Possible life on Venus? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: BU508A
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2020, 03:16:08 pm
content: A few minutes ago appeared this article in National Geographic:https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/09/possible-sign-of-life-found-on-venus-phosphine-gas/Quote:"“Something weird is happening” in the clouds of the planet next door—but some experts are raising doubts about the quality of the data."

author: donotdespisethesnake
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2020, 05:55:23 pm
content: That news leaked out a while ago. It seems to be 99% "we don't know" and 1% "it could be life of some sort".

author: Refrigerator
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2020, 08:15:49 pm
content: Quote from: donotdespisethesnake on September 14, 2020, 05:55:23 pmConsidering how unlikelylife is to existwe are to find life elsewhere, 1% is quite high

author: Alex Eisenhut
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2020, 09:09:04 pm
content: Life is very likely to exist elsewhere. The amount of "elsewhere" we've looked at close enough is practically zero.

author: eti
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2020, 10:03:35 pm
content: There's not always that much sign of intelligent life DOWN HERE!Fanciful fantasties, but utter nonsense.

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2020, 03:40:13 am
content: Forget Venus, try the USA.Further "evidence" of aliens in our solar system is the US Customs Immigration which has a queue next to "US Citizens" named "Aliens".Alien: TAKE ME TO YOU LEADER.Officer: Er, why don't have one sir, not here anyway. But even if we did, you and your ship have to go into quarantine for 14 days.

author: Ed.Kloonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2020, 03:57:25 am
content: It's a God-awful small affair.

author: donotdespisethesnake
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2020, 07:30:28 pm
content: The sticking points I have with the venus-life hypothesis is in order to survive the 80% sulphuric acid clouds, either:1) the life forms have a completely different basis to Earth (e.g a non-carbon base). That would be an even more shocking discovery.2) they have an incredibly tough sealed acid-resistant exterior, like kevlar but stronger. In which case, how do they get nutrients in etc.These cannot simply be tough anaerobic bacteria like those we find on Earth. Even the extremophiles live in <5% acid conditions. If early Venus was watery and Earth like, it would be a remarkable feat of evolution.So my bet is on unusual chemistry. We'll need to be more cautious with our choice of bio-signatures. In the future we will probably discover hundreds or thousands of exoplanets with some "hints of life" type signatures, and never know for sure. Sending interstellar probes is not practical for the foreseeable future.Although paradoxically, if the "Great Filter" theory is true, we should hope wedon'tfind many examples of extraterrestrial life. Otherwise we have to answer the question, "if life is so common, why does it get snuffed out before reaching an advanced stage?"

author: Cerebus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2020, 08:42:55 pm
content: Quote from: donotdespisethesnake on September 15, 2020, 07:30:28 pm3) They don't even attempt to survive in the clouds of acid gas, but in some other environmental niche.If we were observing Earth from Venus we'd be completely unaware of environmental niches that can only be observed from relatively close. From odd micro-environments like black smokers to the whole range of macro-environments that range from tropical rain forest, tundra, permafrost, cold deserts, hot deserts, cave environments and so on. Drawing a broad conclusion from the first environment that can be observed through a telescope with a spectrometer would be short-sighted.Also, one has to make allowance for billions of years of evolutionary pressures operating to produce viable organisms. We have bacteria that have evolved on Earth to thrive in the cyanide loaded tailings of gold mining, and in the pH 0 tailings of iron mining, all in the very short period of time, in evolutionary terms, that those processes have been in use - both environments which one would naïvely say were inimical to life as we know it. Also, what's to say that this is ancient life, if indeed it is life, that we're now observing? What's not to say that this is the relatively recent beginnings of life in that environment?

author: raptor1956
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 16, 2020, 02:14:25 am
content: Given the temp on Venus even the most extreme extreme-o-philes would not last long -- seconds at most. I'm going to go with simply an interesting chemical reaction.The Fermi paradox still holds.Brian

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 16, 2020, 02:31:40 am
content: The life hypothesis assumes they exist at high altitudes where temperatures are well within known life ranges. It would be very exciting if true because it would lend credence to the Asimov proposal to seed the upper Venusian atmosphere with photosynthesizing microbes. Which would eventually consume the CO2 reducing or ending the greenhouse effect. Not a short term plan. Many centuries to start the cooling and many more before planetary surface temperatures would drop to reasonable values, but think of all the real estate.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 16, 2020, 02:54:20 am
content: These photos were taken on venus by one of the several Venera space probes.

