
Signs of Life discovered on Venus and atmosphere - mromanuk
https://twitter.com/brianroemmele/status/1304984620304232448
======
tectonic
On the other hand, we may have instead found evidence of a new abiotic form of
phosphine synthesis— I expect scientists will be working hard to propose non-
biological processes that could explain these results. I also expect some new
Venus probes real soon now.

This definitely could be the result of an unknown abiotic process. It also
definitely could be evidence of life.

Some papers to check out:

\- [https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.05224](https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.05224)

\-
[https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/ast.2017.1783](https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/ast.2017.1783)

For 3 billion years, ending about 750 million years ago, Venus was likely
hospitable, leaving the tantalizing possibility that we’ve detected the last
vestiges of an ancient ecosystem.

Self-promotion: we'll cover this in-depth in Orbital Index
([https://orbitalindex.com](https://orbitalindex.com)) this week.

~~~
awb
From a quora post by the same author of the tweets:

> 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

> there very well could be an abiotic source but that alone would be an
> amazing discovery. However we must deploy Occam’s Razor and suggest the
> simplest explanation and the evidence suggests the simple explanation is
> biological sources, life.

Wouldn't a better announcement be "Phosphine detected in Venus atmosphere".
Maybe it's compelling evidence for life, but claiming "Signs of Life Detected"
seems a bit premature, no?

And from the link on the author's Twitter bio:

> Over the long, winding arc of his career, Brian has built and run payments
> and tech businesses, worked in media, including the promotion of top
> musicians, and explored a variety of other subjects along the way.

Not exactly who I thought would be announcing the discovery of life beyond our
planet.

~~~
tannhauser23
Did you read the article? There's going to be a paper published tomorrow in
Nature and the MIT scientists who wrote it will be doing a press conference.
This Brian guy is just amplifying the news - he's not the author of the study.

~~~
awb
Yes, I read the article. The discovery does sound compelling. I'm commenting
on his amplification strategy ("Signs of Life discovered on Venus") rather
than just presenting the facts ("Phosphine detected in Venus atmosphere").

I prefer my science news without a hype man but the author seems to take quite
the initiative on Quora: "However we must deploy Occam's Razor and suggest the
simplest explanation and the evidence suggests the simple explanation is
biological sources, life."

[https://www.quora.com/Was-life-discovered-in-the-clouds-
of-V...](https://www.quora.com/Was-life-discovered-in-the-clouds-of-Venus-
in-2020/answer/Brian-Roemmele)

It's pretty sensationalized and coordinated like a PR campaign.

If you watch the video on his Twitter feed, the scientists themselves seem to
focus on the science and don't claim to have "discovered life on Venus", so
they do seem well intentioned. And their discovery certainly does sound
interesting and potentially significant.

~~~
gfodor
“Signs of life” has more information content than “Phosphine” - I had no idea
that Phosphine is a sign of life, and that is a completely objective
description of it from my new understanding. A sign of life does not mean
life.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _A sign of life does not mean life._

But strongly, _strongly_ implies that. It's misleading marketing.

~~~
gfodor
My understanding is that the presence of it strongly implies life on Venus.
Just because people have a prior on that doesn't mean the evidence is
inherently weak. If it turns out there is bacterial life on Mars and on Venus
(both potentially the case) people who claimed we needed "extraordinary
evidence for extraordinary claims" will look conservative in retrospect.

------
aazaa
The thinking seems to go like this:

1\. phosphine is found on earth in low-oxygen environments that harbor life
(e.g., swamps)

2\. abiological routes to phosphine, although known, require unusual reagents
and/or elevated temperatures

This 2019 article gives some background:

[https://news.mit.edu/2019/phosphine-aliens-
stink-1218](https://news.mit.edu/2019/phosphine-aliens-stink-1218)

Here's some evidence of phosphine production in a swamp:

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/014663...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0146638095000216)

This leaves (2), which is a bear because it states a negative. The claim that
the phosphine on Venus is biological in origin requires no feasible route to
the substance given the known chemistry of the planet's atmosphere.

Given that Venus' atmosphere is a complex mixture held at very high
temperature and pressure, the "sign" seems pretty weak here.

~~~
Jetroid
Agreed.

