Potential sign of alien life detected on inhospitable Venus

[brooklynite]

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 Earth’s 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]

1. Probably all female

From what I’ve heard.

If it was Mars it’d be males.

I’m not sure about Uranus brooklynite.

[ffr]

5. .

[underpants]

8. ✅

[getagrip_already]

12. I'm not sure about his anus either.... lol ;) n/t

[underpants]

15. Oh. ... no.

Is. That. what you thought. that was?

[sdfernando]

21. Is Uranus

brown or pink?????

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

24. Depends.

Seriously. Depends.

[JohnnyRingo]

2. Obviously not intelligent life, however.

As evidenced by the abundance of Trump 2020 signs.

Just kidding. Thanx for posting.

[NNadir]

3. This is very tenuous science, as we discussed in the Science forum here.

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. There is really no way to assess the likelihood

that it “goes the way“ of arsenic life.

[NNadir]

10. I think there is.

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): 422–427)

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]

6. I hope it's not the protomolecule.

N/T

[rictofen]

29. Remember the Cant!

[Mrs. Overall]

7. George Adamski is vindicated!

Orthon lives!

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

9. I will have to check in with

My Son the Astronomer about this.

[Warpy]

11. Anywere there is an environment to exploit

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]

13. Agree.

We have such a limited definition of life.

[OhZone]

14. Oh Great.

Now watch someone launch a probe quickly and gather the next plague of 2020.

[cstanleytech]

19. I would not worry to much about that as there a shit ton of hurdles that would

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]

16. Let us send Trump there. The most Noxious vile creature on earth will find itself at home there

[scipan]

17. From the atlantic

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 aren’t 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 doesn’t have plate tectonics, because they couldn’t 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 it’s usually the least likely. As the saying goes, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. “I’m 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 we’re at the end of our expertise.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/09/venus-life-phosphine-microbes/616342/

[cstanleytech]

18. More likely it's from some other source than from some microbe that miraculously

evolved and or was transported to Venus.

[roamer65]

25. Probably took a ride on one of our probes.

[cstanleytech]

26. Doubt it as Venus has an extremely harsh environment.

[Danascot]

20. I'd like to think there may be penguins on Venus.

Penguins significantly increased phosphine formation and phosphorus contribution in maritime Antarctic soils

https://www.nature.com/articles/srep07055

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

22. I'm guessing there are no polar ice caps on Venus.

Isn't the surface temp estimated around 800 degrees F?

[Igel]

23. Very hot.

And uniformly hot, which is a bit of weirdness.

[LudwigPastorius]

27. They would have to be penguins wearing carbon fiber/titanium/diamond exo-suits.

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]

28. I saw a video the other day that said cloud cities on venus were possible.

But living on the ground is not because of the intense pressure.