Life may have been discovered in Venusian atmosphere...

[eschaton]

I saw this on another forum. There's an academic paper coming out today showing traces of phosphine in the Venusian high atmosphere. This is important, because there no known way that phosphine can be made other than through biology outside of a lab - and the portion of the Venusian atmosphere it's found in is between the freezing and boiling point of water - fairly hospitable save for the whole sulfuric acid thing.

 

[BillJ]

This is important, because there no known way that phosphine can be made other than through biology outside of a lab

Not sure this is actually true.

Just finished watching this video on the find...

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[BillJ]

Earth doesn’t have the right conditions for Phosphine to occur naturally, Jupiter does.

It is also found in Jupiter's turbulent atmosphere where it forms in the planet's hot interior and reacts with other compounds in the upper atmosphere.[16] The abiotic synthesis of phosphine takes enormous amounts of energy, such as in the planet-sized convective storms of gas giants.[17] Phosphine has also been detected in the atmosphere of Venus and its origin is currently unexplained—with the paper announcing the discovery suggesting that the phosphine "could originate from unknown photochemistry or geochemistry, or, by analogy with biological production of PH3 on Earth, from the presence of life".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphine

 

[Mr Awe]

I saw this on another forum. There's an academic paper coming out today showing traces of phosphine in the Venusian high atmosphere. This is important, because there no known way that phosphine can be made other than through biology outside of a lab - and the portion of the Venusian atmosphere it's found in is between the freezing and boiling point of water - fairly hospitable save for the whole sulfuric acid thing.

It can be created outside the lab and via other processes than life. However, natural methods of creating it require greater pressures and temperatures than exist on Venus. However, apparently gas giants can produce it.

At this point, I wouldn't rule out unknown natural processes, but it is an intriguing finding. I HOPE it's life. But, I wouldn't get too excited yet.

 

[eschaton]

Earth doesn’t have the right conditions for Phosphine to occur naturally, Jupiter does.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphine

Yes, it does appear there are abiotic ways to generate phosphine outside of a lab. But they seem to require levels of energy which creates plasma, which (despite Venus being hot) don't seem to exist on Venus.

Regardless, the good news is this is pretty easy to solve with current technology. Send a "balloon probe" which will float in the upper atmosphere, and sample thoroughly.

 

[BillJ]

Send a "balloon probe" which will float in the upper atmosphere, and sample thoroughly.

Would be great, if we can scrape a few pennies out of the Mars budget.

 

[eschaton]

A nice twitter thread about the discovery:

 

[Spider]

My money would be on a chemical process we haven't figured out yet, not life. Since life can't exist on the surface of Venus, it would have to be life that spends it's entire life cycle airborne. While we don't have life like that on Earth, I suppose it's possible. We find microscopic examples of life high in our atmosphere all the time, but it's not life indigenous to the high atmosphere, but has been blown there by the winds that came from land.

I would love it if we found life on Venus, but I think there are better places in our solar system to search.

 

[eschaton]

Given the substantial lead time it takes to build a probe, we'll probably have to wait another 10 years or so in order to get life on Venus confirmed.

Also, one of the interesting elements of this discovery is they actually started out with the hypothesis that Phosphine was a sign of life, and then searched for it. This is the opposite of how this stuff normally works in Astrobiology, when there's some anomalous chemical found out of equilibrium (like say the methane on Mars) and they then conclude it may be because of life.

 

[BillJ]

Also, one of the interesting elements of this discovery is they actually started out with the hypothesis that Phosphine was a sign of life, and then searched for it. This is the opposite of how this stuff normally works in Astrobiology, when there's some anomalous chemical found out of equilibrium (like say the methane on Mars) and they then conclude it may be because of life.

Which would make sense, since it is a byproduct of life here. 20 parts per billion though? I wouldn’t be surprised if this ends up being some kind of mistake.

 

[Imaus]

Gods I hope it's not life.

That'll just result in some automated research lab at best as no one would dare touch Venus afterwards, turning it to some off-limit world.

It's better if only one of the gas giant moons has life, those are a dime a dozen; so if Titan or Callisto or Ganymede has life, fine. But not Venus; I would love to see some bubble habs there than not.

