Slashdot Mirror
Venus and Life
An anonymous reader writes "Venus-- thought in the 1950's by British astrophysicist, Fred Hoyle, to be covered in oil-- is discussed today by NASA's Principal Investigator for Planetary Atmospheres and Venus Data Analysis Program as having water in its atmosphere, and strange ultraviolet absorbers that swirl in the upper clouds. He speculates on the four ways that Venus might harbor life. Today's Cessna 182 crash led to the tragic death of the spacecraft manager for the highly successful Venus Magellan radar mapping mission, Gary Parker. The next scheduled Venus fly-by will be in 2004 and 2006 by the Johns Hopkins/Goddard Messenger spacecraft on its four-year mission to study Mercury."
"The next scheduled Venus fly-by will be in 2004 and 2006 by the Johns Hopkins/Goddard Messenger spacecraft on its four-year mission to study Mercury."
Will a spacecraft even last 4 years that close to the sun? Does it plan on staying on the "dark side" of Mercury?
I mean, the article says that "The frame for Messenger's signature sunshade - which will protect the craft and its instruments from the intense heat at Mercury - is due to arrive this week from GenCorp Aerojet. Layers of ceramic fabric will be added to the frame at APL over the next two months." but will that be enough? I mean it is the sun after all. I'd be surprised if it didn't fry as soon as it got within Mercury's gravitational field.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
Everyone already knows that Earth is the mating grounds for the Venusians and the Martians. Why speculate about life with which we are already intimately familiar?
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Well, this story reminds me what a nut Hoyle was.
It brings joy to my heart to remember space-bourne viruses and the extra long nasal passages tree-dwelling monkeys have to defend against them.
What this article really needs now is a creationist to start quoting Hoyle to prove that the chances of evolution happening are 1 in a gawdzillion.
Hey, wouldn't a 'mozillion' be a cool number? We could make it equal to the number of ink droplets in the Library of Congress or something.
Quick! :-)
Call Bush to tell him that Venus has oil. That should get more funding for space exploration
Unless he's heard of "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus," in which case he'll probably start a war against women^W^W^W^W^W take action to liberate the women of Venus from an evil opressive dictator...
Mmmmmm, oily astrophysicist.... /Homer
Dr Fish
I was thinking that this guy is flying his plane, crashes, and dies. A bad story in itself, but then when you factor in this guy was creating a revolutionaly mapping systems to explore other planets this one person takes on a much larger "life". Imagine if life, or even something such as water was proven to exist in our own solar system, but now because of a personal plane crash this won't be discovered for hundreads of more years? I have to stop thinking too deep as it gives me headaches....
... they found life on Uranus
Sure, life can survive some pretty extreme conditionsi [thermal vents], but can it form there?
Superrotation caused by life? 820 degree F mountaintops covered by life? I know he's probably trying to drum up funding, but it sounds like babble.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
is here. It's not overly technical but quite detailed. And no, this stuff is not science fiction or metaphysics, it is quite real.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
David Grinspoon says: First let me say that I am a big fan of carbon-based life. Some of my best friends are carbon-based.
I'd sure hope so...
Government IS the problem.
posted to wrong story
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
1. Strongly acidic media (diluted sulfuric acid) is not a big deal: there are microbs on Earth that thrive in diluted sulfuric acid (like pH=0) 2. Strong UV is bigger problem: enegetic UV is enormously destructive to carbon-based life 3. Some moisture is probably needed, and there is not much of it in the clouds in liquid form 4. The strongly UV-absorbing material in clouds can very easily be a mixture of sulfurous compounds: The products formed in system H2S + SO2 + S (irradiated by UV) are qute complex and very, very UV absorbing. They form and decompose easily. So we may have the photochemical processes high up in the clouds (which produce or destroys the compounds) and pyrolitic processes by the surface (which does a different chemistry). So we would have these various bands of cloud material with different levels of UV absorbing sulfur compounds - depending whether they were iradiated by strong UV or exposed to the hot interior of the atmosphere. You do not need a life to explain this - a simple thermal convection will do the same. And, I found the idea of life (single cell -like?) in atmosphere causing its super-rotation on planetary level (because it gives these microbs an evolutionary advantage) just preposterous. No living organism can produce energy enough to move around atmosphere of entire planet at speeds 200+mph. Only the sun energy can do that.
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
Anything can exist anywhere. As long as they have adapted to there living environment. It is possible that a chunk on rock with small traces of life on it could have been projected off earth and landed on Venus; the life form evolves and adapts to the radiation and heat allowing it to live in that what we think of harsh conditions. Then, as for the resources it would need to survive, it is possible that it could adapt to live off the heat or to live off even oil.
We are not tech freaks, nor tech addicts, but merely Technology experts.
I think the reason why Venus sounds like such an incredibly bad place to find life is that a lot of us consider "life" to be humans and ducks and such. What is the core of life? Life is just a very complex machine for converting stuff to energy and then using that energy to do stuff. Venus has tons and tons of energy just hanging around. Life on Venus wouldn't need to eat, it could just sit there and absorb all the 800 degree goodness in little bio-capacitors. If it did eat, it wouldn't have to spend any time creating digestive juices, it could just open it's mouth when it rained. For us, Venus would suck, but for life adapted to Venus, it would be paradise.
Yeah, I know that Earth seems like a bad place for life: it's so hot that methane is a gas, and it's atmosphere is so corrosive that that gaseous methane is highly unstable. It even explodes sometimes! But for life adapted for eath, it would be paradise, all it would have to do would be to sit there and absorb all the 20 degree goodness in little bio-capacitors. It wouldn't have to eat or anything, just absorb plenty of that odd dihydrogen monoxide they have kicking around. It would be paradise for life adapted to that planet.
You see the problem now, right? Yeah, Venus is 800 degrees, but themodynamics says that taking energy out of an 800 degree atmosphere would be a net loss. This makes sense when you cosider that for 800 degree temperatures to do you any good, you'd have to be under 800 degrees to absorb it, and getting your temperature that low would require you to cool yourself off.