Phosphine gas in the cloud decks of Venus | Hacker News Reader

Phosphine gas in the cloud decks of Venus

nature.com

113 pointsperihelions32 comments

Open articleView on HN

Previous discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24463423

> Previous discussions

FTFY :)

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

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24471024

If you haven't yet, I highly recommend watching to the Royal Astronomical Society Press Briefing [1], where the main researchers present the results of their research. It's just 30 minutes and pretty well explained (although I'm not an astrophysicist).

One of the researchers, Dr. Clara Sousa-Silva, also have a 2-min video on how they know about the elements in other planets' atmosphere [2], and a great explanation about what is phosphine [3]. Her personal website is one of the best I've ever seen.

2020 doesn't cease to surprise me.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1u-jlf_Olo

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt7UBhYdM_o

[3] https://clarasousasilva.com/phosphine

> Her personal website is one of the best I've ever seen.

Wow, it's really good indeed!

Yep, clean and well structured

> Her personal website is one of the best I've ever seen.

FWIW I found it borderline unusable on desktop. It feels like 95% hero banners and confusing multi column layouts with at least 5 different font sizes/weights. Actively worse than a stuffy plain html PhD page stuck in 1997.

It would be interesting to see if they also found H3PO3.

If so, then the inorganic synthesis pathway turns obvious, but the question where from H3PO3 comes on Venus arises.

It would be even more interesting if they found C3PO IMO.

Yes, but the odds of that are approximately 3,720 to 1.

Obvious how?

Suppose we find primitive life forms after sending probe. What's the next step gonna be? Should we manipulate things or let the life form as it is?

We don't have the ability to manipulate that kind of ecosystem.

Surely we have the ability, we just don’t operate on the timescale required nor would want to invest the amount of resources required. We make significant manipulations of our own ecosystem accidentally all the time.

We do if there exist microorganisms on Earth that can survive and multiply in the atmosphere of Venus. (The upper layers aren't nearly as harsh an environment as at ground-level, though I don't know if it's survivable by anything Earth-native.)

How? If there's no water, how could there be an ecosystem of microorganisms thriving in the atmosphere?

It has water (according to wikipedia), just not very much in comparison to the Earth.

In theory, some hypothetical life form could convert sulfuric acid to water, but I have no idea if such a thing is possible or currently exists on Earth.

> Water vapor 20 ppm

(from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus)

> The concentration of water vapor (a greenhouse gas) varies significantly from around 10 ppm by volume in the coldest portions of the atmosphere to as much as 5% by volume in hot, humid air masses, and concentrations of other atmospheric gases are typically quoted in terms of dry air (without water vapor).

(from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth)

Probably a slow process of sending more probes and getting more samples to test, and eventually shipping them back to Earth. We don't really have any interest in manipulating whatever ecosystem Venus potentially has, but we could certainly use microbes that survive in such an environment.

I strongly doubt there is life on Venus, however.

I was thinking in the line of artificial natural selection in the long run. So that life could thrive better! or let nature do it's work.

What's your plan for artificial natural selection?

Assuming the conditions are similar to primitive earth: We could simulate the fastest way to take the life fast forward. (For e.g. putting antibiotics like things, recombination etc.)

Phosphine on earth is only created as a product of biological chemistry. This might be the case on Venus too, which would be a first sign of extra-terrestrial life.

It's interesting, but the conditions on Venus are of such high pressure (93 bar) and temperature is so high, that using the fact that phosphine does not appear naturally on earth (by that I mean by non biological means) doesn't mean there is a biological process. Venus is quite a different beast as environments go.

There could be a relatively simple process at high pressure/temperature that produces it in abundance (it's not a complex molecule).

My point is that until we have evidence of an actual organism, we cannot jump and say "life created this".

I think they've already thought through the high pressure/temperature situation. These are professionals and the videos seem to show that they've taken many variables into account.

Who is "they"? The scientists who conducted the research did not conclude that this was rock-solid evidence of life, and they plainly note that there are too many unknowns to rule out natural reactions that just don't occur in Earth-like conditions. All they claim is that this is "promising."

I also never said they said this was rock solid evidence of life. I just said they took into account temperature and pressure. Never said other explanations were ruled out.

What does "took into account temperature and pressure" mean if we agree there are many unknowns that the temperature and pressure are interacting with? If you weren't trying to say they have ruled out other explanations, I can't figure out what concrete point you were making. From what I can tell reading the article, it sounds like the only thing they've come close to ruling out is that the measurements are faulty.

From one of the scientist's personal site: "I found that, if detected on a rocky planet, phosphine can only mean life."

For one, this assertion seems too certain to be scientific. That they attempted to create phosphine using a non-biological method and were unable to do so does not appear to be proof of anything except perhaps it does indicate likelihood. However, we shouldn't be fooled into believing that nature's creativity does not often exceed our own, even our brightest minds.

Jupiter and Saturn are able to produce this molecule and while they don't fit the assertion's limitation of "rocky planet"...Venus certainly has many unique characteristics that may produce this molecule. Professionals get things wrong, too. As Feynman said, "you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest one to fool."

The point about Jupiter and Saturn is specifically addressed in the press conference. The processes that produce phosphine on gas giants rely on a very high partial pressure of hydrogen, whereas Venus has a critical shortage of hydrogen.

Randall made a good comic again, covering this topic:

https://xkcd.com/2359/

also an amusing one from SMBC https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/phosphine

We might be weeks / months away from finding aliens, even if they are only microbes :) Exciting times.

So much for terraforming Earths “Twin”.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com