
Phosphine detected in the atmosphere of Venus – an indicator of possible life? - istinetz
https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/news/hints-life-venus
======
niemenmaa
Royal Astronomical Society's press release will be held at 4 pm (according to
twitter time zone is GMT+1)
[https://twitter.com/RoyalAstroSoc/status/1305454796225351682](https://twitter.com/RoyalAstroSoc/status/1305454796225351682)

Press conference live stream:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IIj3e5BFp0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IIj3e5BFp0)

~~~
memetomancer
Press conference summary: Phosphine confirmed, abiotic pathways ruled out,
need to send a spacecraft to learn more.

~~~
cygx
_abiotic pathways ruled out_

To the best of the reasearchers' knowledge: All known pathways to produce
phosphane couldn't explain the observation (they were talking several orders
of magnitude off). Abiotic 'exotic' chemistry is still an option (ie the
'unknown unknown' hasn't been ruled out).

~~~
tantalor
You don't need to state the obvious.

It's impossible to rule out an "unknown unknown" by definition, because if you
did then it wouldn't be "unknown" anymore.

~~~
cygx
No-go theorems exist (conservation of energy for example, hence no perpetual
motion machines). Instead, they tediously had to exclude any process they
could think of one by one.

~~~
formerly_proven
> No-go theorems exist

That's K-K, not U-U.

~~~
cygx
There are known abiotic pathways. They've been ruled out.

There are unknown biotic pathways known to exist (from the press conference,
biotic phosphane production on earth apparently still has some large question
marks attached?).

There might be unknown abiotic pathways ('unknown unknowns'). In principle,
there could be some clever way to rule them out based on the constraints of
the Venusian environment.

------
Jedd
Naively - I'm assuming that if it _is_ (single-celled) life, and when we get a
sample of it, there's two broad categories of options.

Either a) it's the same DNA - in which case some basic panspermia - some
material bounced between Venus and Earth, in one or both directions, some
billions of years ago, or b) it is demonstrably _not_ the same structure as
life on this planet, in which case statisticians get to have a field day.

~~~
metalliqaz
Humans have sent space probes to Venus, and the Soviet ones weren't
sterilized. It was thought there was no need, given the extreme environment
there.

~~~
Jedd
My understanding is that a half century is not long enough for distance-
detectable amounts of phosphine to have been generated by whatever tiny
populations we may have accidentally sent over - or that we're likely to have
accidentally shipped well-adapted thermophiles on the outside of Soviet
probes.

~~~
fiblye
Let's assume, by chance, there's some strain of bacteria that can not only
survive but thrive in Venus's environment.

This bacteria is introduced to an environment that has all it needs to spread
quickly. There's absolutely nothing out there that it has to compete with.
There's nothing out there consuming it or infecting it or otherwise inhibiting
its growth other than a lack of whatever nutrient it consumes.

Rabbits went from 0 to over 200 million in under 200 years in Australia, and
that's with snakes and disease. Apparently they spread across the continent in
just 50 years.[1] Rabbits generally reproduce at a small fraction of the rate
of bacteria, although exceptions exist.

Note: I'm not saying humans definitely introduced bacteria to Venus and that's
the source. I'm saying if conditions are by some chance ideal, and these
things are apparently thriving in the atmosphere, it shouldn't be hard to
spread across the planet incredibly fast.

[1] [https://www.nationalgeographic.org/article/how-european-
rabb...](https://www.nationalgeographic.org/article/how-european-rabbits-took-
over-australia/)

~~~
pc86
I don't mean this as a counterpoint to your argument, which I think is a valid
one, or as any kind of sarcasm. But even as a relative layperson as far as
these things go (1 college semester each of bio and o-chem, which I didn't do
all that well in) I would be _extremely_ interested in learning about any
bacteria that could a) survive on Earth at a large enough scale to find its
way onto a Soviet spacecraft; b) survive a trip through space; c) not only
survive but _thrive_ on Venus so much so that it reproduces enough for us to
pick it up now.

