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OMFG FURRY
Jul 10, 2006

[snarky comment]
:monar:

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SERPUS
Mar 20, 2004
God has allowed this revelation.

Ornamental Dingbat
Feb 26, 2007

This gives me hope that Earth may some day be able to support intelligent life.

Lawman 0
Aug 17, 2010

https://twitter.com/AeroDork/status/911986550245912576
GOOGLE RON PAUL

Crusader
Apr 11, 2002

https://i.imgur.com/rb81ub4.mp4

Grevling
Dec 18, 2016


lmao

Jesustheastronaut!
Mar 9, 2014




Lipstick Apathy
Op goes to Venus to get more penis
While I on the other hand go to Mars to buy nicer cars

And any contradictory claims will be disputed

Mozi
Apr 4, 2004

Forms change so fast
Time is moving past
Memory is smoke
Gonna get wider when I die
Nap Ghost
not only are women from venus but they've been fartin up the place. i knew it!

Jesustheastronaut!
Mar 9, 2014




Lipstick Apathy
I'm the wow emoji

Crusader
Apr 11, 2002

press conference stream will be here in about 90 minutes (11am eastern):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IIj3e5BFp0

Shadowlz
Oct 3, 2011

Oh it's gonna happen one way or the other, pal.



Why couldn't it have been Uranus man. That would have been the perfect headline in 2020.

Crusader
Apr 11, 2002

https://twitter.com/plutokiller/status/1305504135769251840

this is the dude who got pluto demoted

Lawman 0
Aug 17, 2010


King

Ehud
Sep 19, 2003

football.

if anyone is interested, watch party about the Venus stuff with astronomer Dr. Pamela Gay

https://twitch.tv/CosmoQuestX

Crusader
Apr 11, 2002

articles:

https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/news/hints-life-venus

quote:

An international team of astronomers, led by Professor Jane Greaves of Cardiff University, today announced the discovery of a rare molecule – phosphine – in the clouds of Venus. On Earth, this gas is only made industrially, or by microbes that thrive in oxygen-free environments.

Astronomers have speculated for decades that high clouds on Venus could offer a home for microbes – floating free of the scorching surface, but still needing to tolerate very high acidity. The detection of phosphine molecules, which consist of hydrogen and phosphorus, could point to this extra-terrestrial ‘aerial’ life. The new discovery is described in a paper in Nature Astronomy.

The team first used the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) in Hawaii to detect the phosphine, and were then awarded time to follow up their discovery with 45 telescopes of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile. Both facilities observed Venus at a wavelength of about 1 millimetre, much longer than the human eye can see – only telescopes at high altitude can detect this wavelength effectively.

Professor Greaves says, “This was an experiment made out of pure curiosity, really – taking advantage of JCMT’s powerful technology, and thinking about future instruments. I thought we’d just be able to rule out extreme scenarios, like the clouds being stuffed full of organisms. When we got the first hints of phosphine in Venus’ spectrum, it was a shock!”

Naturally cautious about the initial findings, Greaves and her team were delighted to get three hours of time with the more sensitive ALMA observatory. Bad weather added a frustrating delay, but after six months of data processing, the discovery was confirmed.

Team member Dr Anita Richards, of the UK ALMA Regional Centre and the University of Manchester, adds: “To our great relief, the conditions were good at ALMA for follow-up observations while Venus was at a suitable angle to Earth. Processing the data was tricky, though, as ALMA isn’t usually looking for very subtle effects in very bright objects like Venus.”

Greaves adds: “In the end, we found that both observatories had seen the same thing – faint absorption at the right wavelength to be phosphine gas, where the molecules are backlit by the warmer clouds below.”

Professor Hideo Sagawa of Kyoto Sangyo University then used his models for the Venusian atmosphere to interpret the data, finding that phosphine is present but scarce – only about twenty molecules in every billion.

The astronomers then ran calculations to see if the phosphine could come from natural processes on Venus. They caution that some information is lacking – in fact, the only other study of phosphorus on Venus came from one lander experiment, carried by the Soviet Vega 2 mission in 1985.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientist Dr William Bains led the work on assessing natural ways to make phosphine. Some ideas included sunlight, minerals blown upwards from the surface, volcanoes, or lightning, but none of these could make anywhere near enough of it. Natural sources were found to make at most one ten thousandth of the amount of phosphine that the telescopes saw.

