Life on Venus? Astronomers See a Signal in Its Clouds

Im geeking out over here. I love space and such, though im not smart enough to really understand a lot of it.

But possible life on venus,  the planet that apparently makes hell look like a vacation spot? Mind boggling. 

Walt Kelly said it best...

NickD said:

I still want to know whatever happened with that pulse of energy that came out of the black hole a couple years back.  That one really threw a bunch of astronomers for a loop. I remember the consensus being "Well, that's not supposed to happen."

This.

I can't find a good, niche news site about space stuff. I don't give a E36 M3 what the corporate news networks have to say, I want to read what the scientists and astronomers are doing, and get follow ups. So often I'll see a great story or interesting development, then never get a follow up, and searching for them just brings out the real wack jobs.

It could be argued I'm one of the wack jobs in this sense, because I firmly believe we're just an exhibit in an intergalactic zoo, but I'm referring to the lizard people and greys running the government and making pod people kind of wack jobs who seem to be the only ones that follow up on space based discoveries and science. 

In reply to RevRico :

Ars Technica's Rocket Report is great for launch news: https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/09/rocket-report-delta-iv-heavy-gets-a-new-date-spacex-to-destroy-test-tank/

Space.com is also a good resource.

In reply to RevRico :

I disagree on two points:

I tend to think lizard people and greys would be a little more intelligent than our current crop of political "leaders". 
I also think a more advanced species would be kinder to their zoo animals. 

The population of the universe is zero:

GIRTHQUAKE said:probe failed it's first insertion

But seriously I like the excitement that is going on right now with space and I hope it leads to a new golden age of space exploration.

Don49 (Forum Supporter) said:

I'm still looking for intelligent life on Earth. Seems hard to find these days.

Yep

bigdaddylee82 said:

I thought men were from mars? ... Sorry, I’ll let myself out...

How does this thread not have a picture from the Venera probe yet?

Related to the Venera probes:  One of the missions failed to escape earths orbit because of some sort of failure.  The upper part of it (containing the probe) is still orbiting... but maybe not for much longer because the orbit is decaying.  The interesting part of this is that the lander is obviously made to survive EXTREME conditions, so it seems very likely it will survive re-entry.

The good news is a very large percentage of the earth is non-populated, especially around the equator where I am guessing this thing is orbiting (or maybe the plane of the ecliptic which is similar but not the same because of Earths tilt).

https://www.space.com/failed-soviet-venus-spacecraft-falls-to-earth-soon.html

It would be just our luck that life exists on a planet we were have little ability to study it from the surface. 

It would however, indicate that too much atmosphere is better than too little (like Mars) and if we were really desperate we could grab an ice moon and chuck it at Venus to both add water and create spin, wait a few centuries and we might have a planet that we could at least land on, avoiding the oceans of sulfuric acid. 

Although, if you could tow an ice moon across the solar system, you could probably tow Titan or Callisto or some other Ice Moon into a more appropriate orbit and not wait nearly as long for its habitation. 

aircooled said:

Related to the Venera probes:  One of the missions failed to escape earths orbit because of some sort of failure.  The upper part of it (containing the probe) is still orbiting... but maybe not for much longer because the orbit is decaying.  The interesting part of this is that the lander is obviously made to survive EXTREME conditions, so it seems very likely it will survive re-entry.

The good news is a very large percentage of the earth is non-populated, especially around the equator where I am guessing this thing is orbiting (or maybe the plane of the ecliptic which is similar but not the same because of Earths tilt).

https://www.space.com/failed-soviet-venus-spacecraft-falls-to-earth-soon.html

That's so cool! I hope it survives re-entry so we can look at how the Soviet's built computers in that era; they used specialty iron for memory and did lots of things completely different than what we are used to today.

In reply to pheller :

Completely right on atmosphere; it's why Titan could also potentially support something. Worse yet, lacking a magnetic field is partly why Mars is barren; high-energy ions in solar wind would grab and strip away atoms in the atmosphere, and cosmic rads sterilize everything eventually. Having a magnetic field- which Venus has, and Mars does not- keeps that from happening.

There seem to be a number of science geeks here, so I'll ask a question that I've often wondered about.

