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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."
These guys are GOOD!
Not on the surface of Venus, 50 km up in the atmosphere, where the temperature is not too extreme. Their being lifeforms is inferred from the presence of gases that should recombine over time (like oxygen on Earth, which wouldn't stay in the air if life wasn't there to produce it).
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 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.
This sounds like a case of a bunch of scientists forgetting to properly apply Occam's Razor!!
Life (even microbial life) is so extremely complex, that is seems implausable to jump to the conclusion that life must be present, simply because of a chemical marker which we find hard to make without the help of microbes!
These guys should be concentrating on eliminating other possibilities, rather than just jumping onto the News Bandwagon to get their latest 'discovery of life' publicised.
Disclaimer: I meant what I thought, not what I wrote! What? You can't read my Mind? Oh dear!
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.
Look what you did!
:-)
Now you made Google News post old news as well and we get this chain of Google News from Slashdot News from Earlier Slashdot News (which I'm sure got covered on Google News as well).
Hm... On the other hand... Let's just blame it all on Houston Chronicle which posted the old story first.
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I think we need a new category on Slashdot; "Wild speculation about extraterrestrial life based on insubstantial evidence".
"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.
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All together now, "Hello, Timothy."
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Because otherwise the 99% of the human population who know little to nothing about modern science and don't even watch the news would never get "hooked" by anything. "Life on X" is popular at the mo' there have been many others "The Might Atom" for example.
I think the theory is that you have a coupla "whizz bang" announcments a year and hope that enough people get into the sciencey thing and become inventors, engineers, fizzysists etc...
Otherwise most people would go back to watching "Big Brother" or "Pop Idol" or some equally vacuous "entertainment"... after many years of this the TV system would eventually fall into disrepair and the ensuing social chaos would cause untold destruction.
probly.
"None of this shit works" -W.Shatner
The original paper in question here was called "Reassessing the Possibility of Life on Venus: Proposal for an Astrobiology Mission" and published in a journal called "Astrobiology."
Please note that the title of the damn paper is not "Merchants of Venus Discovered, Are Selling Us Meat," but, it appears to me to be an optimistic proposal for another venusian probe.
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These bacteria might be a genetically-enhanced version of the thermophiles which are known to survive in extreme temperatures
Does this only sound silly to me? They can't be genetically enhanced. If they exist, they're just the way our lord Venus Christ created them!
Trollem mirabilem hanc subnotationis exigiutas non caperet
That was Mars (Percival Lowell mapped and counted the canals). Sure, it's confusing, what with them having a capital letter in common, not to mention the same number of letters! Still, they're different. The moon was believed to be made out of cheese and Mars had lots little green men with shovels.
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Dear God, please stop trolling.
thanks.
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.
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.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
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...
I believe the appropriate karma to follow should be tagged "Funny". :-) Community moderation at work!
And now, to make my post important enough for it to avoid the dreaded zero...
Regarding life anywhere; Steve Grand makes a very interesting point about life in his book "Creation"; it's not tied to the matter that makes life up but rather the patterns in how things connect. The analogy he drew was how clouds are not static bodies of steam but rather areas inside which the water carried by air becomes visible. Like ripples in the water, we only borrow the atoms in our own bodies for a while, binding them to the patterns of interaction that make us unquestionably alive.
While it's far fetched to imagine even bugs on Venusian surface, it is not impossible to envision bacteria evolving from the complex interactions of heat and gases in the atmosphere. All evolution needs to kick off is a fertile playground, a pattern that can replicate itself with a degree of variation, and a lucky roll of dice.
If there indeed *is* bacteria discovered on Venus it would suggest the dice of the universe are heavily loaded with a bias towards generating life. It's that bias which would determine not just whether we are alone but just how crowded it can this universe get after a while. On the other hand, the Venusians have quite a few hundred million years to catch up with their Terran cousins.
Although, with the moderation above points, one has to wonder. :-)
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Jouni Mannonen | Game Designer, Consultant