Russian Scientist Claims Signs of Life Spotted On Venus

flergum writes "Leonid Ksanfomaliti, an astronomer based at the Space Research Institute of Russia's Academy of Sciences, analyzed photographs taken by a Russian landing probe during 1982 and claims to have found signs of life. Ksanfomaliti says the Russian photographs depict objects resembling a 'disk,' a 'black flap' and a 'scorpion.'"

Comments

WWCSD?

[Zaldarr]

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" -The Sagan Standard

Re:WWCSD?

[nirgle]

What Would Charlie Sheen Do?

Re:WWCSD?

[LoyalOpposition]

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" -The Sagan Standard

"I get to decide which claims are extraordinary and which claims aren't." -The Opposition Standard

~Loyal

Re:WWCSD?

[alphatel]

I for one, welcome our new disk, black flap, and scorpion overlords.

Re:WWCSD?

[sl4shd0rk]

Actually, Marcello Truzzi is credited with coining that phrase:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcello_Truzzi

Re:WWCSD?

[Gideon Wells]

Claim he has Venusian Scorpian blood?

Re:WWCSD?

[trum4n]

And then snort it?

Re:WWCSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not so extraordinary picture

Re:WWCSD?

[hairyfeet]

Well if life developed along a similar pattern or if you believe the theory that there are certain "universal forms' like the conch that are simply the most efficient form and therefor will naturally be created then a scorpion would be a most likely early life form as one of the earliest life forms we have records on is Bronto Scorpio or the sea scorpion. The bigger question would be is if it is a scorpion what is its prey?

While I'd have to see more proof than some fuzzy pictures from 1982 as we humans are known for seeing shapes and trying to "fill in the blanks" I think its arrogant of us to believe all life had to develop the same way we did. just look at the life we've found living next to volcanic vents, that is a truly hellish place with water that would boil us alive yet there is thriving life under all that pressure and heat. of course if i were to hazard a guess I'd say Europa and Ganymede are more likely places to find life simply because there is a good chance there is liquid water and as we know water makes for a great medium for primordial soup,but who knows, maybe liquid methane or hydrogen under the right conditions could also make a primordial soup, who knows.

Re:WWCSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

a Wikipedia article (without any primary source citation)

You mean like the big quote box including volume, issue and page number of the quote from Zetetic Scholar?

Re:WWCSD?

[mcgrew]

It does seem very unlikely that a complex life from like a scorpion would live on Venus.

It seems even more unlikely that any extraterrestrial life would evolve to look exactly like anything on Earth.

Re:WWCSD?

[Internetuser1248]

Don't forget this is a 4th hand translated account we are getting here through the notoriously sensationalist media. There was probably a 30 page report in which the scientist outlined which optical effects could most likely result in such an effect on the image through camera error or heat distortion, and then a sentence like "there is a small possibility that the objects were moving of their own volition" which then got grabbed up and made the focus of a story. If you read something stupid in the media, try blaming the media first and the scientists only when you have seen 1) the evidence and 2) the actual conclusions of the scientist in their own words.

Careers can be ruined by this sort of thing, ignorant journalists and skeptical armchair scientists.

Re:WWCSD?

[LWATCDR]

That is just it we do kind of know.
Chemistry is the same everywhere. Take your idea about liquid hydrogen and liquid methane for example. Anyplace that is cold enough for those to exist are probably too cold for life. Life need energy and anyplace that cold will be by definition be energy poor.
Venus is probably too hot. Again it comes down to chemistry. They type of reactions that are needed for what we call life just will not work at heat because molecules like proteins well just fall apart on in this case too much energy.
Please notice I said "probably" life can be surprising but the idea that anything like a scorpion would live on Venus is way out their at the far edge of highly improbable. A shadow and the human minds great talent at finding patterns when when their is none to find is just way more likely.

Re:WWCSD?