I think an unknown route to phosphine generation seems simpler and more likely
than a biological explanation. YMMV.

Occam's razor would therefore imply that this is not life.

~~~
pdabbadabba
I think it's debatable, at best, whether Occam's razor would favor "an unknown
process" over a known biological process. Especially when some research
apparently _has_ already been done, without success, to discover alternate
processes.

(And, by the way, the unknown process could also be biological!)

~~~
appleiigs
Well... a biological process would be “rare” outside of earth, so if I was a
betting man...

~~~
Koshkin
Milky Way contains on the order of _half a trillion_ star systems. Would
having, say, a _million_ planets carrying some form of life in our galaxy
alone qualify as “rare”?

~~~
JauntTrooper
We also know that our solar system has exactly the right conditions needed for
life.

~~~
brianberns
No, we know that our _planet_ has the right conditions for life. The
conditions on Venus are very different.

------
UncleOxidant
Something doesn't add up here: This is sourced by a guy on twitter
(@BrianRoemmele) who AFAICT doesn't have expertise in the area. Now go read
his Quora on this: [https://www.quora.com/Was-life-discovered-in-the-clouds-
of-V...](https://www.quora.com/Was-life-discovered-in-the-clouds-of-Venus-
in-2020/answer/Brian-Roemmele?ch=10&share=756a32e9&srid=Pi3) It gets quite
bizarre:

"We should also not rule out far more complex life from the observations of
Phosphine. It is quite possible we will observe life as large as a Whale on
Earth quite happy suspended in the gravity waves of Venus." WTAF?

Also, how did the video in his tweet somehow become available a day early as
well as the Earth&Sky article. Something doesn't smell right here. The
explanation is that the Earth & Sky article was put up early by mistake and
pulled.. and this guy happened to find it. Another explanation could be that
an article was written to look like an Earth & Sky article and put on a google
drive... and that he got a couple of friends to make the short video on the
MIT campus. Otherwise how does that video somehow appear today, a day early as
well as the article?

~~~
HuShifang
He does seem like a bit of a "character." But maybe he had a webscraper that
just happened to catch the premature post, and is just trying to self-
aggrandize on a real scoop? Nasawatch [0] is saying that several sources have
confirmed it to them...

[0]: [http://nasawatch.com/archives/2020/09/phosphine-
detec.html](http://nasawatch.com/archives/2020/09/phosphine-detec.html)

~~~
UncleOxidant
And he just happened to have a big quora write up ready? And he happened to
get the video a day early too?

~~~
HuShifang
Probably a leak from one of the embargoed reporters is more likely, if it's
true. Obviously we'll find out soon. But if the Earthsky.org story a fake, he
certainly did a vastly better job producing the fake than he did self
aggrandizing off of it.

------
perihelions
Here's a long-form article about this that appears tomorrow in _Earth & Sky_.
It was apparently published early by accident, and taken down; hence this
Google cache link.

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dUWrpm...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dUWrpm80WHsJ:https://earthsky.org/%3Fp%3D343883+)

~~~
hutzlibu
"What did the researchers find?

Simply put, a gas that shouldn’t be there, and on Earth is considered a
conclusive biosignature: phosphine, a very stinky gas. As far as scientists
know, there are only two ways to produce it, either artificially in a lab, or
by certain kinds of microbes that live in oxygen-free environments. Since it
is rather unlikely there any alien labs on Venus, that leaves microbes."

Or it reveals, that we still don't really know what is going on on venus,
which chaotic atmosphere and vulcanic activity might very well result in the
specific "lab conditions" to create phosphine.

So, it is a very interesting find, worth investigating, but I just for the
existence of a gas, I would not shout "proof of alien life", yet.

~~~
perl4ever
Is it possible a previous space probe seeded the atmosphere though? For
example, did the Soviets sterilize all the Venera probes perfectly?

~~~
bsder
An Earth microbe evolving to be suddenly Venus-adjusted would possibly be
_more_ stunning than just "life evolved on Venus".