To create the observed quantity of phosphine on Venus, terrestrial organisms would only need to work at about 10% of their maximum productivity, according to calculations by Dr Paul Rimmer of Cambridge University. Any microbes on Venus will likely be very different to their Earth cousins though, to survive in hyper-acidic conditions.

Earth bacteria can absorb phosphate minerals, add hydrogen, and ultimately expel phosphine gas. It costs them energy to do this, so why they do it is not clear. The phosphine could be just a waste product, but other scientists have suggested purposes like warding off rival bacteria.

https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/so-astronomers-may-have-found-evidence-of-life-on-venus

quote:

With that in mind, the astronomers observed Venus with the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT). Phosphine is known to absorb light with a wavelength of about a millimeter (well outside what the human eye can see, past even infrared), where JCMT is sensitive.

And that's just what they saw, a dip in light at that wavelength. However, while the observations were good, they weren't convincing, so the team got time on ALMA, another millimeter telescope in Chile that is larger and more sensitive than JCMT. The data from that were far clearer, again showing absorption at the right wavelength for phosphine.

To their knowledge, no other molecule or atom could absorb at that specific wavelength. Still, to be clear, finding a single absorption feature in the spectrum is a little bit iffy. I'm reasonably convinced they found phosphine, but I'd be happier if they found it at different wavelengths as well. They do plan on observing more to look for it.

Their observations indicate a level of phosphine at 20 parts per billion (so, 20 molecules of phosphine out of a billion of everything else). That may sound low, but it turns out that from what we currently know, on Venus it's hard to make anywhere near that much. The phosphine was seen at altitudes of at least 50 km. The environment there is pretty hostile to phosphine, which would decompose fairly rapidly. They estimate that that it should all be gone in less than a thousand years at that level, and probably much faster.

So something must be actively making it to keep the levels up. But what?

The scientists looked at a variety of known pathways to make phosphine, but none really fits the bill. The list included sunlight (not enough to make the right amount of phosphine), geological processes on the surface and subsurface (scratched off because those can't make enough either), lightning (too rare on Venus by a factor of ten million to produce the levels seen), meteoric activity (again, too low), and volcanoes.

That last one would need volcanic activity at least 200 times higher than Earth's to account for the phosphine levels. I wouldn't 100% cross that off just yet; there's evidence of volcanic activity on Venus, but we don't know the rate. Still, 200X is the lower limit, and it might take far more (hundreds of millions times more!) to make the phosphine, so it seems pretty unlikely.

So no non-biological process known can make phosphine at the levels needed to explain the observations. That doesn't rule out unknown processes, of course. You can't cross off the list something you don't know about. Clearly, more research needs to be done about that. We really don't know all that much about the chemistry of the clouds of Venus, so it's entirely possible there's just something weird but non-biological going on here.

So, could it be life?

Well, yeah, maybe. But that's a big leap, and again one they don't affirmatively make in their paper. They do discuss it, though, as they properly should, since they can't rule it out.

edit: the actual paper has been made available - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-1174-4

edit 2: good thread on potential pitfalls - https://twitter.com/jccwrt/status/1305525648488894464

Crusader fucked around with this message at 17:11 on Sep 14, 2020

smoobles
Sep 4, 2014

it's irresponsible for venus life to be hanging out in the atmosphere during a pandemic

phasmid
Jan 16, 2015

Booty Shaker
SILENT MAJORITY
Who is the king of the 'crobes?

A Fancy Hat
Nov 18, 2016

Always remember that the former President was dumber than the dumbest person you've ever met by a wide margin

Like 5 years ago I would have been super excited, now I'm just wondering how we gently caress this up.

Fartington Butts
Jan 21, 2007


phasmid posted:

Who is the king of the 'crobes?

He's right there in your av.

Edit: The queen is the av above

Ornamental Dingbat
Feb 26, 2007

A Fancy Hat posted:

Like 5 years ago I would have been super excited, now I'm just wondering how we gently caress this up.

We'll catch a planetary venereal disease from the first sample return mission.

old beast lunatic
Nov 3, 2004

by Hand Knit

A Fancy Hat posted:

Like 5 years ago I would have been super excited, now I'm just wondering how we gently caress this up.

