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."

Comments

Re:Mercury?

[CheshireCatCO]

Of course NASA/APL/LASP has thought through this. The heat shield will do the job. All it has to do is relect the light, after all. The heat can only get to the spacecraft via radiation, so no convection or conduction. (Except a little done the heat-shield holding arms.) The bigger worry is Mercury itself. That chunk of rock is really hot, and the IR radiation coming from it will at some points of orbit be hitting the spacecraft's unshielded side. As I recall, the solution is to not do that for very long and then spend more time away from Mercury, radiating the heat away.

Look at it scientifically

[Sifersdomain]

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.