~~~
umanwizard
Not for me. Finding life from elsewhere than Earth would be by far the most
significant scientific discovery in human history. (Again, just a personal
opinion; I have no objective argument to back it up).

~~~
hutzlibu
Just finding life on venus does not mean, it evolved independent from the life
on earth. Microbes travelling with asteroids is possible.

------
_Microft
If this were true and if abiogenesis had been independent from life on Earth,
we could basically assume that it is certain that life arises on planets with
suitable conditions (as they were once in the history of Venus).

In this case, the universe basically _must teem with life_ in one form or
another.

These might be the biggest _if_ s one could imagine but I'm really excited for
the follow-ups...

(Cross-posted from another thread, as the other doesn't seem to gain traction)

~~~
saberdancer
If this is true, I expect several missions to launch ASAP to try and test this
hypothesis. If we could prove abiogenesis separate from Earth we will have
good proof that life should be abundant.

Very exciting news, I'm hoping that it is proof of life as that will give
increase interest and funding for space exploration.

~~~
stupendousyappi
Very exciting news, if by exciting you mean horrifying. It would be near
confirmation of the Great Filter.

~~~
saberdancer
Why would it be confirmation of Great Filter? It's quite possible that life is
abundant in the galaxy but that intelligent life is not common and especially
industrialized civilizations.

~~~
Jetroid
That's still a confirmation of the Great Filter; just that life on Earth has
already passed through it.

~~~
pvaldes
(Ok. Can somebody explain what is all this fuss about filters?)

~~~
gremlinsinc
Essentially it's the fermi paradox. If life is out there, why aren't there
signs? The universe should be teaming with life but isn't. There's a few
reasons why... the Great Filter is a hypothesis that basically means almost
all life hits a wall where it dies out no matter what. No life so far that we
know has ever made it past this filter.

Here's a good read on the subject: [https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-
paradox.html](https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html)

~~~
CamperBob2
_If life is out there, why aren 't there signs?_

For the same reason the large dinosaurs died out. Life as we know it operates
best within fairly narrow mass scales and energy level ranges. Those are both
several orders of magnitude away from the quantities needed to produce effects
observable at interstellar distances.

 _The universe should be teeming with life but isn 't._

We currently have no good evidence that it is. That doesn't mean it isn't,
just that our detection methods aren't yet up to the challenge. Basic
information theory suggests that they may never be. Advanced civilizations
will use coherent EM radiation for a limited time only. The radiation they
_do_ generate in the long term probably won't be wasted by letting it escape
isotropically into space.

Also, at some point they may come to understand that drawing attention to
themselves isn't a good survival strategy. A civilization that is advanced
enough for us to observe is also advanced enough to hide from us.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Those are both several orders of magnitude away from the quantities needed
> to produce effects observable at interstellar distances. (...) our detection
> methods aren 't yet up to the challenge. Basic information theory suggests
> that they may never be._

Not really true. There are more signs of life than just radio waves. One -
like in the article - is chemistry. Planets that seem to be very far from
chemical equilibrium are objects of interest, as this may imply there is a
complex system that's actively fighting entropy. I.e. life. For instance,
aliens with powerful telescopes and good understanding of geology could
conclude Earth has life on it by observing it keeps a surprising amount of
oxygen in the atmosphere, where it should have already oxidized everything
instead.

~~~
CamperBob2
Yes, really true. Look at how hard it was to establish the presence of the PH3
absorption line on the planet right next door. We are not able to make that
kind of observation on extrasolar planets yet, at least not beyond very
rudimentary levels. Hopefully someday, but certainly not now.

Admittedly Earth's oxygen signature would be a lot easier to detect than a
minute quantity of PH3 on Venus. But we wouldn't have been able to look for
that either until just a few years ago. Even to a seasoned RF engineer, ALMA
and JCMT are indistinguishable from magic.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Fair enough. What I'm saying is that detecting anomalous chemical composition
of exoplanet atmospheres seems almost reachable with our current capabilities,
and - unlike radio signals - is an indicator we can't really hide. So aliens
slightly more advanced than us could be looking at that.

------
eutropia
Phosphine found exactly in the "habitable temperature" cloud range
unexplainable by all current abiotic models, which meshes up with other
observations of "unknown absorbers" in the same cloud range, which researchers
have modeled to be particles about the size of bacteria.

holy shit.

~~~
robterrell
...ironic to discover life on another planet just as we're hitting the Great
Filter here.

~~~
jdmoreira
are we really? Could you explain exactly what you believe the great filter to
be?

