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Possible signs of life found on Venus

Insane Metal

Insane Metal

Member
FemdomFilmFan said:
you_got_me_breaking_bad.gif
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HeisenbergFX4 HeisenbergFX4 got caught. He's now gonna miss PS5 show on wednesday
 
ExpandKong

ExpandKong

Banned
RoadHazard said:
What if we came from Venus. And the guys left behind there just never evolved past the bacterial stage because of their shitty environment.
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I'm imagining astronauts touching down on Venus to make contact with Venusians years from now and they find out it's this exact scenario, and the bacteria are all like "boy howdy you guys sure got big must be all that good air down on Earth heh heh heh *spits tobacco*" and the astronauts are all "aww shoot we've gotta go, so nice seeing you guys take caaaaaaarrrrreeeeee......" and everyone just agrees to never go back.
 
MetalAlien

MetalAlien

Banned
RoadHazard said:
What if we came from Venus. And the guys left behind there just never evolved past the bacterial stage because of their shitty environment.
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That is completely possible. One of the big mysteries of earth is how life started so quickly after earth formed. Earth was barely settled when life sprang up.
 
H

hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
GAMETA said:
Could it be bacteria from Earth? We've sent quite a few missions there, specially the Russians.
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They wouldn't survive the conditions there. The only way life can exist there is if it's an entirely different form to that found on Earth, ie not water-based.
 
H

hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
IDKFA said:
This is huge news.

I always thought Europa, Ganymede or
Enceladus would be the first place we would find alien life. Venus wasn't even considered.

This could be one of biggest discoveries of all time and absolutely should be reason to fast track a mission to Venus to further investigate.
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Tbh it's becoming (to me at least) increasingly clear that life up to a microbial point is probably pretty common. There are good and bad things about that, but certainly one of the interesting things is that it means we can widen our range of planets we consider potentially habitable by alien life. That said, it may be the case that the conditions for life to evolve beyond microbes are a little more rare. This would help explain how we've not seen any signs of civilization elsewhere (although it's worth noting that we're searching based on looking for things our own civilization produces - clearly an alien civilization that isn't carbon/water-based is going to be different in other ways too and might take an entirely different approach to tech).

The problem that does present itself is that, in addition to the challenges of getting anywhere in space due to all the radiation, we now have a microbe hazard on any planet to which we send humans. Given we're having enough trouble right now with a fucking virus, I'm not sure I fancy risking dealing with some fucking Martian virus. We also have to then consider the risks of bringing anyone back from other planets - might they be contaminated and would we even be able to detect that contamination if it's in a form unfamiliar to us. It's another barrier to space travel (and may be another explainer as to why we've not encountered civilization - it's simply too difficult for any biological organism to become a multi-planet species).
 
Stilton Disco

Stilton Disco

Member
For life to exist on Venus would be incredible, both on it's own and for it's implications for how much more common life might be out in the wider universe.

Venus is one of the most hostile environments imaginable, the closest equivalent we could get to it on Earth would be a pressure cooker full of poison.

If life can spring up there, then it should be possible practically anywhere.
 
Stiflers Mom

Stiflers Mom

Banned
hariseldon said:
Tbh it's becoming (to me at least) increasingly clear that life up to a microbial point is probably pretty common.
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I am the reverse, after watching a lot of stuff on abiogenesis, it seems really hard for me to believe that this thing happened even once on this planet.
DNA/RNA constructing itself just out of a few random molecules that happened to be in one place, with a cell hull that's robust enough around it being there just randomly is so incredibly unlikely it's not even measureable.

The chance of it being common in the universe, let alone this solar system seems very far fetched to me.

I'd be happy to be proven wrong, though.
 
royox

royox

Member
Mihos said:
It's pretty cool. I am not sure it will have to do with anything biological. There is lots phosphine on Saturn and Jupiter also.
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CHEMIST HERE!

In saturn and jupiter phosphines can be created by "force" using the extremely high pressures and temperatures close to the cores to convert diferent molecules into phosphines. Venus doesn't have those extreme conditions to force the creation of phosphines not using any biological way.

Phosphines are molecules that require a LOT of energy to be created as usually are 3 big molecules all 3 attached to one poor single P atom. The nature of those compositions make them to be very uncommon to happen in non-biological environments because of a thing called steric hindrance, meaning that those 3 big molecules are so "big" that they use a lot of space and other big molecules shouldn't be able to fit in the structure. But biological beings have the ways of adding the energy and catalyst to add not only 1 or 2 big molecules to a poor P atom...but 3 of those motherfuckers! Here an example of what I'm trying to explain.

Triphenylphosphine-2D-skeletal-Smokefoot-style.png
 
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carlosrox

carlosrox

Banned



Thinking we are alone in the universe is fucking hilarious to me. Our neighbors more than likely have life somewhere too.

We can't even find fucking giant ruins on our own planet, thinking we know shit about the other planets is peak human hubris.
 
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RoadHazard

RoadHazard

Gold Member
hariseldon said:
Tbh it's becoming (to me at least) increasingly clear that life up to a microbial point is probably pretty common. There are good and bad things about that, but certainly one of the interesting things is that it means we can widen our range of planets we consider potentially habitable by alien life. That said, it may be the case that the conditions for life to evolve beyond microbes are a little more rare. This would help explain how we've not seen any signs of civilization elsewhere (although it's worth noting that we're searching based on looking for things our own civilization produces - clearly an alien civilization that isn't carbon/water-based is going to be different in other ways too and might take an entirely different approach to tech).