Hopefully if they can get a probe out there they would be able to tell
definitively if it was Soviet contamination or not, although I'm not sure how
they would be able to do that. I could see them ruling it out (some entirely
different DNA structure or something) but not sure how they'd say 100% that it
_was_ Soviet in origin.

~~~
kortex
I have a degee in chem. Your intuition is spot on. Lets assume Venera 3 wasn't
sterilized (reports in 1966 say it was [1] but the effectiveness is contested
[2]).

Even if spores did survive the space trip (actually quite plausible, [0],
venus trip is ~110 days), the atmosphere is extremely dessicating and acidic
(SO2, SO3, H2SO4), and the ground is too hot for any known life. The
dessication and osmotic pressure is the real kicker. It's very unlikely spores
would germinate without rehydration.

[0]
[https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/eu_...](https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/eu_tef/)

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/1966/03/06/archives/soviet-says-
venu...](https://www.nytimes.com/1966/03/06/archives/soviet-says-
venus-3-spacecraft-was-sterilized.html)

[2]
[https://www.jstor.org/stable/1720963](https://www.jstor.org/stable/1720963)

------
pmlnr
Stanislaw Lem wrote a book in 1951 with the idea that Venus had a full-on
warmongering civilization in the past:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Astronauts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Astronauts)

(don't read the Plot on Wikipedia if you're planning to read the book)

~~~
onion2k
Philip K Dick once wrote a letter to the FBI to inform them that Stansilaw Lem
was not a person, but in fact a committee of communist writers.

~~~
DonHopkins
[https://english.lem.pl/index.php/faq#P.K.Dick](https://english.lem.pl/index.php/faq#P.K.Dick)

>What was that "Famous Philip K. Dick Letter" regarding Lem?

>On September 2, 1974 Philip K. Dick sent the following letter to the FBI
(Please keep in mind Mr. Dick was most probably suffering from schizophrenia):

And Stanislaw Lem returned the complement by writing "Philip K. Dick: A
Visionary Among the Charlatans" in 1975, which got him expelled from the SFWA
in 1976.

[https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/5/lem5art.htm](https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/5/lem5art.htm)

>ABSTRACT

>Philip Dick does not lead his critics an easy life, since he does not so much
play the part of a guide through his phantasmagoric worlds as give the
impression of one lost in their labyrinth. He has stood all the more in need
of critical assistance, but he has not received it. A characteristic of Dick
’s work, after its ambiguity as to genre, is its tawdriness, which is
reminiscent of the goods offered at country fairs by primitive craftsmen who
are at once clever and naive, possessed of more talent than self-knowledge.
Dick has as a rule taken over a rubble of building materials from the run-of-
the-mill American professionals of SF, frequently adding a true gleam of
originality to worn-out concepts, and erecting with such materials
constructions truly his own. The world gone mad, with a spasmodic flow of time
and a network of causes and effects which wriggles as if nauseated, the world
of frenzied physics, is unquestionably his invention. If Dick’s writings are
neither of uniform quality nor fully realized, still it is only by brute force
that they can be jammed into that pulp of materials, destitute of intellectual
value and original structure, which makes up SF. Its fans are attracted by the
worst in Dick—the typical dash of American SF, reaching to the stars, and the
headlong pace of action moving from one surprise to the next—but they hold it
against him that, instead of unraveling puzzles, he leaves the reader at the
end on the battlefield, enveloped in an aura of mystery as grotesque as it is
strange. Yet his bizarre blending of hallucinogenic and palingenetic
techniques have not won him many admirers outside the ghetto walls, since
outsiders are repelled by the shoddiness of the props he has adopted from the
inventory of SF.

Discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8801011](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8801011)

[https://english.lem.pl/index.php/faq#SWFA](https://english.lem.pl/index.php/faq#SWFA)

>Why was Stanislaw Lem expelled from the SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of
America) in 1976?

>Lem has always been critical of most science fiction, which he considers ill
thought out, poorly written, and interested more in adventure that ideas or
new literary forms. (...) Those opinions provoked an unpleasant debate in the
SFWA [the "Lem affair"]. Philip José Farmer and others were incensed by Lem's
comments (...) and eventually brought about the removal of the honorary
membership(...). Other members, such as Ursula K. Le Guin, then protested the
removal (...) and the SFWA then offered Lem a regular membership, which he, of
course, refused in 1976. Asked later about the "affair," he remarked, that his
opinions of the state of science fiction were already known when he was
offered an honorary membership (...). He also added he harboured no ill
feelings towards the SFWA or U.S. writers in particular, "...but it would be a
lie to say the whole incident has enlarged my respect for SF writers".

