3911

Thanks for the links. The Phosphine paper is quite readable for a layman.
I wonder if there is an entire ecosystem of microbes on Venus, and not just these phosphine producing ones. How genetically similar are they to earth life? I hope these questions get answered in my life time.

3912

Their is going to be a lot of hand-wringing about contamination or Andromeda Strain scenarios - but over geologic timeframes I imagine that cross-pollination of spores are inevitable, and we’re all still here. So there may be some similarities (DNA or RNA based life). Hopefully by the 2040s or 50s we’ll have enough samples to start probing the genetic back-history of these lifeforms.

3913

From one of the authors of the to-be-published paper:

It’s very hard to prove a negative. Now, astronomers will think of all the ways to justify phosphine without life, and I welcome that. Please do, because we are at the end of our possibilities to show abiotic processes that can make phosphine.The

They did at least look at possible abiotic processes and found them unlikely.

3914

This meme made me laugh. Calling @fire but she’s probably seen it already:

3916

Wild plague virus gets found occasionally as well (including in the US), and we’re still here too.

3917

Leaked video. Life on Venus! (probably!)

3918

Reading through the 2019 MIT paper on Phosphine as a biomarker, and combined with the other lines of evidence discussed by Sagan as far back as 1967 (!) - the strange “UV absorber” in the atmosphere that has no simple chemical explanation and the unexplained fluctuating albedo (dark patches) within its atmosphere) - its hard to argue with it.

I’m REALLY looking forward to reading the formal paper to see if they have anything else to add to the above.

3919

Press Conference will be live streamed here (originally it was closed to the public)

3920

Some of the video has been leaked:

https://youtu.be/HQSGHbbDR_Q

3921

Who needs leaked video? Its live and official now. Even a NY Times writeup (pretty good one!)

3922

I hope they consulted Mick West about these findings.

3923

I wouldn’t have put Venus as a likely contender for life, although I gather its upper atmosphere is rather temperate.

3924

Lots of chemicals. Lots of storms (lightning). Lots of sun (energy). Seems like the ingredients needed for life soup.

Just hope it doesn’t dismantle any orbiting probes.

3925

IMO this observation definitely justifies the expense of a long-duration balloon mission with a nice suite of instruments. It looks like they really dotted their i’s and crossed their t’s when it comes to ruling out all known abiological sources.

I’ve seen the idea that this is the result of contamination from Earth space probes bandied about. This is pretty much impossible, for two reasons: first, the unexplained ultraviolet absorption features (which may not be connected to what’s producing the phophine, but probably are) were first observed in the 1920s long before any space probes went to Venus; second, any living things in the Venusian clouds would have to have special adaptations to that environment that no terrestrial organisms have. If there has been any cross-contamination with earth, it was naturally occurring and probably billions of years ago.

3926

There’s good evidence that Venus was likely a nice place for life 1 billion years ago, and over the past several hundred million years has had extreme vulcanism and greenhouse effect changing that. So one possibility is that life could have possibly evolved when the planet was more hospitable and then survived maybe only in the atmosphere.

Natural contamination from Earth due to ancient meteorites is another vague possibility, as @antlers said.

3927

“We think there might be life on Venus, but it also might be lots of other things” isn’t really the blockbuster I was expecting based on the hype.

3928

Even if it’s not life, then that means theres a brand new method of Posphine creation that isn’t known and that itself can be scientifically significant (AIUI)

3929

Combine it with the unknown thing that is absorbing UV light at the same regions (photosynthesis?), and the unexplained albedo changes in the clouds (dark and light patches coming and going for no explainable reason) - and its pretty compelling because you can answer 3 puzzles with one answers.

Of course they left themselves an out - but at this point the onus is on someone to come up with a non-life explanation for its production - its now the default explanation. So odds are very good that this is The Big Deal it was laid out to be.

3930

The answer, of course, is that it’s the Flying Spaghetti Monster! It’s the only thing that fits.

3931

I would be so happy if our neighbor had life. That would blow my mind.

I wonder if they would be similar to archaea.

Spores with life cycles in the Hadley cells.