Life on Venus? Who Would Have Thoght?
Well wouldn’t you know it. Last month I posted a story regarding NASA’s consideration of steampunk technology to explore the planet Venus. Now we get this super exciting story on the possibility that there might actually be life over there. It’s amazing really. As a kid growing up, I grabbed every astronomy book I could find, watched every astronomy documentary on TV, and listened to the likes of Carl Sagan, my imagination ran wild on the possibility of other planets in our solar system harboring life. Klingons and Romulans not withstanding, I knew if there was any life out there, it would be some sort of microbial life. Mars was supposedly our best bet for finding such life. Jupiter’s moon Europa was yet another sexy target for astronomers. After we sent our probes to Venus and took a peek under the atmosphere, Venus quickly got kicked to the curb as a top solar system destination. Old books and movies fatisized at the idea of Venus bearing intelligent civilazations, with rich forests, and…dinosaurs? Yeah, no such luck with that. Instead we found a literal hellscape with blistering average temperatures of 860 degrees fahrenheit and atmospheric pressure equal to that found 3000 feet down in Earth’s ocean. Trust me when I say you do not want to take any nature hikes on Venus.
Now, it was only a few years ago that I read reportts that speculated that, instead of finding dinosaurs running around on Venus’ surface, we might actually be able to find microbial life in the acidic clouds of Venus. Part of the speculation was attributable to the inexplicable large dark spots observed in the clouds. Some pondered on the idea that there may actually be some type of microbial life floating around in the atmosphere, causing these dark spots. But let’s be clear, , this was all pure speculation, no direct or indirect evidence that there were little buggers shooting the breeze up there in the Venus clouds.
Der Be Life in Dem Der Clouds
A paper published on Monday (09/14/2020) in the journal Nature Astronomy, may have just blown the lid off of the possibility of life existing on Venus. The paper provided information on the discovery of high amounts of the chemical phosphpine in the Venician atmosphere. As it turns out, it’s common knowledge that there are really only two ways this chemical can be produced. It can either be artificially manufactured or be produced as a waste product from bacteria. As far as we know, Venus shouldn’t be capable of producing this chemical, particularly in large quantities, given it’s type of atmosphere and the chemestry taking place there. It should be noted that there has not yet been found any direct evidence of life found on Venus. The detection of phosphine is simply a possible bio-marker. But it’s one hell of an indicator. Interestingly, it was proposed back in January n another paper that theorized on the possibility that this type of bio-marker could be used to help determine if life exists on exoplanets, planets found far off in other solar systems. But then some wild and crazy astronomers got the bright idea to test this out on our nearest planetary neighbor, you know, just for kicks. And wouldn’t you know it, jackpot! It’s a really exciting story to be sure. Undoubtedly, NASA will be reconsidering some of its near term exploratory plans and see how a new Venus mission could be squeezed into the schedule. Compared to Mars missions and like, sending probes to Venus is quick and relatively cheap. So get on it NASA! It’s time to go bug hunting.
EventHorizon – Phosphine Found in Clouds of Venus
Reuters – Life on Venus?