~~~
y-c-o-m-b
They are implying the great filter is actually the current step (advancing
towards colonization explosion). The next step would be colonization explosion
(aka colonizing space or other planets), but that could be cut short due to
civilization eradicating itself. This is thought to happen either via climate
change, nuclear war, or artificial intelligence wiping us out.

I personally am not a fan of the AI destruction theory because I'd expect AI
to replace us and expand into the solar system. If it got to the point where
it could kill all organic life, then I'd bet it's unlikely for AI to die off
with us as well. Just my opinion though...

~~~
tintor
There could easily be more than one AI, competing for Earth's resources.

~~~
ptrenko
Yes and it ends eventually. A single AI makes it out of here

~~~
nwsm
Why are humans susceptible to complete self destruction but multiple AI would
not be?

Disregard this if you mean “0 or 1 AI makes it out of here”

------
mekkkkkk
There's a lot of talk about the great filter this, and the great filter that.
Even if life is abundant, what gives you the impression that civilization
level intelligence would be? Out of all the species that ever roamed the
earth, only a single one has reached this point. Perhaps it's an absolutely
incredible fluke or glitch in our biology that is one in a [insert
astronomical number].

It's tempting to think something in the lines of "oh but if it happened here
in our little shitty solar system, it can't be very special". But that's more
or less the anthropic principle.

~~~
profmonocle
The hypothesis also makes a _huge_ assumption: that if intelligent
civilizations were common, they would be detectable by us. The radio waves
emitted by our own civilization don't go that far (compared to the distance
between stars) before becoming nearly indistinguishable from background noise.

~~~
garmaine
On the other hand, stars are extremely wasteful. A technological civilization
will, eventually, encase their sun in an energy extracting Dyson swarm. So why
isn't the sky full of dim uniform-distribution infrared blobs?

~~~
yesenadam
> A technological civilization will, eventually, encase their sun in an energy
> extracting Dyson swarm.

I always wonder, when I read this and similar claims, how on earth the tone of
100% certainty is justified. It seems pure bluff.

~~~
garmaine
It’s quite rooted in game theory:

[https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Basic_AI_drives](https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Basic_AI_drives)

The above link is about AI, but it could apply to any alien species just as
well.

Any organism living in a thermodynamic universe and subject to competition and
evolutionary pressures will develop instinctual drives that align with
resource acquisition, replication, and survival. As the above link details
this surprisingly holds true even when you remove evolution and consider
designed minds.

Even if a hypothetical civilization didn’t care about resource acquisition,
replication and survival, they’d be out-competed by one which did. So where is
_that_ civilization’s ever expanding sphere of Dyson clouds?

~~~
yesenadam
The authors referenced at the above link don't use that seemingly unwarranted
tone of certainty. I can't see anything in Omohundro's papers of anything like
the same flavour, and Bostrom's conclusion is the sensible-sounding

 _It should be emphasized that the existence of convergent instrumental
reasons, even if they apply to and are recognized by a particular agent, does
not imply that the agent’s behavior is easily predictable. An agent might well
think of ways of pursuing the relevant instrumental values that do not readily
occur to us. This is especially true for a superintelligence, which could
devise extremely clever but counterintuitive plans to realize its goals,
possibly even exploiting as-yet undiscovered physical phenomena. What is
predictable is that the convergent instrumental values would be pursued and
used to realize the agent’s final goals, not the specific actions that the
agent would take to achieve this._

~~~
garmaine
I’m not what you’re picking up on other than academic prose. The very quote
you give is very certain that convergent intermediate goals would be pursued.

------
scarmig
If indeed abiotic processes couldn't have generated the phosphine and life
does exist on Venus, some questions I'm pondering:

1) How can we determine whether Venusian and Terran life share a common
ancestor? A seemingly clear signal would be a different genetic basis for
Venusian life than DNA, but would the converse be true, or just a sign of
convergent evolution?

2) How hard would it be to send a probe there that could perform a preliminary
analysis of the life form? How hard would it be to bring a sample back to
Earth?

3) This would be an indicator of life existing in the habitable zone of Venus'
atmosphere. How should that change our estimate of the likelihood of other
forms to exist on the surface of Venus? Earth extremophiles can exist at
>100C, but the surface of Venus is >450C. On the other hand, there'd be a
continuum which would allow evolutionary processes to work their magic.
Acidity is also an issue, but the life forms in the habitable zone already be
living at levels impossible for any known Earth species.