~~~
the_af
Very interesting, I didn't know this bit of scifi history!

I'm an absolute fan of PKD, and he was definitely at his best when exploring
the surreal and unexplainable, the paradoxes, the philosophical, and also the
minutiae of the "uninteresting" parts of people's lives. Like someone said in
the intro of his collected stories, PKD's characters themselves are often
cardboard thin, and his props likewise. Taken at face value, the "pure" scifi
bits of his stories aren't particularly interesting; but it's fascinating how
he cares about what a time-traveler does for a living, and when a service call
from the future goes horribly wrong, it's the minutiae about the repairman's
life that matters, not the "tech". When someone is stuck in a parallel
universe, their possible savior might only be interested in what's in it for
her as profit. When someone is stuck in a Nazi-ruled world, we still learn he
sells fake antiques for a living.

If someone lives in a backwards time-travelling stream ("Your Appointment Will
Be Yesterday") this is never really explained. PKD doesn't care about this, he
cares about how it affects his characters. And the story is never fully
resolved, not in a tidy way -- it often ends up more confusing than it
started!

So I guess I find myself in agreement with Stalislaw Lem here.

------
dandelany
FYI - this story was supposed to be embargoed and only a few sources are
leaking details. So tune in tomorrow (presumably) for some better sources!
[https://twitter.com/starstoofondly/status/130532585089260339...](https://twitter.com/starstoofondly/status/1305325850892603394?s=21)

~~~
henearkr
It ought to be released the 14 September morning, and still nothing:

[https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/latest-news](https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-
press/latest-news)

~~~
aww_dang
Supposedly it should drop at 15:00GMT

~~~
henearkr
Oh, thanks a lot!!

------
benji_is_me
The paper was just now released in nature's astronomy.[1]

[1]:
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-1174-4](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-1174-4)

~~~
foobar1962
The article abstract uses the phrase “in situ cloud and soil sampling” which
is a delicious understatement.

------
yreg
Combined with the recent witnessing of evolution of multicellular life[0] the
Great Filter seems more and more menacing.

[0] - [https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-witnessed-in-
re...](https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-witnessed-in-real-time-a-
single-celled-algae-evolve-into-a-multicellular-organism)

~~~
gfodor
The Great Filter theory has a very big assumption attached to it, and it's
troubling that it's seemingly become accepted as fact by the constant
references to "The Great Filter" as a real thing. The assumption is that in a
universe with other civilizations we'd certainly be aware of them. I can't say
what prior we should have on that, but it's definitely not 100%. Certainly if
we find bacteria on Venus all of the claims of "The Great Filter was the
creation of cells" will be wrong, and in retrospect it will be shocking to
think we could be so ignorant as to be unaware of bacteria on our nearest
neighbor for so long. In other words, if it took us this long to find bacteria
on _Venus_ , why should we assume anything about our ability to determine life
beyond our Solar System?

~~~
bluGill
It is safe to say that the universe is teaming with life even though we are
not aware of it off of earth. Here is a simple thought experiment: assume that
there was a civilization that stagnated on our exact level of technology and
interest in other life - when would they have detected us at various
distances?

As we can see by this announcement they wouldn't have detected the first
primal soup that formed life (we don't have any probes), but given enough time
they would have sent a probe to our planet and detected single celled life,
and they would have seen evidence of life.

At 5 light years (the closest start is just less than that) they wouldn't have
had a chance before about 1900, and they might needed until 1960 (I give a
range because there is room for debate on exactly what would be proof, they
might have not been sure) to detect out radio transmissions. We would probably
have made contact with them in the 1970s.

At up to 100 light years the above applies with more of a timeshift. After 200
we don't have the ability to detect ourselves (the technology of 1820 didn't
give any emissions to go on.) I'm not sure if they would know there is a
planet with water where we are (There has been great progress in detecting
small planets but I don't know what their abilities are).