[hairyfeet]

But who is to say that life has to fit our definition? Take you comments about being "energy poor" for example, we know that many of the giants cause the moons to be tidal locked, that constant pull creates plenty of energy as we have seen with the fountains of Ganymede. And we once thought that nothing could live in the cold dark depths of the ocean under such "energy poor" conditions with the added burden of insane pressures yet the farther we go down the more life we find that has adapted, to steal a line from an old movie "life finds a way' and all I was simply pointing out is it is incredibly arrogant to assume on an alien planet with vastly different conditions that life would automatically take the same route we took.

I'm personally a believer in what is called the "mediocre Earth" theory that states that Earth isn't some magically blessed place that is the only possible place life could have began. Maybe when we stop slaughtering each other and wasting trillions on even more military crap we don't need (WTF do we need 12 damned aircraft carriers for when the next most powerful country has 2? 5 times more powerful than everybody else isn't good enough anymore?) hopefully we will do an in depth study of Venus as well as Ganymede and Europa and i have a feeling we may find life on one of those three, it just won't be little green aliens or be ready to have conversations but i'm betting that we WILL find life. But when we do find our first signs of life out there I have a feeling it will be as alien to what we consider life on this blue ball as we are to squid. But to assume a place will not have life because it is "energy poor" in what WE would normally think of as energy doesn't mean it doesn't have plenty of other forms of energy such as gravity induced heat. Hell who knows what a methane based or silicon based lifeform would consider 'energy" anyway.

mirage

[alphatel]

Or easily explained by the distortion of a lens by heat in desert conditions - this one a scathing 1k F.

Re:mirage

[AikonMGB]

Since when has temperature been measured in kilofarads?

Re:mirage

[Samantha Wright]

Slashdot eats degree symbols, even if encoded as HTML entities. Alas we cannot poke fun at people for that particular typographical wandering.

Re:mirage

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Mirage. Or easily explained by the distortion of a lens by heat in desert conditions - this one a scathing 1k F.

I doubt it. You need temperature variations in order to get this effect (hot ground, colder atmosphere) which is not going to happen on Venus, seeing as most of the heat and light is absorbed in the atmosphere before it touches the ground. You won't even get diurnal temperature variations, as the thermal capacity of the dense armosphere is quite significant, and finally, the convection will smooth out any local temperature inequalities. You simply never get the optical interface necessary for a mirage.

Re:mirage

[afc_wimbledon]

Slashdot eats degree symbols, even if encoded as HTML entities. Alas we cannot poke fun at people for that particular typographical wandering.

Neither the SI temperature unit (K) nor the most common (C) require a pesky degree symbol. As the internets is supposed to be worldwide and modern, perhaps chosing one of those units might have been more appropriate?

Re:mirage

[chefmonkey]

I think you're a bit confused about typographical conventions around representation of Celsius. This is a quick and illuminating read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celsius#Name_and_symbol_typesetting

Re:mirage

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Something you can expect with 700 kph winds.

There are no 700 kph on the surface of Venus. They actually move at walking pace. Given the density of the atmosphere, however, you wouldn't be able to stand still anyway.

Re:mirage

[afc_wimbledon]

I sit corrected on Celcius, which still requires the degree symbol. I'd love to be able to say I only use Kelvin, but....

Re:mirage

[viperidaenz]

Uranus has some pretty strong winds too...

No pictures!~

[zidium]

No pictures were included, so how can we form our own, uneducated, opinions???

Re:No pictures!~

[sanosuke001]

pics or it didn't happen!

Re:No pictures!~

[KBehemoth]

Couldn't find any pictures of the aliens, but I did locate schematics of the exploration vehicle: http://i.imgur.com/gER2w.jpg

Re:No pictures!~

[the_fat_kid]

scorpion flap or gtfo?

Re:No pictures!~

[VortexCortex]

If putting my disk in a scorpion flap is wrong, I don't want to be right!

“Let’s boldly suggest

[mapkinase]

“Let’s boldly suggest"

Let's not.

Scorpions?

[vlm]

Leonid Ksanfomaliti, ...claims to have found signs of life...objects resembling ... a scorpion

I haven't heard the Scorpions since the 80s. They were pretty good in their niche. Is this a reunion tour?

Re:Scorpions?