author: Gyro
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 16, 2020, 10:42:29 am
content: Quote from: CatalinaWOW on September 16, 2020, 02:31:40 am^ An important point, the thread would more properly be called 'Possible lifeaboveVenus'. The pressures at the surface make it entirely possible for the atmosphere to have its own goldilocks zone at high altitude. Again, with the pressure gradient, it wouldn't be hard for microbes to have sufficient buoyancy to stay there.It would be very easy to put a buoyant probe into that zone, more or less indefinitely - far easier than putting another very short lived probe on the surface. Once you've put one on the surface, for the achievement / hell of it / to look for big ceramic monsters roaming the surface, there's really no reason to expend the resources to ever go down there again.https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-54133538

author: donotdespisethesnake
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 16, 2020, 11:14:36 am
content: Quote from: Cerebus on September 15, 2020, 08:42:55 pmWell, the niche the researchers propose is in the clouds 40 km up. There are Hadley cells that circulate a permanent cloud layer, where the clouds are mostly droplets of sulphuric acid. It is possible that the phospine is produced somewhere else and migrates to the cloud layer.QuoteSure that is true. We are basing all our expections of extraterrestrial life, and detection methods thereof, on extrapolations of Earthly life. It could be that life is common, but carbon based life using water as a solvent is just one of many types. Maybe evolution on Earth has not had to try very hard, because most of Earth is quite benign. That may be because life adapts the planet to it's preference - the Gaia principle. However, if Gaia thoery is true, as a corollary of that, we might think that if life on Venus had started when it was benign, them it should have maintained those benign conditions instead of runaway greenhouse effect.There are so many questions about life and evolution we don't the answer to, it is far too premature to assume life is a cause of unexpected chemistry. Planetary geochemistry is also largely unknown, it is really too simplistic to say "if we find substance X, that means there is a good probability of life". I like the adage "the answer is never life, until it is proven to be life".There is also an intriguing possibility there borderline life-like processes. Something between prions and viruses. Molecules that can use a catalyst to self-replicate. Logic by itself will not answer these questions. Only studying the environments in more detail will help.

author: Cerebus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 16, 2020, 01:10:04 pm
content: Quote from: donotdespisethesnake on September 16, 2020, 11:14:36 amI think you're having a problem here because you're making quite reasonable hypotheses on one hand, and holding a bunch of interfering assumptions on the other. The assumption that Earth is benign is a wrong assumption to make. From the perspective of a different biochemistry 300ºK and a 20% oxygen atmosphere might be anything but benign - way too hot, way too cold. Heck, from the perspective of Earth biochemistry that highly reactive 20% oxygen atmosphere is anything but benign, why do you think every life form on Earth is riddled with antioxidants? Life here has evolved to make use of that oxygen atmosphere but if you were choosing a system to work under, you wouldn't choose one where one spark makes the difference between a tree living and going up in flames and every organism has to protect itself against the atmosphere it lives in. However, evolution managed to cope with such a nastily reactive, poisonous atmosphere and even turned it to advantage - having such a large pool of redox potential available (atmospheric oxygen) is why terrestrial creatures can move so fast.QuoteThe reactions that cause people to suggest life as a possible explanation are ones where the reactions are going uphill energetically when, from a simple chemistry perspective, you'd expect them to be going downhill. The blindly obvious one on Earth is the formation of free atmospheric oxygen when all the chemical expectations are that under Earth-like conditions oxygen binds to something and then stays there. The only place you see these reactions happen 'uphill' on Earth is where life is involved and it's a reasonable tack to be taking to search for life as we understand it to be, even if it was life that could be in many ways different from terrestrial life. In fact, in this context, it's probably the most useful working definition of what constitutes "life".Quote from: donotdespisethesnake on September 16, 2020, 11:14:36 amYou do know what anenzymeis, don't you? That's pretty much the basis of life on Earth, enzymes are molecules that can catalyse very specific (usually energetically unfavourable) chemical reactions to create or modify the building blocks of life.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 16, 2020, 01:56:41 pm
content: Quote from: Cerebus on September 15, 2020, 08:42:55 pmExactly. We've been caught out by extremophiles on Earth, upturning our views and beliefs. There's no saying what conditions Venus could serve up and how life may have adapted, whether that's carbon based or anything else.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 16, 2020, 01:59:33 pm
content: Quote from: raptor1956 on September 16, 2020, 02:14:25 amWe felt the same about extremophiles we didn't know about before. Yet they popped up and somehow filled their niche.