The farther out you go the harder it gets. Eventually they are still seeing
the big bang form our galaxy and so have no idea life will eventually happen
here (or where we will be as the universe is moving all along in directions
that they cannot predict)

~~~
outworlder
If you go just be what's detectable by radio emissions, there seems to be
another problem.

Back when we started broadcasting radio, we needed very powerful transmitters
since the receivers were pretty primitive - you could make receivers with no
power source at all (Galena radios).

Then we started using them for other purposes. Powerful radars appeared. TV
was invented. Later on we added digital signals and most traffic shifted to
binary for computer to computer communication.

Now we have things like WIFI and 5g. The problem is that the technology has
advanced so much that cellular antennas can talk to puny transmitters from
miles away, while the transmitters are only outputting milliwatts. We can also
electronically 'steer' transmissions so they will 'point' at the other party
(beamforming).

Long range communication is shifting to satellites and fiber optic cables.
Those are pretty directional and not very strong signals, by comparison (and
fiber optic of course has none). We have been slowly shutting down TV stations
in favor of internet streams.

Civilian radars still exist but they are relatively weak. They are also slowly
being phased out in favor of technologies like ADS-B, which broadcast a
fraction of the power. GPS signals are very weak.

Military radars are also more sensitive than before - and increasingly look
like background noise. Given the high emphasis on stealth, they are also more
directional and lower power than before. And may not even be on all the time.

Given this, it is possible that, if you are taking a SETI approach, there's
only a very small window before a civilization switches to more efficient and
less noisy RF comms.

> At up to 100 light year

At 100 light years you'll have very faint, possibly undetectable signals, as
the strength decreases with distance squared. Unless they are pointing at us.

------
TigeriusKirk
So obviously a mission to Venus to gather additional information should
instantly become a top priority. Is there anything already in the works?

~~~
ddevault
Such a mission has to be undertaken with care. You don't want to become the
next Venusian extinction event by mistake.

~~~
willis936
Or almost as concerning: you don’t want to be genesis on Venus before you have
some answers.

~~~
LostTrackHowM
Or alternatively, we deliberately infect it without athmosperic bacteria:
[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090318094642.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090318094642.htm)

Which would be terrible... but true to our history when discovering new world.

------
dmix
I’m confused about one thing, would the (potential) organisms be
floating/growing/dying entirely in the habitable region of the atmosphere or
would it be rising from below?

~~~
Symmetry
There are bacteria that live entirely in Earth's stratosphere so floating
bacteria wouldn't be out of the question.

[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090318094642.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090318094642.htm)

I can't see how bacteria could possibly _evolve_ in the atmosphere but Venus
is believed to have once had oceans.

~~~
Robotbeat
The question I have is how they could get access to micronutrients up there.
On Earth, there's dust blown from dust storms, etc, but my read on Venus is
that there's not a ton of circulation between the hellish surface and the
upper atmosphere.

~~~
muttled
Volcanic activity throwing nutrients up there is what I've read.

------
bencollier49
If life existed previously on Venus but no longer, how long could phosphine
exist in the atmosphere without breaking down due to natural chemical
processes?

~~~
rg2004
In their video conference they said thousands of seconds.

~~~
bencollier49
Only in the upper cloud layers! Apparently underneath they haven't a clue, but
I'm guessing it can't be aeons.

------
henearkr
See also:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24463423](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24463423)

~~~
dmix
With a headline like that no wonder it got so many upvotes. I much prefer this
one.

------
gmueckl
Alright, so there are traces of Phosphine in the atmosphere. But what makes
the association with life a credible claim? There are a number of possible
inorganic synthesis paths leading to that molecule. How can those be ruled
out?

~~~
mlnj
[http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/phosphine-biosignature-
gas...](http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/phosphine-biosignature-
gas-07957.html)

Something along the lines of:

> To do this, they spent the last several years running many species of
> phosphorous — phosphine’s essential building block — through an exhaustive,
> theoretical analysis of chemical pathways, under increasingly extreme
> scenarios, to see whether phosphorous could turn into phosphine in any
> abiotic way.

> The scientists found that phosphine has no significant false positives,
> meaning any detection of phosphine is a sure sign of life.