5 years ago I'd be thinking about how this owns and it means there is probably life everywhere. Now I just want to know how I can weaponize this venusian fart alien news to gently caress with religious people

pop fly to McGillicutty
Feb 2, 2004

A peckish little mouse!

A Fancy Hat posted:

Like 5 years ago I would have been super excited, now I'm just wondering how we gently caress this up.

They're sentient, we meet, Trump farts, and starts a war.

Robo Reagan
Feb 12, 2012

by Fluffdaddy

A Fancy Hat posted:

Like 5 years ago I would have been super excited, now I'm just wondering how we gently caress this up.

were going to bring a bunch back and theyre going to fart venus gas on us

Big Beef City
Aug 15, 2013

re: Venus' biosphere,

it's me. I'm Venus' biosphere.

Fallows
Jan 20, 2005

If he waits long enough he can use his accrued interest from his savings to bring his negative checking balance back into the black.
Venus has no magnetosphere so if life does exist there its gonna be cooool because it has to be very hardy to resist the acidic/hightemp/high radiation enviroment i think.

cnut
May 3, 2016

Penus

old beast lunatic
Nov 3, 2004

by Hand Knit

Fallows posted:

Venus has no magnetosphere so if life does exist there its gonna be cooool because it has to be very hardy to resist the acidic/hightemp/high radiation enviroment i think.

Going to just assume this means microbes with xenomorph blood, and I'm here for it.

BAGS FLY AT NOON
Apr 6, 2011

pop fly to McGillicutty posted:

They're sentient, we meet, Trump farts, and starts a war.

Watch Trump fart a loving war

Sleeveless
Dec 25, 2014

by Pragmatica

old beast lunatic posted:

5 years ago I'd be thinking about how this owns and it means there is probably life everywhere. Now I just want to know how I can weaponize this venusian fart alien news to gently caress with religious people

After watching all the I loving Love Science people immediately lapse into UFO cult fanfiction the moment the possibility of life on other planets is even speculated about I don't think they're in any position to be throwing stones.

Lawman 0
Aug 17, 2010

old beast lunatic posted:

Going to just assume this means microbes with xenomorph blood, and I'm here for it.

That's actually a legit possibility tbh.

Crusader
Apr 11, 2002

hell astro course
Dec 10, 2009

pizza sucks

oh dope posted:

Oh cool so does this mean I won't have to pay my bills anymore?

yes. you never had to, actually. just walk away.

The Belgian
Oct 28, 2008
Nuke them before they nuke us.

hell astro course
Dec 10, 2009

pizza sucks

Fallows posted:

Venus has no magnetosphere so if life does exist there its gonna be cooool because it has to be very hardy to resist the acidic/hightemp/high radiation enviroment i think.

that's only because you didn't develop in the venereal hardness zone like they did. You've got the wrong outlook.

Inverted Icon
Apr 8, 2020

by Athanatos
Nuke their rear end!

Take their gas!

pop fly to McGillicutty
Feb 2, 2004

A peckish little mouse!

DarkSoulsTantrum posted:

Watch Trump fart a loving war

Inverted Icon posted:

Nuke their rear end!

Take their gas!

HD DAD
Jan 13, 2010

Generic white guy.

Toilet Rascal

Chamale
Jul 11, 2010

I'm helping!



Didn't we discover similar life signatures on Mars and Titan? Time to launch some robots with microscopes to figure out who or what is farting out these exciting gasses

edit: Apparently the Titan one was geysers

DamnCanadian
Jan 3, 2005

Perpetuating the stereotype since 1978.
About 50 km above the Venusian surface, the temperature and atmospheric pressure are nearly the same as Earth’s, so it’s not out of the question that free-floating microorganisms might exist there

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its all nice on rice
Nov 12, 2006

Sweet, Salty Goodness.



Buglord
I know a guy who's a total conspiracy nut: the Illuminati run everything; COVID is a political move to control the population; 9/11 was an inside job; the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids to control electricity; etc. He brought this up the last time I was talking to him, and seems to think it means that there are humanoid like aliens on Venus that have been hiding there for millennia. Not, you know, tiny bacteria or whatever.

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