New Scientist: Venus' Atmosphere Implies Life

WolfWithoutAClause writes "This New Scientist article says that the atmosphere of Venus has features that may only be explaineable by the existence of life in its upper atmosphere. In particular it has cartain chemicals which are extremely difficult to make inorganically. At the altitude where life is suspected the temperature is about 70C and about 1 atmosphere. There are gases there which are not naturally found together. The article suggests something is actively producing them, quite possibly, life."

Comments

Life on Venus?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gotta be female. After all, Men are from Mars, etc.

Life in the Atmosphere of Venus

[herwin]

New Scientist is not a peer-reviewed journal and often publishes speculative articles. This report is interesting, but I'd like to see the scientific article. There are alternative explanations, I'm sure, and I'm interested in seeing whether they've been adequately ruled out. In any case, how would you test this theory?

Re:Life in the Atmosphere of Venus

[Hittite Creosote]

The article should appear in an ESA special publication (ESA SP-518). If the author submits it, it might appear in the new peer-reviewed journal International Journal of Astrobiology

To test the theory, obviously you'd need a sample of the atmosphere. Although New Scientist mentions ESA's Venus Express mission, it doesn't say whether the mission would have the necessary equipment to check for life.

Now that's sci-fi appeal!

[Anthony Boyd]

From the article:

He suggests the bugs could be using ultraviolet light from the Sun as an energy source. If they are absorbing UV, that would explain the presence of mysterious dark patches on ultraviolet images of the planet.

I think this would be amazing. Whenever there has been a possibility of life before, it has always been microscopic bacteria frozen in rock or ice. Nearly undetectable, and certainly nothing that would visually incite people. But this? Huge swarms that discolor the atmosphere under ultraviolet light? If true, I'd bet that these images become more popular than Cindy Margolis.

Hmm.....

[neksys]

Remember that astronomers once said Mars was covered with a complex network of irrigation ditches, which implied the presence of life. Take this with a grain of salt - we know so little about our own solar system that we must treat all discoveries as hypotheses - nothing more, nothing less.

Humm...

[hatchet]

Maybe numerous earth probes infected venus' atmosphere with life.

Is it worth getting excited about?

[Zakabog]

Shopkeeper: "... I must warn you they've found life on venus."

Homer: "That's bad."

Shopkeeper: "But it was only some bugs!"

Homer: "That's good!"

Shopkeeper: "The news was reported on New Scientist."

Homer: "That's bad."

Shopkeeper: "But they don't require you to register!"

Homer: "That's good!"

Shopkeeper: "They log your IP address and keep logs of all the pages you go to."

[Silence; Homer looks puzzled]

Shopkeeper: "That's bad."

Homer: "Can I go now?"

Yo ho let's go

[spankfish]

Let's terraform the bastards before they evolve into ten foot tall insection beasts with razor sharp teeth, glistening with demonic slobber.

Terraform Venus Now!

Re:Developing ideas

[richie2000]

So how'd you do it?

1. Put a vehicle in orbit.
2. Insert a probe into the atmosphere (either from the orbiter or as a separate vehicle). This probe could use one or more of several techniques (parachute, winged design (no retro-thrusters at this stage as this may contaminate the samples)) to perform a fairly slow and controlled descent.
3. The probe fills a small canister with gas (possibly several compartments from different altitudes) and propels it back up into orbit before the pressure and gravity gets too high
4. Dock the canister with the orbiter and send it back to earth.

Difficult? Damn right. Impossible? Nope. Just keep those pesky imperial units away from the project and you should be set. The probe could continue to send back data to the orbiter as it goes down, but it's probably too much to ask for a soft landing.

oh great.

[sawilson]

New York Times August 10th, 2010

KILLER VENUS MICROBE BROUGHT BACK BY SWEDEN
"EATS EVERYTHING"

You must have an account to read full text of
story. :)

If it's life, Jim, then it's not as we know it.

[Observer]

See subject.

The speculation is on the basis of finding two chemicals which don't typically persist for long in each others presence, Hydrogen Sulphide and Sulphur Dioxide. BBC news has a summary.

--
"Now my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."- JBS Haldane.

Re:Developing ideas

[richie2000]

AFAIK, it was primarily the pressure that did the Venera probes in, not the heat. And in one case, the plastic (probably not a thermoplastic, but still) lens cap got in the way of the soil sampler so the data sent back was an analysis of something the Soviets had put there in the first place. :-)

But the heat just gives us even more reasons to not (at least not as a first step) land first and try to launch back up. It's much easier to propel the canister(s) from a decent altitude than if you wait until you're in deep. Gravity, pressure and heat all combine to make it unnecessary difficult (and expensive, since all propellants and other resources has to be brought along for the ride) to do launches from the surface.