~~~
PopePompus
Phosphine was detected in Saturn's atmosphere at the Caltech Submillimeter
Observatory (right next to the JCMT) decades ago
([http://www.ericweisstein.com/research/papers/dps93/](http://www.ericweisstein.com/research/papers/dps93/)).
I don't recall anyone screaming "Life on Saturn" back then. I think this is
being overhyped.

~~~
ncallaway
From the other thread about this, people were saying there are known abiotic
chemical pathways to generate Phosphine on gas giants, so detection of
Phosphine on Saturn and Jupiter is much less interesting.

Apparently those know pathways don't work on rocky planets, which is why a
detection on Venus is more interesting than a detection on Saturn.

I still expect the outcome to eventually be: "we have found a new pathway to
Phosphine, that's consistent with a rocky planet", but it definitely seems
like a discovery that warrants attention and further study.

~~~
Robotbeat
I have often thought of Venus as halfway between a gas giant and a rocky
planet.

~~~
sedatk
Why?

~~~
Robotbeat
Because like a gas giant, the surface is effectively unreachable or at least
absolutely uninhabitable (if it even exists for a gas giant). The atmosphere
of Venus, like a gas giant, becomes a very hot, supercritical gas as you go
deeper. Like a gas giant, the only potential habitable area is in the
atmosphere.

Venus still has a sensible surface, although it's unclear if that concept
makes sense for a gas giant. "Gas dwarfs" exist, which have a thick atmosphere
around a rocky planet (i.e. around Earth's mass), but Venus probably doesn't
qualify for that. It's sort of a continuum, though, so the dividing line is
somewhat arbitrary.

~~~
saberdancer
In an colonization sense perhaps, but the environment is very different.
Pressures while high on Venus are orders of magnitudes lower than in gas giant
atmospheres.

~~~
Robotbeat
In a broad, habitability of life standpoint, with human settlement being a
subset of that.

------
crazydoggers
The Planetary Society has a measured and insightful analysis.

[https://www.planetary.org/articles/venus-phosphine-
biosignat...](https://www.planetary.org/articles/venus-phosphine-biosignature)

------
ricksunny
I wonder if the phosphine could be primordial - left over from ancient
microbial life there rather than existing microbial life.

~~~
MrEldritch
It seems very unlikely - the researchers estimate a lifetime for phosphine of
just thousands of years in the more temperate parts of the atmosphere, and
just thousands of _seconds_ nearer to the surface.

------
jungletime
Does Earth's atmosphere ever spill out into outer space? Is it possible for an
asteroid to pass through our outer atmosphere, and then fly on to hit Venus?

In some ways humans are simpler than the cells they are made off. Yeah, you
may know how to drive a car, but can you synthesize DNA? I find it fascinating
that complexity goes up, when you zoom into a human. And cells exhibit all
these behaviours.

There was this video I watched once, where a white blood cell was chasing a
bacteria around. And it looked like a game of pacman. I would have never
expected that a cell has some sort of self awareness, and is able to navigate
its environment.

~~~
metalliqaz
It is not possible for an asteroid to do that. If a space rock hit our
atmosphere, it would either burn up or rapidly lose speed and crash to the
ground.

I know the white blood cell animation you are talking about.

White blood cells are not self-aware. It might be helpful to picture cells
(and even large animals) not as the discrete objects that are seen by the
naked eye, but rather as a cloud of "stuff". In the middle is the meat; on the
outside is various liquids, particles, and gases that leak out. So, the white
blood cell isn't keeping an eye on the bacteria and chasing it. It's
increasing contact with the "stuff" that it recognizes as foreign.

~~~
thangalin
When a sufficiently large asteroid[0] slams into Earth, the impact plume[1]
can hoist matter off the surface. The velocity of said matter may be
sufficiently high to escape Earth's orbit, potentially seeding the solar
system with life[2].

[0]:
[https://impacts.to/downloads/lowres/impacts.pdf#page=21](https://impacts.to/downloads/lowres/impacts.pdf#page=21)

[1]: [https://youtu.be/bU1QPtOZQZU?t=70](https://youtu.be/bU1QPtOZQZU?t=70)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia#Lithopanspermia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia#Lithopanspermia)

------
vikramkr
Looks like there's some renewed importance to that rocketlab venus prove then!
I wonder if they'll modify their mission parameters to look for signs of life
now - part of the flexibility of doing interplanetary research as a private
company is going to be that ability to modify the mission however you want
without worrying about too many stakeholders, and this could be a great
motivation to justify focusing that mission more on life

~~~
thret
Imagine trying to justify sending a probe to Venus now and _not_ looking for
signs of life.