~~~
stupendousyappi
If the Venusian life has anything vaguely like replicating paired strands of
nucleic acids, I think we have to assume a common ancestor (and I'd put my
money on it coming from Venus). Even if there's no commonality whatsoever in
details of the genetic code. FWIW, if we do discover life on Venus, I expect
this to be the case.

Regarding #2, bringing a sample back to Earth is way too dangerous. At least,
I'm certain NASA will see it that way, and I doubt any other space agency has
the capability to execute a sample return mission within the next 10 years
without NASA assistance.

~~~
reducesuffering
Is the extreme danger for Earth or for the life form? What is it? Is it the
risk of some extreme replication?

~~~
stupendousyappi
Danger for earth. When we introduce a species to a new environment, sometimes
it dies, and sometimes it becomes an invasive species and kills a lot of other
stuff. And some of those invasive species are big (like snakehead fish) and
some are small (like the smallpox virus or, frankly, SARS-Cov-2). Many experts
think there's a risk that an extraterrestrial microorganism could devastate
some or all Earth life, given that no Earth life has had a chance to evolve
defenses against it.

------
rishav_sharan
Ok. I am hyped. I had always been fairly obsessed with Venus and any news
about possible biological processes there (though very unlikely) is welcome to
my nerdy ears.

Venus has a zone above the clouds where the atmosphere is not that cruel and
the temperature livable. There is always the chance of airborne microorganisms
living in the oasis layer above the hell that is the near-surface of Venus.

~~~
messe
> Venus has a zone above the clouds where the atmosphere is not that cruel and
> the temperature livable. There is always the chance of airborne
> microorganisms living in the oasis layer above the hell that is the near-
> surface of Venus.

Just to add to this, it's a similar temperature and pressure to earth, but the
main gas is CO2. In other words, almost ideal for anaerobic organisms (bar the
absence of water), which are the kind that generate phosphene, i.e. the
biosignature that was detected.

------
emerged
What's the confidence level that the detection of phosphine is not some sort
of false positive? I read the majority of the google cache and that aspect
seemed to be glossed over.

~~~
Tossrock
They used two different observatories (James Clerk Maxwell Telescope and the
Atacama Large Millimeter Array) to confirm the signal. The chances of both
being wrong in the exact same way is very low.

~~~
jml7c5
That suggests the instruments aren't faulty, but does not preclude systematic
error.

------
dvh
Phosphine was also found on jupiter and saturn:
[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/253319719_Ammonia_a...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/253319719_Ammonia_and_Phosphine_on_Jupiter_and_Saturn)

Also there is no water on venus.

~~~
callahad
The video explainer linked from the EarthSky article mentioned this,
clarifying that there's no known natural and abiotic means of producing
phosphine on _rocky planets._ Apparently gas giants can crank out phosphine
without it being indicative of life.

------
Santosh83
The video says phosphine is also produced at hellish pressures in the depths
of planets like Jupiter. So how likely is it that it is produced at hellish
depths in Venus and then spat out into the atmosphere by active volcanism?

~~~
saberdancer
Venus is a rocky planet, it doesn't have hellish depths like a gas giant does.
The researches have no credible explanation how those quantities of phosphine
can be produced on a rocky planet.

~~~
jvanderbot
Venus has extreme heat and pressure at its surface. The temperature is around
500C, and the pressure is nearly 100 Bar (about the pressure at 3000ft depth).
That is indeed hellish, and this is indeed a good question.

~~~
saberdancer
Depends on your definition of hellish. I guess Venus could be called that but
it is not comparable to the pressures and temperatures that are found inside
gas giants. For example Jupiter is estimated at 24000 Celsius at the core with
pressures of several million bar. This is vastly different than environment on
Venus and that is why they have no credible abiotic explanation for phosphine
generation on Venus.

My point was that Venus is not comparable to a gas giant.

------
_Microft
An article on the paper has leaked and was submitted here already:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24462429](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24462429)

------
l0b0
> Research scientists […] submitted a paper to the peer-reviewed academic
> journal Astrology […]

Someone might want to very quickly correct that to "Astrobiology". This whole
presentation, of going from a tweet to a Quora Q&A obviously posted by the
same person, is a bit weird.

