Uh oh. Venusians.

[robinson]

If only there were a way to send a probe and find out

[Pyrrho]

Isn't that a byproduct of orgone?

[robinson]

Just stop it

[robinson]

No more orgone jokes

[robinson]

Stop it!

[robinson]

Oh fuck it


Maybe they can a picture of Mons Venus

[robinson]

I heard there is life there













HAHAHAHAHA

[Bruce]

They say its because phosphines were discovered in the atmosphere.

Phosphines are a sign of life on earth because 20% of our atmosphere is oxygen. All phosphines have long since been oxidized to phosphates. The only way to get phosphates back to phosphines us to reduce them, and the only reducing agents in nature are bacteria and plants.

Venus is very much NOT an oxygen based atmosphere. Most of the atmosphere is hydrogen sulfide. On earth, hydrogen sulfide quickly reacts with oxygen to make sulfuric acid, which rains back down on earth.

Without oxygen, it's not surprising at all to see phosphines on a planet with an atmosphere that's saturated with sulfide because sulfur and phosphorus naturally occur together. It's not a sign of life.

If there were no sulfide in the atmosphere and a lot of oxygen, only then would the presence of phosphines be a sign of life.

[Witness]

They named it for the goddess of love because it eats files.

Now I understand what happened to my HD.

[Witness]

Most of the atmosphere is hydrogen sulfide.

Not to be pedantic, but this is inexact:

Venus Fact Sheet

Atmospheric composition (near surface, by volume):
Major: 96.5% Carbon Dioxide (CO2), 3.5% Nitrogen (N2)
Minor (ppm): Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) - 150; Argon (Ar) - 70; Water (H2O) - 20;
Carbon Monoxide (CO) - 17; Helium (He) - 12; Neon (Ne) - 7

https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/f ... sfact.html

Detailed breakdown of what is known, with isotopes and all: Venus Atmospheric Composition In Situ Data: A Compilation

[Bruce]

Obviously I meant besides carbon dioxide and nitrogen, it's mostly sulfur.........just like besides being correct, you're mostly an asshole.


Just kidding. Thanks for the fact checking.

[Witness]

you're mostly an asshole.

Hey, I resent that "mostly"!

[Bruce]

Something a little more official

Same counter argument. Why jump to the conclusion that it is "produced" rather than inherent? There is known volcanic activity on Venus that is continuously pumping sulfur into the atmosphere. Phosphine could easily be off gassing from that. There are meteors discovered all the time with unusual ratios of particular elements. Could have come from one of those. Hell, we don't even have a good plausible theory for where the water on earth came from. The least ridiculous idea is heavy bombardment from comets shortly after the earth cooled, but that would take a shit load of ice comets of just the right size. Too big or too small results in the water blasting back into space as vapor. And why did all these comets hit earth and not the moon or other planets.

I'll answer the guy's question. Much of what we know or think we know about planet formation is wrong or poorly understood.

[Anaxagoras]

Bruce may have been wrong about the composition of Venus's atmosphere, but I think his point about the lack of O₂ still stands.

The logic they are using to say its presence (phosphine) might be a "sign of life" is flawed.

[Doctor X]

Protomolecule.

– J.D.

[Bruce]

Protomolecule.

– J.D.

I'm sad about the direction that The Expanse has taken. They started so good, then gradually got weird.

[ceptimus]

We see phosphine in Jupiter and in stars. The scientists say they have tried to account for all the sources of phosphine they can think of in Venus's atmosphere - they say that it must be continually being produced because it's not stable, long-term on Venus. Phosphine production requires energy input, and the scientists have tried to allow for inputs like sunlight, lightning, volcanoes, and even things like meteor impacts. But they say the levels are about ten thousand times higher than they should be, and are also higher near the equator than at the poles.

I'm not an expert, and my guess is that the gas is more likely due to some weird chemical process the scientists haven't thought of, than a result of biology: but it's still an interesting discovery and worth investigating further - sending probes to collect atmospheric samples and such.

[Bruce]

Phosphine is unstable in what? Earth's atmosphere? If course! In the cold vacuum of space with nothing around to react with? Its plenty stable. I have a bottle of it in the fridge at work and its doing just fine. If I can keep a bottle of it in a fridge on earth, it can do just fine on Jupiter.

[Witness]

Life in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter, fed as much or more by the internal heat of the planet as the sun.

I'd be interested to know how that is meant to work.

[ceptimus]

Phosphine is unstable in what? Earth's atmosphere? If course! In the cold vacuum of space with nothing around to react with? Its plenty stable. I have a bottle of it in the fridge at work and its doing just fine. If I can keep a bottle of it in a fridge on earth, it can do just fine on Jupiter.

You can read the scientists' paper, published at Nature.

Photochemical model

Within the atmosphere of Venus, PH3 is destroyed by photochemically generated radical species, by near-surface thermal decomposition and by photodissociation within/above the clouds. Since PH3 itself scavenges chemically reactive radicals and atoms, for example, OH, H, O and Cl, the presence of PH3 suppresses these species, increasing its lifetime. Previously published models of Venus’s atmosphere did not include the scavenging effect of PH3, so we developed our own model.