[guttentag]

Leonid Ksanfomaliti, ...claims to have found signs of life...objects resembling ... a scorpion

I haven't heard the Scorpions since the 80s. They were pretty good in their niche. Is this a reunion tour?

Nope. The summary specifies that the scientist's claims are based on 30-year-old photos, which means they may have been on Venus then (which isn't so far-fetched... they opened for a group called UFO in 1972 and their guitarist then joined UFO, so it's quite possible that the scientist saw a UFO who looked like a Scorpion because he used to be one), but according to Wikipedia they've been back for some time now. In fact, their tour at the time of these photos was called the Blackout Tour. Curiouser and curiouser.

Re:Scorpions?

[Balanced]

The Venus concert is a special collaboration with the Europe reunion tour. Weird combination, no?

Venera pictures

[troon]

See this site for the best processed pictures from the Venera missions. Absolutely fascinating stuff those Russians did then.

http://www.mentallandscape.com/V_DigitalImages.htm

Re:Venera pictures

[troon]

Er, sorry. Try this newer page:

http://www.mentallandscape.com/C_CatalogVenus.htm

Re:Venera pictures

[adamgundy]

that site seems to be getting hammered... try this cached copy:

http://www.free-photos.biz/photographs/science/astronomy/67895_c_venera09_processed.php

Well, these ought to be interesting pictures...

[orphiuchus]

*clicks on article* ...Hmm, ok, no pictures here.
*googles it* http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2090556/Life-Venus-Russian-scientist-claims-seen-scorpion-probe-photographs.html?ito=feeds-newsxml.
Yea... I'm no astrocryptozoologist, but that doesn't look like life to me.

We have to go deeper!

[Sockatume]

Digging back to the original source gets "Solar System Research". Seems like a legit journal:

http://www.maik.ru/cgi-perl/journal.pl?name=solsys&page=main

Re:We have to go deeper!

[Sockatume]

The author designed some of the instruments on Venera, in fact. I can find several articles by him in the aformentioned journal but nothing that suggests "aliens".

http://www.springerlink.com/content/0038-0946/?k=Ksanfomaliti

Intelligence found

[gmuslera]

but on earth. We do pattern matching, even when there is none, we see shapes of gods in cluods, of the future in tea leaves, even faces in the moon and mars. This could have been totally random shapes. But of course, if it was life, specially one that are totally different from what we are used to see, could be a step forward for us, still too much people see earth as the center of the universe.

Re:So...

[Hartree]

"looked like a disk, a black flap, and a scorpion"

Is that like one of those drafting exercises where an object looks like a black flap from the front, a scorpion from the side, and a disk from above?

Here's a Single Picture

[eldavojohn]

No pictures were included, so how can we form our own, uneducated, opinions???

This article from Ria Novosti has one picture with attributions to the scientist and journal. I'm not sure what you're looking at but I am guessing that the object outside of the pod is not a device of theirs -- which leads to a lot of speculation and conjecture. I guess I don't know enough about their sensors/cameras that they were using in 1982 to say whether or not this was some sort of aberration or malfunction of the camera due to extreme temperatures. But that's about the best uneducated opinion I can offer you.

Re:Here's a Single Picture

[eldavojohn]

Scratch that, I just read some lengthy forums that say that's a shattered lens cap. Here's another panorama with said lens cap pieces. The Daily Mail offers this strange image as evidence ... but that's The Daily Mail so take it with a grain of salt. If that is what all the fuss is about, I'm a little angry I just wasted this much time. Personally I'd assume my camera is experiencing an anomaly due to it being 867 degrees Fahrenheit outside ...

Re:So...

[littlebigbot]

What in god's name does a "black flap" look like?

Re:Suppose . . .

[Lucas123]

Especially if they were scorpions that could withstand 900 degree temperatures and 1,508lbs of pressure. I'd believe we should defer to the old adage: "let sleeping scorpions lie".

Re:Or not.

[Gripp]

I don't understand why there are not any pictures with this story.

Re:So...

[gstoddart]

What in god's name does a "black flap" look like?