~~~
UncleOxidant
And a very weird Quora at that. They posits that gravity waves keep these
organisms in the atmosphere. And then goes on to mention that viruses that
cause disease may be coming from space.

------
gdubs
So, this is a bit “out there” but something I’ve considered for a while is:

1) NASA scientists published a paper that showed just how difficult it would
be to find evidence of a past, advanced civilization on Earth.

2) There was, if I understand correctly, a window of time where Venus was
potentially inhabitable.

So, the idea I’ve wondered is: is it possible that Venus had, at one point, an
advanced civilization that triggered a runaway greenhouse effect?

~~~
garmaine
Hard to imagine a civilization advanced enough to trigger a runaway greenhouse
effect and yet not having achieved a space program with all that energy usage.

EDIT: Venesian satellites would have been detected, if that's not clear.

~~~
rsynnott
After 750 million years? I doubt any of ours will be detectable after that
time, at least not without a very careful search (which hasn’t been done for
speculative Venusian ones).

~~~
spideymans
I’d also assume that if a Venusian civilization was capable of releasing
satellites, they also likely generated an abundance of space junk which, over
the course of hundreds of millions of years, would completely tear apart any
trace of these satellites.

------
niemenmaa
Royal Astronomical Society's press release will be held at "4 pm"
[https://twitter.com/RoyalAstroSoc/status/1305454796225351682](https://twitter.com/RoyalAstroSoc/status/1305454796225351682)

Youtube stream of the press release:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IIj3e5BFp0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IIj3e5BFp0)

------
stupendousyappi
Assuming no abiotic pathway is found, what type of mission will confirm
Venusian life? I imagine that everyone will agree it's way too dangerous to
bring a sample back to Earth for analysis, so I expect we'll need to send
microscopes to Venus. We'll also need to send something down into the
appropriate cloud layer to collect a sample. Keeping anything aloft in the
atmosphere will be expensive, so I assume that they'll separate those two
elements of the mission, Apollo-style. So I expect that they'll send an
orbiter containing the microscopes, and then a glider that collects the sample
and then fires an engine to get out of the atmosphere and rendezvous with the
orbiter (a helicopter would also be possible, but I expect it will be easier
to get a plane back out of the atmosphere than to launch some kind of ascent
vehicle from a helicopter). If they can design the sample capture mission to
preserve the atmospheric pressure, temperature, etc. they might be able to get
it up for analysis with the organisms still alive.

~~~
rsynnott
> I imagine that everyone will agree it's way too dangerous to bring a sample
> back to Earth for analysis

There’s always the ISS.

~~~
Buttons840
People come and go from the ISS, just as they do from labs on earth. Is the
ISS really that different?

~~~
rsynnott
I mean, people come and go to labs holding _smallpox_. I would assume the main
risk of bringing back to earth would be landing failure, but just having the
thing in a room doesn't seem like a huge risk compared with what certain labs
already deal with.

------
na85
Been following this topic for a little bit now, and one thing I don't see
being discussed very often is the possibility that the phosphine gas is being
created by bacteria or microbes of terrestrial origin.

I.e. who's to say that the lander that made planetfall a while ago wasn't
contaminated with a hardy strain of bacteria?

------
civilized
Before we get too excited, we already know phosphine is in Jupiter's
atmosphere, and Jupiter is an awfully unlikely candidate for life. So the
claim that it can only be produced in the lab and by microbes strikes me as
already implausible, even if we don't know exactly why there's phosphine in
Jupiter's atmosphere.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Jupiter#CITERE...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Jupiter#CITEREFAtreya_Mahaffy_Niemann_et_al.2003)

~~~
sonofgod
[https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1910/1910.05224.pdf](https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1910/1910.05224.pdf)
talks at length about it -- the result is known to be wildly invalid for gas
giants, as they have the temperatures and pressures to have viable chemical
pathways to phosphene.

~~~
civilized
Yeah - the argument in the paper is a lot more nuanced than it's being
represented in the media, where it's being flattened to the point of
uselessness.

------
Linked_Liszt
Looks like the article Google archive has gone down.

