Possible Signs of Life Detected On Venus

MoThugz writes "This article from the The Houston Chronicle discusses the discovery of mysterious swirling patches on the surface of the planet which may be communities of bacteria. These bacteria might be a genetically-enhanced version of the thermophiles which are known to survive in extreme temperatures. The article suggested the bacteria could be using ultraviolet light from the sun as an energy source, which would explain the presence of strange dark patches on ultraviolet images of the planet."

Comments

Not Likely

[e8johan]

I'd say that there are lots of other, more plaussible, explanations to 'mysterious swirling patches' on a planet surface.

But, hey, the sientisist will get a headline or two, and perhaps even a few dollars to spend. I'm just saying that there are reasons to stretch the reality just a bit sometimes. Often these reasons are political or economical. In this case I'd have to go for the latter.

FAR more compelling EVIDENCE = CO levels

[Anonymous Coward]

FAR more compelling EVIDENCE = CO levels being suspicious.... too low.

All the free carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide gasses are too low in concentrations expected.

SOMETHING is getting rig of them... a likely suspect is a biological activity from a microbial lifefrom.

The patches are just a MINOR piece of the puzzle, this header to this article should not have been written without revealing the alarming absence of expected carbon gasses.

Re:FAR more compelling EVIDENCE = CO levels

[mikerich]

My own problem with the life hypothesis is that we are pretty clueless about the chemistry that goes on in the Venusian atmosphere. It is quite possible that some chemical process that we haven't considered is influencing the balance of the atmosphere.

Whilst on Earth carbonyl sulphide might be made by biological processes, it is quite possible that the high temperature and pressure of the lower Venusian atmosphere is generating the chemicals without biological intervention.

It's interesting, but I'm quite literally not holding my breath.

Best wishes,
Mike.

Not good news for terraformers

[rpjs]

If there is life on Venus, it's going to be very difficult to get any future plans to terraform the planet past the environmentalists.

Re:Occam's Razor

[Dynedain]

Actually, I would say that in this case, applying Occam's Razor could justifiably let you pick either life-based or purely chemical processes.

However, these scientists didn't choose. They said it might be life, or it might be an unknown chemical process.

They lean to the life option because in this case microbes are much more efficient than inorganic processes (a valid Occam's Razor conclusion)

Trash talking scientist.

[Perdo]

"For life, you need a volume of water, not just tiny droplets."

Yeah, he's right. There is no such thing as airborn viruses....not

This is the comment of an entrenched and threatened scientist.

Plenty of extremephiles can live at 158 degrees. Plenty of viruses can live in the air. I've always thought venus has been too often overlooked. I belive it was because the russians made it there first.

Seems to me the ideal place to send a solar glider made of glass. Better solar power production than Earth. Thicker atmosphere than Mars. Easier to get to than mars. Least explored of our neighbors.

Re:Trash talking scientist.

[Perdo]

Sorry, I read this article too long ago to remember it's subject:

"Almost no earthly environment is out of bounds for bacteria, including the atmosphere. And while the clouds aren't exactly teeming with life, air-sampling instruments have trapped bacteria more than 11 kilometers above sea level. Carried aloft by rising currents, some microbes can also drift thousands of kilometers before landing. But scientists thought that, like many long-distance travelers, the bugs were inert during their time in the air.

To test whether atmospheric bacteria were inactive, limnologist Birgit Sattler of the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and colleagues collected cloud water from a site 3100 meters up in the Austrian Alps. They kept the samples frozen and analyzed them back in the lab. Once thawed, the cloud bacteria released carbon and slurped up radioactively labeled amino acids and thymidine, an ingredient of DNA, showing that they were metabolizing and reproducing even when on the verge of freezing. That bacteria straight from clouds were active suggests that cloudborne bacteria are as well, the researchers conclude in the 15 January issue of Geophysical Research Letters."

Terrible error on my part. I hope this clears up the gist of my argument, that air itself carries life.