------
sparsely
It's worth considering that: * we have an N of 1 when it comes to
understanding under what conditions life can appear * when life first appeared
on earth, conditions were such that almost no currently existing creatures
could survive

that being said, it does seem more likely that this will result in some new
chemistry or a better understanding of conditions on venus than anything else

------
DonCopal
I find it interesting that the first detection of phosphine on Venus was in
2017 and later confirmed with another telescope in 2019. Does this mean that
the scientists basically need to keep it a secret from 2017 until now, even if
it's such an exciting news? How do they prevent "leaks"?

------
siraben
Searches for "venus phosphine" and "venus life" are peaking.[0]

[0]
[https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=now%207-d&geo=...](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=now%207-d&geo=US&q=venus%20phosphine,venus%20life)

------
narag
So Venus smells like garlic. Anticlimatic.

~~~
jvm_
Smells like garlic, at 20 parts per billion, in 80-90% sulfuric acid...
Probably not much smelling going in.

------
city41
Big Picture Science's new episode is about this. They interviewed the
researchers who made the discovery

[https://radio.seti.org/episodes/life-on-
venus](https://radio.seti.org/episodes/life-on-venus)

------
taf2
Could be life we sent there from earth via probes in the 70s?

~~~
saberdancer
Doubtful.

On Venus, we have detected "unknown absorbers" that absorb portion of UV and
visible light, these absorbers are seen in the form of clouds for 100 or so
years. It's possible this detection is connected with those unknown absorbers
and if so, it predates any human spacecraft.

Not only that, but it is doubtful that any kind of life would survive
spaceflight and entry into an environment so vastly different than earth. If
there is life on Venus, it is probably more extreme than extremophiles on
Earth. Venera probes were not coated in phosphine producing extremophile
bacteria.

~~~
Symmetry
The environment in the Venusian atmosphere isn't actually particularly extreme
high up. At 50km up you could walk around outside your vessel in shorts and a
breathing mask. I'ts just CO2 instead of N2/O2 and has about 1/10th the amount
of water vapor as on Earth. And a little acid but well within industrial
safety limits.

~~~
ta8908695
From the press releases today, the clouds of Venus are upwards of 80% sulfuric
acid, and on earth the highest concentration of acid we've observed things
living in is 5%.

All of the expert testimony I heard described Venus as far to acidic for any
life on Earth [0]

[0]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1u-jlf_Olo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1u-jlf_Olo)

~~~
Symmetry
Looking more into it, the problem seems to be that while the absolute amount
of acid isn't that high the ratio of H2SO4 to H2O is super high and there just
isn't very much of either in the Venus clouds. The absolute amount matters a
lot if you're just stepping outside for a bit but ratio is the only important
thing for theoretical floating bacteria since they have to get their working
fluid somehow.

------
amgreg
Related:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24463423](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24463423)

------
ssijak
One of abiotic ways to explain this is that some complex and intelligent Venus
lifeform is artificially making it to use it for something :)

------
traveler01
Considering how strong the tardigrades, wouldn't surprise me that much if we
found life in this form in Venus.

~~~
CyanBird
Oh, it most certainly isn't multicellular life, just bacterium floating in the
high air currents of Venusian atmosphere synthesizing acids or light into
energy and excreting phosphine and other things as a result

~~~
browserface
How do you know? In the past people would have said, there can be no life
there at all. And now people think they have evidence. The universe is so
vast, and we are blind to most of it, why should life be so sparse? It's the
norm, not the exception, is that unlikely? How can you be so certain.

Seems people so sure of life outside earth or not need it to be that way. Why
can't people be okay with it just being ambiguous for now...

------
greesil
So weird, phosphine is potentially the output of some life-based chemistry
happening, but phophine has a lot of hydrogen. Hydrogen is something that
Venus does not have a lot of. I haven't seen this addressed anywhere in the
discussion yet.

