetamine labs
  • Hey..It's not so convenient to communicate here ... Write me here and better call ==>> http://bit.do/fJpuZ [bit.do]
  • Finally, honesty. This discovery simply means what the subject line says, *not* that there may be life on Venus.

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