They spent over a year studying possible chemical pathways for phosphine production on Venus before publishing the paper, and they waited till the microwave signals were independently confirmed by a separate telescope team. They do appear to be proper scientists not making wild claims.

[Doctor X]

Protomolecule.

I'm sad about the direction that The Expanse has taken. They started so good, then gradually got weird.

The books are different and the series is behind. Unlike the Game of the Thrones, the people behind the series have not decided to go on their own. They make changes, some are not so good, but do not change the story like GoT did.

"Doors and corners!"

– J.D.

[Witness]

In A Complete Fluke, A European Spacecraft Is About To Fly Past Venus – And Could Look For Signs Of Life

Earlier this week, scientists announced the discovery of phosphine on Venus, a potential signature of life. Now, in an amazing coincidence, a European and Japanese spacecraft is about to fly past the planet – and could confirm the discovery.

On Monday, September 14, a team of scientists said they had found evidence for phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus. The region in which it was found, about 50 kilometers above the surface, is outside the harsh conditions on the Venusian surface, and could be a habitat for airborne microbes.

To find out for sure, we will need to send a mission into the Venusian atmosphere to look for such life. Several proposals are on the table, with the closest being a spacecraft from the U.S. company Rocket Lab that could send a probe into the atmosphere as soon as 2023.

As far as we know, the phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus could have been produced by life, although it's possible it could also be produced by an unknown non-biological process. Before missions start launching to Venus to find out, however, scientists will want to know for sure if phosphine is really present.

And as luck would have it, a joint mission comprising two spacecraft – one from the European Space Agency (ESA) and the other from the Japanese space agency (JAXA) – is about to fly past Venus that could tell us for sure.

BepiColombo, launched in 2018, is on its way to enter orbit around Mercury, the innermost planet of the Solar System. But to achieve that it plans to use two flybys of Venus to slow itself down, one on October 15, 2020, and another on August 10, 2021.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanoc ... 3539fa2681

---

And in other news:

Russia's space agency chief declares Venus a "Russian planet"

Moscow — If there is life on Venus, it might want to start learning Russian. The boss of Russia's government space agency has claimed it as a "Russian planet."

The bold territorial claim comes on the heels of scientific research suggesting life could exist on Earth's celestial neighbor, the second planet from the sun.

Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin, who's known for espousing unconventional scientific views — and for frequently sarcastic anti-Western rhetoric — said this week that Russia wants to send its own mission to Venus, in addition to an already-proposed joint venture with the United States called "Venera-D."

"We think that Venus is a Russian planet, so we shouldn't lag behind," Rogozin, a former deputy prime minister, told reporters on Tuesday. He noted that the Soviet Union was "the first and the only one" to land a spacecraft on Venus.

Russian President Vladimir Putin (C) and state space corporation Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin (L) listen to Director of Russian rocket engine manufacturer NPO Energomash Igor Arbuzov in Khimki, outside Moscow April 12, 2019.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/venus-russ ... ef-claims/

[DJ]

Well the USSR was the first to soft land a probe, though they never made a territorial claim back then.

Never the 1960s space treaty. It's theirs if they can take it and defend it.

Loving the new Space Force.

[Fid]

Heechees it's gotta be.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heechee

[robinson]

I loved those stories

[Anaxagoras]

Ah, too bad. It was fun while it lasted.

[Anaxagoras]

Re-analysis of the 267-GHz ALMA observations of Venus: No statistically significant detection of phosphine

Context: ALMA observations of Venus at 267 GHz have been presented in the literature that show the apparent presence of phosphine (PH3) in its atmosphere. Phosphine has currently no evident production routes on the planet's surface or in its atmosphere.
Aims: The aim of this work is to assess the statistical reliability of the line detection by independent re-analysis of the ALMA data.
Methods: The ALMA data were reduced as in the published study, following the provided scripts. First the spectral analysis presented in the study was reproduced and assessed. Subsequently, the spectrum was statistically evaluated, including its dependence on selected ALMA baselines.
Results: We find that the 12th-order polynomial fit to the spectral passband utilised in the published study leads to spurious results. Following their recipe, five other >10 sigma lines can be produced in absorption or emission within 60 km/s from the PH3 1-0 transition frequency by suppressing the surrounding noise. Our independent analysis shows a feature near the PH3 frequency at a ~2 sigma level, below the common threshold for statistical significance. Since the spectral data have a non-Gaussian distribution, we consider a feature at such level as statistically unreliable that cannot be linked to a false positive probability.
Conclusions: We find that the published 267-GHz ALMA data provide no statistical evidence for phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus.

(That's the whole paper.) Actually, just the abstract; my bad.

[robinson]

We should just seed Venus with life

[robinson]

Get that second planet ready for tourism