~~~
ta8908695
Venus has a permanent cloud layer of almost entirely sulfuric acid (H2SO4) so
there is hydrogen available it just requires chemistry to get it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus)

------
oxymoran
Data: Navy releases videos of UFO’s that defy our understanding of physics
along with numerous highly credible eyewitness accounts

Science: must be drones or swamp gas or something

Data: Phosphine on Venus

Science: we have found life off of Earth!

This is why nobody trusts ya’ll anymore.

------
TootsMagoon
Life does not need to be RNA/DNA based.

------
xwdv
How fast can we get a probe there?

------
Mizza
An astronomer on Reddit did a good layman's breakdown here:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/iskmro/link_to_the_r...](https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/iskmro/link_to_the_royal_astronomical_societys_not_so/g58l9r0/)

A PDF of the full paper is here:
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-1174-4.pdf](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-1174-4.pdf)

"Astronomer here! Here is what is going on!

For many years, astronomers have speculated that the most likely way to find
evidence of extraterrestrial life is via biosignatures, which are basically
substances that provide evidence of life. Probably the most famous example of
this would be oxygen- it rapidly oxidizes in just a few thousand years, so to
have large quantities of oxygen in an atmosphere you need something to
constantly be putting it there (in Earth's case, from trees). Another one
that's been suggested as a great biosignature is phosphine- a gas we can only
make on Earth in the lab, or via organic matter decomposing (typically in a
water-rich environment, which Venus is not). So, to be abundantly clear, the
argument here is to the best of our knowledge you should only get this
concentration of phosphine if there is life.

What did this group discover? Is the signal legit? These scientists basically
pointed a submillimeter radio telescope towards Venus to look for a signature
of phosphine, which was not even a very technologically advanced radio
telescope for this sort of thing, but they just wanted to get a good benchmark
for future observations. And... they found a phosphine signature. They then
pointed another, better radio telescope at it (ALMA- hands down best in the
world for this kind of observation) and measured this signal even better. I am
a radio astronomer myself, and looking at the paper, I have no reason to think
this is not the signature from phosphine they say it is. They spend a lot of
time estimating other contaminants they might be picking up, such as sulfur
dioxide, but honestly those are really small compared to the phosphine signal.
There's also a lot on the instrumentation, but they do seem to understand and
have considered all possible effects there.

Can this phosphine be created by non-life? The authors also basically spend
half the paper going through allllll the different possible ways to get
phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus. If you go check "extended data Figure
10" in the paper they go through all of the options, from potential volcanic
activity to being brought in from meteorites to lightning... and all those
methods are either impossible in this case, or would not produce you the
concentration levels needed to explain the signature by several orders of
magnitude (like, literally a million times too little). As I said, these guys
were very thorough, and brought on a lot of experts in other fields to do this
legwork to rule options out! And the only thing they have not been able to
rule out so far is the most fantastic option. :) The point is, either we don’t
get something basic about rocky planets, or life is putting this up there.

(Mind, the way science goes I am sure by end of the week someone will have
thought up an idea on how to explain phosphine in Venus's atmosphere. Whether
that idea is a good one remains to be seen.)

To give one example, It should be noted at this point that phosphine has
apparently been detected in comets- specifically, it’s thought to be behind in
the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko by the Rosetta mission- paper link. Comets
have long been known to have a ton of organic compounds and are water rich-
some suggest life on Earth was seeded by comets a long time ago- but it’s also
present in the coma of comets as they are near the sun, which are very
different conditions than the Venusian atmosphere. (It’s basically water ice
sublimating as it warms up in a comet, so an active process is occurring in a
water-rich environment to create phosphine.) However, the amounts created are
nowhere near what is needed for the amounts of phosphine seen in Venus, we do
not have water anywhere near the levels on Venus to make these amounts of
phosphine, and we have detailed radar mapping to show us there was no recent
cometary impact of Venus. As such, it appears highly unlikely that what puts
phospine into Venus’s atmosphere is the same as what puts it into a comet’s
coma. Research into this also indicates that, surprise surprise, cometary
environments are very different than rocky ones, and only life can put it in
the atmosphere of a rocky planet.