-Image Backup: [https://imgur.com/a/uiTcA4Q](https://imgur.com/a/uiTcA4Q)

-WayBack Archive Backup: [https://web.archive.org/web/20200914003530/https://webcache....](https://web.archive.org/web/20200914003530/https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dUWrpm80WHsJ:https://earthsky.org/%3Fp%3D343883+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

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DonHopkins
If only Julia Child were still around to show us how to safely cook up a batch
of delicious phosphine.

Julia Child Cooks Primordial Soup (1973)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24467695](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24467695)

Walter White had a quick and easy recipe (which doesn't actually work in
reality):

[https://breakingbad.fandom.com/wiki/Phosphine_gas](https://breakingbad.fandom.com/wiki/Phosphine_gas)

Breaking bad red phosphorous scene

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9mLUB_pKQE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9mLUB_pKQE)

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RaoulP
As an aside, who is this Brian Roemmele and what's his relation to the topic?

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jeffrallen
And why did he break the embargo? What's he got to gain from that?

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tikiman163
It would be hilarious if we've been wondering why we're alone in the universe
all this time just to find out we're not even the only planet in our solar
system to support life.

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

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

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enchiridion
Either this guy is a crank or the world is about to change. Maybe both?

[https://mobile.twitter.com/brianroemmele/status/128777130722...](https://mobile.twitter.com/brianroemmele/status/1287771307229102081?s=21)

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sudoaza
Link to the press release redirects to login page, probably set to private.
Seems legit!! [https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/news/hints-life-
venus](https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/news/hints-life-venus)

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anonAndOn
We know that tardigrades can survive in space and that there are Martian rocks
sprinkled over the Earth. Perhaps there were some microbes blasted into
Venutian orbit when the Chicxulub meteor took out the dinosaurs 66 million
years ago?

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stupendousyappi
It could have been any number of meteors over the last 4 billion years, on
either planet.

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himinlomax
Doing a sample recovery from Mars's surface is very hard at this point. It
should be much easier to do a sample recovery from Venus's high atmosphere,
shouldn't it? Is there anything planned to that effect?

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G4E
I'm not an astrophysist nor biochemist, so i'm sorry if this is a dumb
question, but how likely is it that we "contaminated" Venus with earth's
microbiology embedded in our previous probes ?

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tgflynn
If life exists in Venus' atmosphere and it's carbon based shouldn't we have
detected evidence of organic molecules, notably methane, by now ?

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deanclatworthy
Can someone explain to me how we can use a telescope to observe for the
presence of Phosphine?

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_Microft
They collect light, split it into its colors and check for certain colors
being more or less present or absent. This is a so called spectrum and
different atoms, ions and molecules have a characteristic pattern there.

Here is what this looks like when doing this with light of the sun:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraunhofer_lines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraunhofer_lines)

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raducu
And why haven't we checked this before on Venus?

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saberdancer
I'm sure it has been checked. This effect is not strong and they probably
needed to "aim" for a specific part of Venus. Also newer telescopes and data
analysis methods may be able to see the effect when before it would be lost in
the noise.

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layoutIfNeeded
So, bacteria from the soviet Venera probes started to colonize the atmosphere?

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andrewflnr
Doubtful. A microbe that thrives in an oxygenanated spacecraft hangar is
probably not one that also thrives in sulfuric acid.

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kardos
Such a microbe may have adapted to thrive in sulfuric acid. Unlikely, but it
would be fascinating if it turns out to have happened that way...

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jamiek88
We’ve been seeing these clouds of unknown reflectors for over 100 years, way
before any missions.

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zrkrlc
Did anything interesting come out of the RAS' press release?

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tazedsoul
I shared this with my girlfriend, and she, without being phased even slightly,
replied, “Can I tell you a secret? I’ve always known that Venus is alive.”

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mhh__
Is she any good at lottery numbers?

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BlueTemplar
Ah, the famous jungles of Venus!

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shadowgovt
We must explore them; it is our Destiny.

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dhab
protomolecule is winning, as expected

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Keyframe
If it weren't 2020, I'd cry out for the clickbait title... I still might, but
discovery in itself is cool enough even without alien life form.

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biggestlou
I’m still looking for intelligent life on this planet!

~~~
sumedh
What is your definition of intelligence?