The problem that does present itself is that, in addition to the challenges of getting anywhere in space due to all the radiation, we now have a microbe hazard on any planet to which we send humans. Given we're having enough trouble right now with a fucking virus, I'm not sure I fancy risking dealing with some fucking Martian virus. We also have to then consider the risks of bringing anyone back from other planets - might they be contaminated and would we even be able to detect that contamination if it's in a form unfamiliar to us. It's another barrier to space travel (and may be another explainer as to why we've not encountered civilization - it's simply too difficult for any biological organism to become a multi-planet species).
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But if it's so different from us, would it even infect us? Viruses and bacteria infect us BECAUSE they're "compatible" with us. They've evolved to do that.
 
H

hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
RoadHazard said:
But if it's so different from us, would it even infect us? Viruses and bacteria infect us BECAUSE they're "compatible" with us. They've evolved to do that.
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Good question - it's hard to know. One could argue that its mere existence in our systems may be toxic though - the thing is that without extensive study (and honestly getting that past an ethics committee would be a challenge) it would be very hard to figure out what the effects would be. Put it this way, I wouldn't fancy having an alien microbe anywhere near me.
 
Nymphae

Nymphae

Banned
Scientists caution that the detection itself needs to be verified, as the phosphine fingerprint described in the study could be a false signal introduced by the telescopes or by data processing
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Its presence suggests one of two intriguing possibilities: that alien life-forms are deftly linking together phosphorus and hydrogen atoms, or that some completely unanticipated chemistry is crafting phosphine in the absence of life.
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wake me up when they actually find something

tXVqQdz.gif
 
Tschumi

Tschumi

Member
I thought your OP was gonna say "last night the girl i keep staring at in the library handed me a note saying "funbags free access two bits"
 
Torrent of Pork

Torrent of Pork

Banned
We seriously need to send a floating probe to Venus. For God's sake you can use Earth atmo as a lifting gas given the heavy concentration of CO2. From what I understand you could have some truly impressive floating infrastructure in the upper atmosphere with very similar pressure, temperature, and gravity to Earth. At a certain sweet spot you could probably get away with a simple acid-resistant leotard with a breathing mask to just walk around in the Venetian clouds.

 
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Stouffers

Stouffers

Banned
TindalosPup said:
Ooooo this is fun news

If there is microbial life there it could eventually evolve into plant/animal life (over the course of millions of years, of course). It surviving in a inhospitable gas, too, is even more tantalizing with the possibilities of what kind of life could form.

There's actually caves on our planet that have newly discovered life forms that can live in a toxic sulphuric atmosphere.

gazette.com

Strange discovery found lurking inside deadly Colorado cave

Hidden in one of Colorado’s iconic ski towns lies a mysterious caved laced with deadly components.
gazette.com gazette.com

This kind of stuff is fascinating to me, I'm always intrigued by new kinds of nature that do/could exist.
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gowrongagh.jpg
 
highrider

highrider

Banned
From everything I understand the atmosphere is virtually impenetrable by our technology so there could be Wakanda up there for all we know.
 
W

Wvrs

Member
hariseldon said:
Tbh it's becoming (to me at least) increasingly clear that life up to a microbial point is probably pretty common. There are good and bad things about that, but certainly one of the interesting things is that it means we can widen our range of planets we consider potentially habitable by alien life. That said, it may be the case that the conditions for life to evolve beyond microbes are a little more rare. This would help explain how we've not seen any signs of civilization elsewhere (although it's worth noting that we're searching based on looking for things our own civilization produces - clearly an alien civilization that isn't carbon/water-based is going to be different in other ways too and might take an entirely different approach to tech).

The problem that does present itself is that, in addition to the challenges of getting anywhere in space due to all the radiation, we now have a microbe hazard on any planet to which we send humans. Given we're having enough trouble right now with a fucking virus, I'm not sure I fancy risking dealing with some fucking Martian virus. We also have to then consider the risks of bringing anyone back from other planets - might they be contaminated and would we even be able to detect that contamination if it's in a form unfamiliar to us. It's another barrier to space travel (and may be another explainer as to why we've not encountered civilization - it's simply too difficult for any biological organism to become a multi-planet species).
Click to expand...

The most convincing answer I've seen to the Fermi Paradox was in a science fiction novel, "The Dark Forest". It posits that life is exceedingly common but keeps itself hidden. Because you can never know if the species you hear from via radio has the intent of peace or murder. So as soon as you see a trace of life, snuff it out before you have to find out. And if you don't, someone else will.
 
GAMETA

GAMETA

Banned
highrider said:
From everything I understand the atmosphere is virtually impenetrable by our technology so there could be Wakanda up there for all we know.
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It's not impenetrable, we've "landed" and took pictures of the surface. But the pressure and temperatures are too high for what we've sent before.

Can we come up with something that would withstand and last enough time to properly investigate the planet's surface? That I don't know.
 
highrider

highrider

Banned
GAMETA said:
It's not impenetrable, we've "landed" and took pictures of the surface. But the pressure and temperatures are too high for what we've sent before.

Can we come up with something that would withstand and last enough time to properly investigate the planet's surface? That I don't know.
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Surface temp is over 800 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s a little hot!
 
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