author: donotdespisethesnake
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 16, 2020, 02:44:56 pm
content: Quote from: Cerebus on September 16, 2020, 01:10:04 pmNo, I have no fucking clue, because I am a fucking moron. Of course I know what a fuckingenzymeis!But thanks for your patronizing comments, it really helps the discussion.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 16, 2020, 03:29:38 pm
content: Unfortunately, I never saw the episodes (69 and 70) of the TV show "The Six Million Dollar Man" that had an interesting synopsis:A Russian planetary probe, designed for a soft landing on Venus with extraordinary survival capability due to a super-alloy, gets loose in Wyoming and the superhero is required to stop its rampage.

author: Cerebus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 16, 2020, 03:49:29 pm
content: Quote from: donotdespisethesnake on September 16, 2020, 02:44:56 pmHow should I know that you know what an enzyme is without posing the question when you practically describe one as if it's a novel bit of biochemistry? It's a straight question. No patronizing was intended.Trust me, if I'm being deliberately rude or patronising, you'll know it. But don't expect me to walk on eggshells just because you've got a fragile ego and immediately take offence at an innocent question. It's been my experience that a lot of engineering types can be remarkably ignorant outside the the maths/physics/electronics arena - go and check out any of this year's earlier discussions on Covid-19 to find proof of that. Ignorance is not the same thing as stupidity. Assuming that you know what enzymes are when you practically describe them as if they're something new would be foolish. Would you prefer that I had assumed you knew what they were and started berating you for making what would be an apparently stupid assertion on that basis? Seems you'd want to pick a fight either way.

author: eti
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 17, 2020, 05:10:51 am
content: Quote from: donotdespisethesnake on September 16, 2020, 02:44:56 pmIf you speak like that to people, how do you expect them to react - positively? Maybe you should deal with your personality issues before engaging in discussion. Imagine how well that would have ended if you'd been face to face with them.Chill out, go eat a banana and thump a few trees.

author: chickenHeadKnob
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 17, 2020, 05:32:45 am
content: Quote from: Gyro on September 16, 2020, 10:42:29 amThe moment the news broke on this story I began wracking my brainz trying to figure out how you would capture any of these cloud lifeforms intact and return to earth for study.It seems a non-trivial problem. Initial collection maybe easy, but then what. They may be sturdy extremophiles in their native conditions, but then turn into a bowl of small molecule soup by the time you get them back to earth.

author: Ed.Kloonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 17, 2020, 05:36:32 am
content: Quote from: chickenHeadKnob on September 17, 2020, 05:32:45 amNo one would have believed that in the first few years of the 21st century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own.

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 17, 2020, 06:04:40 am
content: Chill down everybody, men are from Mars, women are from Venus.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 17, 2020, 06:13:04 am
content: Quote from: donotdespisethesnake on September 14, 2020, 05:55:23 pmThe thing is they have spent several years trying to figure out what it could be, and have rules out virtually everything except some form of life, or some natural process we don't yet know about. Could be more than 1% chance!

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 17, 2020, 06:15:09 am
content: The interesting thing is apparently there is a strata layer in the clouds on Venus that would allow human to actually survive with just supplemental oxygen. Pressures and temperatures are apparently very similar to earth and suitable for humans.No idea what it takes to stay at a certain height in the atmosphere though?

author: magic
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 17, 2020, 06:49:39 am
content: Meanwhile on Earth, Dave, what has happened to your avatar? I get a reference to this image in HTMLhttps://www.eevblog.com/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;attach=14049;type=avatarand it tells me to report this to the administrator

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 17, 2020, 07:00:35 am
content: Quote from: magic on September 17, 2020, 06:49:39 amHmm, no idea!Yes, my icon seems to have vanished.

author: magic
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 17, 2020, 07:11:44 am
content: I think SMF has life of its own and is fighting back against all attempts to fix image uploads