How can life exist on Venus? I thought it was a hell hole! The surface of
Venus is indeed not a nice place to live- a runaway greenhouse effect means
the surface is hot enough to melt lead, it rains sulfuric acid, and the
Russian probes that landed there in didn't last more than a few hours. (No one
has bothered since the 1980s.) However, if you go about 50 km up Venus's
atmosphere is the most Earth-like there is in the Solar System, and this is
where this signal is located. What's more, unlike the crushing pressure and
hot temperatures on the surface, you have the same atmospheric pressure as on
Earth, temps varying from 0-50 C, and pretty similar gravity to here. People
have suggested we could even build cloud cities there. And this is the region
this biosignature is coming from- not the surface, but tens of km up in the
pretty darn nice area to float around in.

Plus, honestly, you know what I’m happy about that will come out of this? More
space exploration of Venus! It is a fascinating planet that is criminally
under-studied despite arguably some of the most interesting geology and
atmosphere there is that we know of. (My favorite- Venus’s day is longer than
its year, and it rotates “backwards” compared to all the other planets. But we
think that’s not because of the way it formed, but because some gigantic
planet-sized object hit it in the early days and basically flipped it upside
down and slowed its spin. Isn’t that so cool?!) But we just wrote it off
because the surface is really tough with old Soviet technology, and NASA
hasn’t even sent a dedicated mission in over 30 years despite it being
literally the closest planet to us. I imagine that is going to change fast and
I am really excited for it- bring on the Venus drones!

So, aliens? I mean, personally if you're asking my opinion as a scientist... I
think I will always remember this discovery as the first step in learning how
common life is in the universe. :) To be clear, the "problem" with a
biosignature is it does not tell you what is putting that phosphine into the
Venusian atmosphere- something microbial seems a good bet (we have great radar
mapping of Venus and there are def no cloud cities or large artificial
structures), but as to what, your guess is as good as mine. We do know that
billions of microbes live high up in the Earth's atmosphere, feeding as they
pass through clouds and found as high as 10km up. So I see no reason the same
can't be happening on Venus! (It would be life still pretty darn ok with
sulfuric acid clouds everywhere, mind, but we have extremophiles on Earth in
crazy environments too so I can’t think of a good reason why it’s impossible).

If you want to know where the smoking gun is, well here's the thing...
Hollywood has well trained you to think otherwise, but I have always argued
that discovering life elsewhere in the universe was going to be like
discovering water on Mars. Where, as you might recall, first there were some
signatures that there was water on Mars but that wasn't conclusive on its own
that it existed, then a little more evidence came in, and some more... and
finally today, everyone knows there is water on Mars. There was no reason to
think the discovery of life wouldn't play out the same, because that's how
science operates. (This is also why I always thought people were far too
simplistic in assuming we would all just drop everything and unite as one just
because life was discovered elsewhere- there'd be no smoking gun, and we'd all
do what we all are doing now, get on social media to chat about it.) But put
it this way- today we have taken a really big first step. And I think it is so
amazing that this was first discovered not only next door, but on a planet not
really thought of as great for life- it shows there's a good chance life in
some for is ubiquitous! And I for one cannot wait until we can get a drone of
some sort into the Venusian atmosphere to measure this better- provided, of
course, we can do it in a way that ensures our own microbes don't hitch a
ride.

TL;DR- if you count microbes, which I do, we are (probably) not alone. :D "

~~~
hmahncke
Thanks for the great explainer!

Do you happen to know more about "organic matter decomposing" as way phosphine
gets produced? Microbes are certainly a pretty broad group here on Earth, and
I wondered if there was something more specific about this metabolic pathway
that could help our understanding of what was going on in the clouds of Venus.

[Yes, I googled a bit a couldn't find a good lay explanation]

------
dang
Url changed from [http://astrobiology.com/2020/09/phosphine-detected-in-the-
at...](http://astrobiology.com/2020/09/phosphine-detected-in-the-atmosphere-
of-venus---an-indicator-of-possible-life.html), which points to this.

Edit: changed from [http://nasawatch.com/archives/2020/09/phosphine-
detec.html](http://nasawatch.com/archives/2020/09/phosphine-detec.html) to
what appears to be the canonical source.

------
plutonorm
Is it aliens?

