Comment by UncleOxidant | Hacker News Reader

Comment by UncleOxidant | Hacker News Reader

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Something doesn't add up here: This is sourced by a guy on twitter (@BrianRoemmele) who AFAICT doesn't have expertise in the area. Now go read his Quora on this: https://www.quora.com/Was-life-discovered-in-the-clouds-of-V... It gets quite bizarre:

"We should also not rule out far more complex life from the observations of Phosphine. It is quite possible we will observe life as large as a Whale on Earth quite happy suspended in the gravity waves of Venus." WTAF?

Also, how did the video in his tweet somehow become available a day early as well as the Earth&Sky article. Something doesn't smell right here. The explanation is that the Earth & Sky article was put up early by mistake and pulled.. and this guy happened to find it. Another explanation could be that an article was written to look like an Earth & Sky article and put on a google drive... and that he got a couple of friends to make the short video on the MIT campus. Otherwise how does that video somehow appear today, a day early as well as the article?

He does seem like a bit of a "character." But maybe he had a webscraper that just happened to catch the premature post, and is just trying to self-aggrandize on a real scoop? Nasawatch [0] is saying that several sources have confirmed it to them...

[0]: http://nasawatch.com/archives/2020/09/phosphine-detec.html

There was an article on earthsky.org [0], but it was taken down. It's available on archive.is [1]

[0] https://earthsky.org/space/life-on-venus-astrobiology-phosph...

[1] https://archive.is/L7MT1#selection-1846.0-1846.1

And he just happened to have a big quora write up ready? And he happened to get the video a day early too?

Probably a leak from one of the embargoed reporters is more likely, if it's true. Obviously we'll find out soon. But if the Earthsky.org story a fake, he certainly did a vastly better job producing the fake than he did self aggrandizing off of it.

It seems to be His Thing and he has been looking at the preprint of the paper since a month ago. There are people outside the normal academic framework who are knowledgeable and even influential within a specialist field.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_wave

Different from gravitational waves.

The (supposed) author of the article retweeted this : https://twitter.com/chrislintott/status/1301188211952291841

So, I suppose we'll find out tomorrow.

There have been rumors it was Venus related on twitter for a few days now.

Journalists got the release early and several of them tweeted out hints.

But I guess we will find out for sure on the 14th.

> Another explanation could be that an article was written to look like an Earth & Sky article and put on a google drive.

I've never in my life seen someone fake a document that good. It's close to impossible under current conditions to appear in the wild. The Russians might be able to, for instance, but there's no circumstances they would, the cost to reward is way to high.

(Assuming you mean - https://archive.is/L7MT1#selection-1846.0-1846.1)

I'd like to see the best faked document you have ever seen.

I'd suspect the best is a real document but with changes.

Total entropy of documents is very high.

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