Or, just get the orbiter there and launch disposable probes into the atmosphere that can analyze the gases as they tumble down through the soup and relay back the results via the orbiter. This could be done as a cheaper and faster precursor to the "bring 'em back alive" mission, to help develop the technology, methodology and focus of the mission.

Re:Developing ideas

[david.given]

But the heat just gives us even more reasons to not (at least not as a first step) land first and try to launch back up. It's much easier to propel the canister(s) from a decent altitude than if you wait until you're in deep. Gravity, pressure and heat all combine to make it unnecessary difficult (and expensive, since all propellants and other resources has to be brought along for the ride) to do launches from the surface.

Damn straight. Venus has the same gravity as Earth, remember? Which means that getting stuff out of its gravity well is an incredible hassle. If you need an Ariane or a Proton to get an object off Earth, you're going to need another Ariane or Proton to get it off Venus again once you've landed it there. And the super-dense atmosphere is going to cause even more problems.

No, launching from Venus is a problem that can happily wait until nuclear rockets or antigravity are feasible.

Besides, if there is life on Venus, I'd much rather study it in situ than bring some back here. While it almost certainly wouldn't survive in an Earth environment, that 'almost' worries me a bit...

We have Found Lando Calrissian's Hideout

[egommer]

We may have found Lando's Cloud City. We must inform the Emperor. The Imeprial have already been dispatched. The rebel resistance will be crushed.

Regards,

D.V.

Sulfur compounds and "proof of life"

[hyacinthus]

I found an interesting article which, among other things, discusses the presence of hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide in volcanic gases. The article is on the website of the U. S. Geological Survey and can be found here. A highlight:

An interesting chemical relationship exists between the sulfur dioxide and the hydrogen sulfide released by the volcano. These two gases react quickly (within minutes) with each other to produce sulfur particles and water vapor. Both of the products of this reaction are odorless and are less toxic than either H2S or SO2. Most of the hydrogen sulfide released in eruptive areas on Kilauea is consumed and is converted to sulfur particles by this process, because there is much more sulfur dioxide than hydrogen sulfide coming out of the volcano. This is why you seldom smell hydrogen sulfide at the summit caldera or along the eruptive east rift. The volcano has its own hydrogen sulfide abatement system! Geothermal areas, by contrast, have no large quantities of SO2 available for reaction, so any H2S released is removed by reaction with oxygen in the air to form sulfur dioxide, a process that takes a day or more.

But another sentence in the article implies that nevertheless the two gases can be found together. And certainly neither of them are produced by biological activity in this case.

As for carbonyl sulfide (also "carbon oxysulfide", or COS - essentially carbon dioxide with sulfur substituting for one of the oxygens), I don't know much about how it can be synthesized. I suspect that it is a product of careful hydrolysis of thiophosgene (CSCl2 - itself not an easy thing to make), but this would hardly be occurring naturally. I know that the gas is unstable, susceptible to hydrolysis into carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide. This article discusses its presence in our own atmosphere; the bulk of it comes from natural sources.

Incidentally, why do these articles on Slashdot of genuine scientific interest attract more stupid posts than usual? Everyone's trying to crack lame sci-fi jokes, and few are addressing the matter seriously.

Re:Contamination from Earth

[jc42]

Several astronomers have written articles about the contamination (or colonization) of the rest of the planets by Earthly bacteria. They've known for some decades that bacterial spores are found throughout the Earth's atmosphere, including at very high altitudes. The Earth has a "dust tail" produced by the solar wind that very slowly strips off the outer atmosphere and blows it outward. This tail is something that interferes with some kinds of astronomy, so they must take it into account.

The dust tail includes gases and fine dust particles, including things the size of bacterial spores. We've also known for decades that many such spores can survive indefinitely in space.

The conclusion is obvious. Bacterial spores from Earth have been contaminating the outer solar system, probably for several billion years. Some of them will get picked up by meteoroids and comets and carried back to the inner solar system, so Mercury and Venus have also been colonized by these bacteria.

Probably not many survive. But it's likely that some do. And, of course, their descendants will have re-colonized the Earth.

The solar system is a pretty messy place, when you look at it on a microscopic scale.

One article I read back in the 70's did a rough calculation on a larger scale. The Earth circles the galaxy in about 250,000 years. We've made more than a dozen orbits since bacterial life arose here, spraying spores most of that time. The author calculated that by now the entire galaxy has been contaminated several times over by Earthly spores. Of course, we don't know how many could survive interstellar space for the required millions of years.

But it's fun to think about.