# Life on Venus - report



## Brian G Turner (Feb 23, 2003)

According to  this report from New Scientist online, there's a highly surprising suggestion from analyses that Venus could harbour at least microbial life in the cloud layers of Venus.

Funny - after reading it, at this moment in time I'd probably place my bets first on Venus having life, than Mars - the issue on the latter planet being perhaps dangerously over-emphasised.


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## nemesis (Mar 1, 2003)

The difference is that Venus still has liquid water. That is a very significant difference. Whether atmospheric conditions were ever stable enough to allow evolution is unlikely.


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## Survivor (Mar 2, 2003)

Hmmm...you're misreading current evolutionary theory there.  Anyway, life doesn't _evolve_ from non-life, it has to _originate_.  Origin of life studies are a totally distinct process from evolution.  And in some ways the atmosphere of Venus is ideal for origin.  In fact, it's a better candidate than Earth.

Hence eventually someone will hypothesize that life originated in the atmosphere of Venus, then was blown to Earth on the solar wind.


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## Brian G Turner (Mar 3, 2003)

It's certainly a nasty piece of logic that if Mars had to seed Earth. And I don;t subscribe to it either.

As for Venus - wouldn't it just be so ironic if life were discovered there before Mars? ;D


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## Survivor (Mar 4, 2003)

Well, it would be ironic in the sense that since we've already discovered evidence of life on Mars, and are only now discovering evidence of life on Venus...okay, I'm not sure how it would qualify as _irony_ per se.

Look, if we look hard at either planet, we're likely to find some evidence of life.  They've discovered microbes living _inside_ metamorphic rock deep within the Earth's crust, and high in the atmosphere, and under the ice of both poles, and everywhere else we've bothered to look on _this_ planet.  Even in _Death_ Valley and the _Dead_ Sea.


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## Brian G Turner (Mar 4, 2003)

> we've already discovered evidence of life on Mars,



Hm...I was under the impression that we're still talking about the _possibility_. I'm thinking in terms of incontrovertible proof via sampling, etc.


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## mac1 (Mar 5, 2003)

What ever happened about ALH84001. The whole thing was ridiculed, but rumour had it that many scientists were still convinced it was real, and were continuing tests on it. Does anyone know the results of these tests, or if they ever happened?? Was it ever proved to be a misidentification??


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## Survivor (Mar 5, 2003)

No.  But the most compelling evidence (to the science community, at any rate) has been weakened by the fact that the magnitite formations _could_ have formed by some process other than life.  The theory is exceedingly complicated, and says nothing about the supposed microfossilized bacteria themselves but I post it here nonetheless--http://www.psrd.hawaii.edu/May02/ALH84001magnetite.html.

Basically, one team claimed that they had abiotically reproduced crystal's that had some important similarities to the magnetite in ALH84001.  Another team claimed that a significant fraction of the crystals had become aligned with the crystalline structure of the rock, which implied that they had forme abiotically.

They couldn't actually reproduce the exact same types of crystals, but they equalized the "preponderance of evidence" between the idea that ALH84001 was solid evidence of primitive martian life and the idea that it was merely an anomaly.

I personally think that the whole thing is rather a tempest in a teapot.  We _know_ that Mars had water during the same period that there was ubiquitous life in Earth's atmosphere.  We also know that even now, organisms in the upper atmosphere do get blown to Mars.  All it would take for those hardy, radiation resistent primative bacteria to thrive on Mars would be a single specimen reaching the surface and finding water with certain minerals in it.  However, short of humanity being wiped out by a Martian plague, I rather imagine that there will still be scientists that will deny that _anything_ constitues solid evidence of Martian life.


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## Brian G Turner (Mar 5, 2003)

On the subject of microbes and space, the following two articles _may_ be of interest:

Hydrocarbon bubbles discovered in meteorite 


Microbes from edge of space revived


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## jojajihisc (Jun 24, 2010)

Survivor said:


> I'm not sure how it would qualify as _irony_ per se.



Here is how it would qualify.



Survivor said:


> Well, it would be ironic in the sense that since we've already discovered evidence of life on Mars, and are only now discovering evidence of life on Venus...okay,


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## skeptical (Jun 24, 2010)

One of the frequent errors made by people speculating on this subject is that the presense of extremophiles means life may have arisen under extreme conditions.

In fact, no-one yet knows what conditions are needed for abiogenesis.  Lots of hypotheses exist, but no proper theory.   It may be, for example, that life can only come into being amongst the sands of a radioactive beach.  Or alongside a calcite crystal next to a black smoker.  Or some other extremely restrictive environment.

Of course, once life exists, it can adapt to all sorts of environments.   It is very probable, in fact, that the balmy conditions we prefer are exceedingly toxic to the first life, and an awful lot of adaptive changes through evolution were required to come up with an organism that actually *likes* oxygen.

The point being that life on other planets is not something that will come into being easily.   I suspect that any life on Mars began here on Earth, as Survivor suggested.  However, life on Venus is extremely speculative, and I would think that is exceedingly improbable.  But if it actually exists, it may have begun there.


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