At least here on earth, life will fill any ecosystem it can. Non-native life will adapt to and fill any ecosystem, even ecosystems hostile to life. There is a common house cat killing penguins in antarctica. Bacteria were found outside the mir space station, eating the glass. Sea lampreys will thrive in a fresh water lake 50 degrees warmer than their normal ocean habitat.

We may have already infected Mars, Venus, the Moon and Jupiter with bacteria. How many bacteria must survive to create a viable breeding population? Just One.

I like the reasoning...

[vandan]

One of the best indicators of life is a system existing far from equilibrium. Without the presence of life, all systems tend towards the point of minimum order (towards chemical and energetic equilibrium). But life uses an energy source to direct the system around it away from chemical equilibrium, producing ordered structures. These structures contain the energy in a way such that life can later return to extract the energy source to perform work. See Stuart Kauffman's "Investigations" for a very interesting read on it.
These guys come to exactly the same conclusion as I would have given the evidence, and I think the theory is quite sound.

Manned mission to Venus

[invid]

We should be looking to send a manned mission to Venus before sending a manned mission to Mars. Venus is 10 million miles closer to Earth than Mars is. A Venus mission wouldn't have a landing so it would be much cheaper. And then there's the possibility of finding life in the atmosphere. I know, I know, people want to have the excitement of astronauts walking around on the surface of another planet. They also want to be able to see the surface of the planet from orbit. But think about it, for considerably less cost we can have humans exploring (from orbit) another world with an atmosphere and possible life. We can have probes enter the atmosphere and return samples to the orbitting spacecraft, which could then be brought back to Earth. A manned mission would have the flexibility and resources to make an exhaustive examination of the atmosphere. It makes more sense to have this be our first manned interplanetary expadition than the more expensive and difficult mission to Mars.

Re:Manned mission to Venus

[chainsaw1]

There are other reasons why I totally agree with this plan

Venus provides positive pressure and a positive heat source to work with. The pressure outside and the temperature outside is _greater_ than our standard for living. We know more about dealing with increased pressure (deep-sea research, scuba) environments than reduced pressure ones. We also know how to cool hot temperatures to cool ones with the Carnot cycle. Venus contains complex chemicalls naturally that would be profitable to industry. Best example is sulfuric acid, the #1 most produced industrial chemical in the world. It is generally too complex to be found in significant amounts on the surface of other worlds.

I also believe it may be easy to set up a power station by taking advanage of the high temperatures of the planet to produce energy somehow, but I'm still formulating how to do this.

Re:Slashdot is ruining everything!

[mbourgon]

Does this mean we could use Google News as a "Slashdot repeat story" filter?

Re:Occam's Razor

[scaryjohn]

To ask which is more likely, that life forms are instigating these reactions, or undiscovered caches of inorganic catylists are... the answer fundamentally hinges on how high you think the lowest hurdle for life's emergence is, and how prevalent you think life is in the universe. (And I'm not talking "greys").

There are a good number of people looking for more basic life in the universe that are of the opinion that life can begin in places much more hostile than blue planet Earth. They're looking to test the idea that basic, basic life is going to crop up wherever possible and then evolutionarily "dare" planetary conditions to kill it off. Just think about it, when life first emerged here the rocks had just barely solidified and the only thing we really had going for us was liquid water. Most of this planet's geologic history has been the three billion years between the emergence of prokaryotes, and the evolution of cells with proper nucleii.

Carl Sagan planned this

[Rotaluclac]

If my memory is correct, Carl Sagan et al already proposed to seed bacteria or algae into the upper atmosphere of Venus. Their proposal was to use photosynthesizing organisms that reproduce so rapidly thay enough of them stay in the friendlier upper layers of Venus' atmosphere to survive. They would break down the carbon dioxide, reducing the greenhouse effect. As aeons pass, the habitable layer of the atmosphere would become thicker and thicker, so the process would accelerate. Another source of acceleration would be simple evolution. After a number of aeons, terraforming could begin. Perhaps the Russian Venera's carried the seeds...