 

[BillJ]

That'll just result in some automated research lab at best as no one would dare touch Venus afterwards, turning it to some off-limit world.

Have you met humanity? If there’s something there on Venus that we want, micro organisms won’t stop us from exploiting it.

 

[eschaton]

Which would make sense, since it is a byproduct of life here. 20 parts per billion though? I wouldn’t be surprised if this ends up being some kind of mistake.

The little bit I have read is the number is unexpectedly high, rather than low. Several orders of magnitude higher than any abiotic process they've thought of as of yet. Particularly because phosphine doesn't last long even in our own atmosphere, to say nothing of the sulfuric acid in the Venusian atmosphere reacting with it.

Gods I hope it's not life.

That'll just result in some automated research lab at best as no one would dare touch Venus afterwards, turning it to some off-limit world.

It's better if only one of the gas giant moons has life, those are a dime a dozen; so if Titan or Callisto or Ganymede has life, fine. But not Venus; I would love to see some bubble habs there than not.

Since Venus's high cloud deck is theoretically an environment where Earth bacteria could possibly survive (if they can get around the whole PH problem), the risk of ecosystem contamination is a big problem. Though I don't think anything short of full-on terraforming would actually cause ecosystem collapse.

I do sort of wonder if bacteria-analogues exist on Venus why they likely didn't stumble upon oxygen-based photosynthesis though. I mean, lots of sunlight right there for the taking - seems a no brainer. Hell, if the models which have Venusian oceans not boiling away until 1 billion years ago are true, it's surprising if cyanobacteria didn't get there just from panspermia.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

OK but if we take the assumption that it might be life, what form could it possibly take?

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

Anaerobic microbial most likely.
We have examples of that on Earth, living in the guts of penguins for example.

Conditions on Venus make it very unlikely that those life forms have similar DNA/RNA setup to us.
Because those apparently just get “melted” (not the technical term) there.
Unless they have protective shells of some sort.

 

['Q']

Is there sulfuric acid in the atmosphere of Venus? check
Are there phosphate rocks on Venus? check
Is it a high temperature in the atmosphere? check

So could sulfuric acid in the atmosphere be reacting with particulates containing phosphates and lower oxidation state phosphorous compounds, generating phosphorous acid, which then decomposes to phosphine and phosphates?

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

Is there sulfuric acid in the atmosphere of Venus? check
Are there phosphate rocks on Venus? check
Is it a high temperature in the atmosphere? check

So could sulfuric acid in the atmosphere be reacting with particulates containing phosphates and lower oxidation state phosphorous compounds, generating phosphorous acid, which then decomposes to phosphine and phosphates?

I don’t know. Have you read the paper? It’s probably covered there.
I just skimmed it and they checked for a whole lot of things.
It’s not just the fact that it’s been detected at all.
It’s where in the atmosphere they found it and the concentration that rules out a whole lot of the few abiotic sources that we know of.

 

[eschaton]

There's also the aspect - which is discussed in the papers - that the anomalous levels of phosphine not only are in the portion of the cloud decks between 30 and 200 degrees Fahrenheit, they're also in equatorial zones associated with some weird UV absorbing element in the cloud decks which tends to ebb and flow over time. We already know this is caused by some sort of particulate approximately the size of small bacteria (1 micron across). It's hypothesized that this could be some sort of protective shell made by Venus life to protect them from UV light. Interestingly there's a potential compound made of sulfur which would not only do this, but also make the internal portions impervious to dissolution by the sulfuric acid droplets.

 

[XCV330]

Walter White is killing Emilio on Venus.
Anyway as someone who is more hopeful for the prospects of settling the cloud layer of Venus than Mars, it's interesting. I don't ethically believe a world should be terraformed that already has its own biosphere, but this would be an instance where terraforming is not realistic, whereas if there are life processes already in place, they might prove useful.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Walter White is killing Emilio on Venus.
Anyway as someone who is more hopeful for the prospects of settling the cloud layer of Venus than Mars, it's interesting. I don't ethically believe a world should be terraformed that already has its own biosphere, but this would be an instance where terraforming is not realistic, whereas if there are life processes already in place, they might prove useful.

But wouldn't it take a lot to terraform a planet like Venus or Mars?