• NEW! LOWEST RATES EVER -- SUPPORT THE SHOW AND ENJOY THE VERY BEST PREMIUM PARACAST EXPERIENCE! Welcome to The Paracast+, eight years young! For a low subscription fee, you can download the ad-free version of The Paracast and the exclusive, member-only, After The Paracast bonus podcast, featuring color commentary, exclusive interviews, the continuation of interviews that began on the main episode of The Paracast. We also offer lifetime memberships! Flash! Take advantage of our lowest rates ever! Act now! It's easier than ever to susbcribe! You can sign up right here!

    Subscribe to The Paracast Newsletter!

Life on Venus? You Better Believe It!


Very interesting, thank you. I had heard of the possibility of microbes high above the Venusian inferno but I was unaware of actual evidence for them.
 
Maybe not the sort of life depicted in the Edgar Rice Burroughs Carson of Venus novels, but it provides the promise that life exists in many forms in many places:


This is a big deal but there are a lot of "ifs" to it. If there is life there, how would it operate? Would it be airborne microbes? Is it life derived from a time when Venus was more hospitable? Is it life that got there that might have developed from life on earth or Mars presuming there was or is life on Mars? What would be interesting would be if they did find life there and it didn't have any of the characteristics of life here like DNA, RNA, mitochondria, etc. and something other than carbon and water based life because that would be so out of our paradigm about earth’s biological life even for those life forms here that derive their energy here sulfur.
 
I think this is very cool. I could totally see life evolving in Venus' atmosphere. Lots of energy and interesting chemistry there. And it would be a cool mission to send a balloon there to check.
I could see the weird chemistry potentially kicking out phosphenes there in new ways though, so there's the potential this is just Venusian chemistry, not biology. Or, perhaps, bacteria from the Venera probes went wild during it's transition through the atmosphere.
 
If there is life there, how would it operate? Would it be airborne microbes?

What else could it be? I'd assume life as we know it couldn't survive broiling temps lower down. Underground life doesn't seem likely if Venus experiences periodic, catastrophic volcanism.

Is it life derived from a time when Venus was more hospitable?

That would be most parsimonious.

Is it life that got there that might have developed from life on earth or Mars presuming there was or is life on Mars?

I don't know if that's possible, if the heat of impact and entry are "more than sufficient to sterilize."
 
I could see the weird chemistry potentially kicking out phosphenes there in new ways though, so there's the potential this is just Venusian chemistry, not biology.

Sure, just like methane spikes in Mars could have a nonbiological source.

Or, perhaps, bacteria from the Venera probes went wild during it's transition through the atmosphere.

Don't they thoroughly sterilize space probes? What awful negligence if that's true.
 
Don't they thoroughly sterilize space probes? What awful negligence if that's true.
I read a report somewhere where that was discounted because of the size of the spike. It would have been funny if the soviets gave beautiful Venus a Veneral disease from the Venera probes.

That was a bad dad joke worthy of Gene on the air. Sorry about that.
 
Back
Top