Usually, kinda black and flappy. :-P

"Greenhoue effect"

[scorp1us]

I wish people would stop saying "greenhouse effect" caused the heating. It's simply not true. It is the atmospheric density and proximity to the sun which makes it so hot.

Venus: 93 bar surface pressure, 96.5% CO2, 460C surface temp
Mars 0.00636 bar surface pressure, 95.3% CO2, -63C surface temp

What's responsible for the heating?

Re:"Greenhoue effect"

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is exactly what a greenhouse effect is, moron.

Re:"Greenhoue effect"

[Sockatume]

The sun is responsible for the heating. The dense atmosphere is responsible for keeping the heat in. Like, y'know, a greenhouse.

Or did you think that the atmosphere was dense enough to undergo nuclear fusion and release heat, or something?

Re:"Greenhoue effect"

[SecurityGuy]

The difference is huge. The percentages are similar, but the quantity of CO2 a photon goes through on the way to the surface of Venus is incredibly higher than the quantity of CO2 a photon goes through on the way to the surface of Mars. That pressure bit matters a lot.

Re:"Greenhoue effect"

[Xyrus]

The greenhouse effect IS responsible for the high temperatures. This is why the temperature stays pretty much the same even on the dark side of the planet. Solar radiation comes in but radiates away very slowly. This is demonstrated by the night side temperatures, which are pretty much the same as the day side temperatures. This is also verified by the stratospheric temperature difference from the surface (the stratosphere is very cold, since little heat is escaping from the troposphere).

Density plays a part because it further reduces the rate of heat escaping. However, it is the CO2 gas that is key. An atmosphere of 95% Nitrogen, for example, would not be nearly as scorching and given the slow rotational rate, the night side of the planet would be bone chilling cold. Our own atmosphere is mostly nitrogen and oxygen, and without the various greenhouse gases (water vapor, CO2, methane, etc.) our planet would be a block of ice.

Re:"Greenhoue effect"

[mbone]

Scientifically, the trapping of the solar heat on Venus is caused by what is called a greenhouse effect (i.e., the trapping of outbound IR radiation), exactly the same in nature as the greenhouse effect on Earth, but much more efficient due to the considerably thicker atmosphere and different composition of Venus' atmosphere. This has been known since Mariner 2, in 1962.

The existence and importance of greenhouse effects for the Earth, Mars and Venus have all been verified for decades. There is absolutely no scientific controversy about that, not even of the ginned up sort favored by oil billionaires. It's the relationship between the greenhouse effect and terrestrial climate change that is controversial, although that is largely of the ginned up sort (i.e., not really in the scientific community), at least since the 1980's.

And, yes, the atmospheric scientists know that real greenhouses rely on the trapping of convection, not the trapping of IR. It's a label.

Re:"Greenhoue effect"

[Sockatume]

the higher pressure means higher temperatures. PV=T and all that regardless of gaseous makeup.

Yes, if you compress a gas its temperature will increase. However it will then lose that heat. Making a gas dense doesn't magically allow it to maintain an elevated temperature.

Speeking of imagination

[sgt scrub]

I always wondered how long you could keep a baloon aloft on Venus. I would think you would be able to use thermal electric effect (peltier/stirling engine) of altitude vs surface heat to create energy and use the acidic clouds to maintain a lighter than CO2 gas for the baloon -- like a CO2 to SO2 converter or something.

Wear a hard hat

[noh8rz2]

Exciting news for Russia, but I hope it doesn't encourage them to launch a probe to investigate the Planet. If so, stay indoors or wear a hard hat!

Looking for the actual pictures?

[aglider]

Look here

Re:Pareidolia

[VortexCortex]

... The guy is either suffering from pareidolia or drinking too much vodka.

Can you say: FALSE DICHOTOMY!

Re:So...

[budgenator]

The picture is published at "Is this life on Venus? Russian scientist claims to have seen 'scorpion' in probe photographs"; I don't think it look like a scorpion though, more like the bio-luminous worm like thingies in the movie "Pitch Black" to me. The photos are way to grainey to get anywhere past the "if you squint your eyes and tilt your head" stage. The book "There's Somebody Else on the Moon" had way better photos.

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