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 17, 2020, 08:19:59 pm
content: There are birds, swifts, that spand most but not all of their lifecycle flying, that live on Earth, in Europe.But to lay their eggs and hatch them they have to return to Earth. They even sleep while they are flying.Quote from: EEVblog on September 17, 2020, 06:15:09 am

author: 460voltclub
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2020, 07:27:35 pm
content: If a single cell is found on a planet people call it life, then why are fetuses not considered life when in the first few day after fertilization there are thousands of cells under going changes and exhibiting life.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 11, 2020, 09:42:34 pm
content: Let's keep this discussion on-topic and not make it political, particularly when what you're saying isn't accurate in the slightest.

author: Rick Law
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 12, 2020, 03:59:28 am
content: Quote from: donotdespisethesnake on September 15, 2020, 07:30:28 pmUnless we water down the definition of life significantly, chances are, life will be carbon based.Silicon has been a source of great excitement. But detailed analysis of the chemistry puts silicon based life form rather unlikely on earth due to certain limitations. Those limitations applies on earth and elsewhere since it is just part of silicon's chemistry. The limitations are:(1) Silicon oxide is solid. For us, carbon dioxide being gas and soluble in water, we can expel it easily. Silicon dioxide on the other hand is "virtually insoluble" below (about) 40C. For silicon based life form, that means it has to be rather hot (high Atmospheric pressure can help). An alternative is a method of disposal. Where energy is needed within a part the body, that energy-needing part will need to evolve a way to collect and dispose of solid waste before it can depend on having energy. Can do but much more complex thus much less likely.(2) Handedness with carbon molecules allow one enzyme/molecule to "key-lock" like fit to another enzyme/molecule. This aids bio-molecules with their ability "regulate" (fit/not-fit) processes precisely and efficiently. Silicon molecules with handedness is far fewer than carbon molecules with handedness. So, choices are limiting and there by functions are more limited.(3) Even with the "Stanley Kipping Award in Silicon Chemistry" encouraging silicon molecule development, many silicon molecules needed for life has not been successfully made. Thermodynamic data confirm these carbon molecules analogs using silicon are "often unstable".(4) The chain reactions of carbon molecule chemistry to make life work has limitations: each reaction has a temperature and pH range. For the entire chain to work, all reaction must fit within a range that the entire chain can work. The silicon-analog chain reactions can't all fit within the same range from one reaction to another. So any needed chain reactions will be necessarily a shorter chain or can't chain at all.So, in X-Files, silicon based life form makes an exciting story. In real life, it is kind of hard to see silicon working with some degree of complexity.Reference:The points above are summarized from Raymond Dessy's (Scientific Americans' Feb 1998) article on Silicon life. Raymond Dessy is a professor of Chemistry at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Va.You can get to the article here:https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/could-silicon-be-the-basi/EDIT: corrected a missing "not" - "has yet been made" corrected to "has not been made" in point #3.

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 17, 2020, 06:28:30 am
content: This second one nails it...

author: GlennSprigg
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 17, 2020, 11:51:04 am
content: Since the early beginnings of our intelligent existence, mankind (womankind) has pined after the idea of life elsewhere.We (most) forget the possibility at least, of say carbon-based molecules or ammonia based structures being at least aprecursor to some sort of basic enzyme. Given time, such components are responsible for such proliferous life on Earth!99.9999% of such existences, if/when found, will not be walking with us, and saying "Take me to your leader"!To MY mind, it is not a question regarding whether life exists elsewhere. One needs to be honest with one's self, whenlooking at the sheer vastness of the Universe, containing billions of Galaxies with billions of 'stars' within each, that to denynot just the 'possibility' of existence elsewhere, but conclude that it absolutely must exist! Even ones that communicate.The only resulting conclusion that we 'can' reasonably postulate, is that there is a huge difference between acknowledgingthat they exist, and believing that they ever have or will make contact or come here!! Two totally different situations!You can look at the formulas that exist, to look at the probability of life elsewhere, which are beyond the scope of thisdiscussion of mine.... Suffice to say that even if the chance of life in another solar system was 100,000,000,000,000 to 1,that the known universe is so huge that 'life' is still generally proliferous !! For now, accept the mere molecules!