We seem to look for a presence of life base on our own biology.  Carbon, Water, etc.  Do we do that because it's the only thing we know and can use as a baseline or is there some deeper understanding of those components that indicates life that I don't understand?  What I mean is, is there a possibility that life could exist in either a totally different chemical structure (lets randomly pick vanadium and platinum) or elements that we aren't aware of because they don't exist on Earth?

I just sometimes wonder if we're looking for something specific that's wholly unique to Earth when maybe we need to look for other indications of life that aren't chemical based/Earth based.

Sadly, as I started reading more sci-fi, I started looking into the science of "life out there" and came across Fermi's paradox and how it's possible that there WAS "life out there" long before we arrived but it's long gone and we're now all alone because we didn't develop as quick.  And, that we may be the most advanced life in the universe and any other life may be way behind us.

-Rob

There are certainly theories about the possibility of non-carbon based life (e.g. Silicone).  So yes, we should be aware to look for such things.  Exactly what secondary indicators (such as the was found on Venus) we are looking for might be a bit more of a mystery though since we have no examples to work with.

For them that are interested in this sort of thing , I cannot recommend  enough "Intelligent life in the universe" by Shlovskii and Sagan. It's old info but totally relevant. Sagan prettymuch predicted microbial life the the Venus cloud tops. As for other biochemstries, silicone biochemistries may work well in waterless environments with high ultraviolet fluxes where hydrocarbons replace water as the solvent medium. Srsly. Go on amazon and get it. Vastly entertaining. 

rob_lewis said:

We seem to look for a presence of life base on our own biology.  Carbon, Water, etc.  Do we do that because it's the only thing we know and can use as a baseline or is there some deeper understanding of those components that indicates life that I don't understand?  What I mean is, is there a possibility that life could exist in either a totally different chemical structure (lets randomly pick vanadium and platinum) or elements that we aren't aware of because they don't exist on Earth?

Both! We look for water because water is known as a "universal Solvent", and look for carbon-based because carbon makes something like 6 times the number of compounds and materials than all other elements on the table combined- but don't quote me on that, because I am not sure where I read it. However, this article from JRank does an excellent job of explaining why we look for carbon instead of Silicone:

Silicon (Si), another element in group 14 of the periodic table, also has four valence electrons and can make large molecules called silicones, but its atoms are too large to fit together into as great a variety of molecules as carbon atoms can.

Carbon's ability to form long carbon-to-carbon chains is the first of five reasons that there can be so many different carbon compounds; a molecule that differs by even one atom is, of course, a molecule of a different compound. The second reason for carbon's astounding compound-forming ability is that carbon atoms can bind to each other not only in straight chains, but in complex branchings, like the branches of a tree. They can even join "head-to-tail" to make rings of carbon atoms. There is practically no limit to the number or complexity of the branches or the number of rings that can be attached to them, and hence no limit to the number of different molecules that can be formed.

 Obviously, we use ourselves as a baseline for this xenoscience too since we're mostly alive- but earth also has extremeophiles like these nematoads found 2 miles under the surface and other extremely wild creatures that would be considered fiction until they were seen, so "only looking" for carbon life will still find plenty of crazy stuff!

wvumtnbkr said:

Grtechguy said:

Why not?   with countless stars in countless galaxies, does anyone really believe that life doesn't exist anywhere else?

Actually, most of the physicists believe that because there ARE so many potential planets and we can't find any sort of non natural signal from anywhere, that it proves we probably ARE alone.  

 

Radio waves can go a LOONNGG way in space.

Humans are putting out fewer "intelligible" radio waves nowadays, focusing (heh) more on relatively low power digital data to satellites to transmit back to earth.

There's a maybe 50 year deep shell of "here we are".  Universe is how many billions of years old?

captdownshift (Forum Supporter) said:

They're trying to contact us about our cars expiring warranty. 

And, like a dumbass, keep blocking their number!

Another video on the subject:
https://youtu.be/zRobiDiHpvE

Wait. The new Dune movie isn't shot on location? It's all green screen? This is just like the moon 'landing'!

In reply to nutherjrfan :

Thats just wrong...