Life on Venus? Astronomers See a Signal in Its Clouds

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/14/science/venus-life-clouds.html

by uptown • 6 years ago

80 27 6 years ago

nytimes.com

perihelions• 6 years ago

Here's the research paper (full paper, open access)

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-1174-4

buryat• 6 years ago

even Venus life moved into the clouds

shadowgovt2• 6 years ago

I think that's unclear at this time; IIUC, the phosphine could be generated at ground level, since Venus's atmosphere is so thick that it'd have to be lifted up a bit before UV light can start breaking it down.

naravara• 6 years ago

The paper posits the microbes living in droplets in the clouds hypothesis. Heat and pressure at ground level are not as conducive to life.

macintux• 6 years ago

Extensive discussion yesterday; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24463423

codethief• 6 years ago

And earlier today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24467635

admiralspoo• 6 years ago

Don't hold your breath.

1) there is doubt about the quality of the radio detection 2) the same group of authors have been promoting this for years 3) Nature Astronomy, not Nature proper

aquova2• 6 years ago

Source on these doubts? This discovery is backed by the Royal Astronomical Society and MIT, which seems to imply the observations have been sound.

orev• 6 years ago

Having doubt is the default position in science. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

It’s an interesting finding, but it’s prudent to remain skeptical.

nabla92• 6 years ago

Still, John Carpenter, an ALMA observatory scientist, is skeptical that the phosphine observations themselves are real. The signal is faint, and the team needed to perform an extensive amount of processing to pull it from the data returned by the telescopes. That processing, he says, may have returned an artificial signal at the same frequency as phosphine. He also notes that the standard for remote molecular identification involves detecting multiple fingerprints for the same molecule, which show up at different frequencies on the electromagnetic spectrum. That’s something that the team has not yet done with phosphine.
“They took the right steps to verify the signal, but I’m still not convinced that this is real,” Carpenter says. “If it’s real, it’s a very cool result, but it needs follow-up to make it really convincing.”
Sousa-Silva agrees that the team needs to confirm the phosphine detection by finding additional fingerprints at other wavelengths. She and her colleagues had planned such observations using the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, a plane-mounted telescope, and with NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii. But COVID-19 got in the way, and the team’s attempts have been put on hold.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/09/possible-...

gammarator• 6 years ago

#3 doesn’t mean much either way. The main Nature journal may be the most prestigious and impactful in science, but the common joke is that only half of the results in it are real.

shadowgovt2• 6 years ago

Feels like the relevant question is "Is the evidence, circumstantial though it may be, compelling enough to justify looking more closely?"

decouvert• 6 years ago

Feels like the relevant question is "Is the evidence, circumstantial though it may be, compelling enough to justify looking more closely?"

What will the likely answer be if there is there is a chance of increased funding on the horizon?

superkuh• 6 years ago

At the time I am posting this comment the press briefing is live on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1u-jlf_Olo

zurfer• 6 years ago

better title: phosphine found in venus atmosphere, some scientists suspect microbes

biggestlou• 6 years ago

I’m still looking for intelligent life on THIS planet!

c22• 6 years ago

Needs a little more work still. Maybe try using italics instead of caps?

ve55• 6 years ago

Given how low my prior would be that life currently exists on Venus compared to all the other possible explanations for this, I wouldn't count on it at this point

Surprised this comment has a negative score, I'd be willing to bet at 50/50 that life on Venus won't be found within the next 5 years, there are a lot of alternative explanations with reasonable priors

sonofgod• 6 years ago

The probability of developing a probe, it travelling to Venus and analysing the data from it within that timescale is worse than 50/50.

merricksb• 6 years ago

Earlier discussion, still on the front page:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24467635

sto_hristo• 6 years ago

I called 2020 August to be the aliens month and 2020 September the random explosions month. But i'm contempt with this resolution as well.

Life on Venus? Astronomers See a Signal in Its Clouds

Related Stories