The search for life in our solar system has been very exciting this week. On Monday, a team of scientists announced that its members had discovered phosphine gas in Venus’s caustic, warm atmosphere. So what Gas – which you can recognize by the smell of its fish – is considered a byproduct of life.
M.I.T. “We did a thorough search through all known chemistry … and we did not find anything that produced the smallest amount of phosphine in Venus’s atmosphere,” said planetary scientist Sara Caesar. Search published in Nature astronomy, Says. It leaves us with two possibilities: the gas was created by life or by some chemical reaction, which scientists do not yet know.
Seeger is one of the foremost dreamers and thinkers in astronomy, in search of life beyond our planet. He studies planets orbiting stars many light-years away and thinks about how to find the lives of them and others close to home like Venus.
She is thinking constructively about microbial life forms that could potentially survive there. This summer, before the announcement of Phosphine, she and her co-authors published a speculative, fictional sketch of what life on Venus might look like. The vision is beautiful: a living rain of microbes floating in clouds, cyclically, for millions of years.
I wanted to hear more about this vision of life in a very different world than our own, so I called it.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Evidence for life on a nearby planet
Brian Resnik
To get started: What is the gist of the discovery you and the team announced this week?
Good Caesar
We are not claiming that we have found signs of life. We are claiming that we have a strong investigation of gas phosphine in the atmosphere.
[After searching] All the well-known chemistry – volcanoes, photochemistry, electricity – we have found nothing that can produce more than a tiny amount of phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus. So we have two possibilities left. One is that there is a kind of unknown chemistry, which seems impossible. And the other possibility is that there is a kind of life, which seems more impossible. So we are there. It took a long time to accept.
Brian Resnik
Okay, so that’s very unlikely. Is Venus historically believed to have life in the solar system?
Good Caesar
It has been a topic all the time. There could be life where Carl Sagan first proposed [Venus’s] Clouds. Is a small group [of scientists] That writes about this topic. Many people love it. It’s like a bound love because a lot of people are passionate about it, but they either didn’t want to say it or had no reason to say so.
Brian Resnik
What do they like about it?
Good Caesar
I think it’s just a conspiracy that there could be life closer to home.
[Venus is closer to Earth than Mars. It’s also the second-brightest object in our night sky, other than the moon.]
Life should be in the clouds of Venus, not on the surface
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Brian Resnik
As I understand it, if life existed on Venus, would it be not on the surface of the planet, but in its sulfuric acid clouds?
Good Caesar
It has always been the principle because the surface is too hot for complex molecules.
Brian Resnik
Is it too hot? What happens there?
Good Caesar
Atoms break down. If you take a protein or amino acid, or anything, and put it at room temperature, it will break down into smaller pieces and molecules.
Brian Resnik
So why is the atmosphere a great place to see life?
Good Caesar
There are things that astrologers think are necessary for life. He wants some kind of liquid. And there are liquids in the atmosphere, although that liquid is sulfuric acid.
Life needs a source of energy. So there is definitely the sun, at least as a source of energy. Life needs the right temperature. In the atmosphere, there is the right temperature. And Darwin needed a life-changing environment to promote evolution. So if you want to break it, that’s it. To put it simply, it’s mostly a temperature argument. Temperature and liquid.
Brian Resnik
Do we know of any life forms on earth that exist in liquid sulfuric acid?
Good Caesar
No, we don’t.
Brian Resnik
What makes possible the existence of life in sulfuric acid?
Good Caesar
We simply do not know. I think your questions are basically the next decade of research.
Brian Resnik
How can you imagine a life that is fatal to any life on earth?
Good Caesar
It is made up of different building blocks than our lives. Our building blocks like proteins and amino acids and DNA cannot survive in sulfuric acid. Or life will have to find a way to make a protective shell, made from a material that is resistant to sulfuric acid.
The dance of (possibly) life on Venus
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Brian Resnik
During the summer, you and your colleagues published a paper speculating on what life on Venus might be like. You describe that it can basically dance in the atmosphere, alternating between an active phase high and a low passive phase. I found it kind of beautiful. Can you describe how you came up with this?
Good Caesar
I had to help plug the holes of the concept of life into the atmosphere. It has come from there. Life fluid drops live inside, to protect from the outside.
But these droplets – where life lives, produces re-rod, gives metabolism – there the droplets will collide and grow.
Over time, like four months or a year or so, the dot gets big enough, so it starts to freeze out of the atmosphere like rain, but really slowly.
And so my colleagues told me I had to figure out how life could last. If it all rains, it will not be able to stay in the atmosphere for billions of years, or even millions of years.
Brian Resnik
How did you solve this?
Good Caesar
So I came up with the idea of this life cycle: as the droplets fall, they evaporate, and we are released with a dry, spore-like life form. Now it’s not too wide; It stops falling and is suspended in the mist layer [lower down in the atmosphere]. And this mist layer exists beneath the clouds of Venus. It is very stable and long lasting. So the concept is that these mist layers are formed by dried spores, which can stay there for days, weeks, months – and eventually they are updated back to the area with the right temperature for life, where it can attract. Liquid, hydrate it and start their life cycle again.
Brian Resnik
It’s like a live rain.
Good Caesar
OK.
Brian Resnik
Why not postpone algebra to that lower level?
Good Caesar
It’s too hot there, so some may die. And all of this is just a hypothesis, so it’s not an accomplished theory or anything, but to do this, some of them have to live. We have examples on earth of dried spores that live longer.
What does it mean to find life on Venus
Brian Resnik
Why is it important to do this kind of exercise, to be so speculative, and to have the idea of life seem unfavorable to life?
Good Caesar
If we think about it and can’t find any possible way to life in the atmosphere indefinitely, that’s bad news for life enthusiasts on Venus. Does that make sense?
Brian Resnik
Yeah Al that sounds pretty crap to me, Looks like BT aint for me either, Looks like BT aint for me either, Looks like BT aint for me either, Looks like BT aint for me either, Looks like BT aint for me either, Looks like BT aint for me either. Does the life you envision fit into the new invention of phosphin gas?
Good Caesar
Yes. Well, it was inspired by the action of phosphine.
Brian Resnik
What does it mean to find life on Venus?
Good Caesar
I think that means that if there is life, it must be very different from the earth, and we can show that it has a unique origin. It will only give us confidence that life can be produced in almost any place. And that would mean that our galaxy would be fascinated with life. All the planets around the other stars. It is a kind of thinking that life can be everywhere.
Brian Resnik
Are you talking about another origin of life being separate on Venus? Or should we find out if life in our solar system has a common origin? Is it something that has sown life on both Earth and Venus?
Good Caesar
We want to get it out.
How to find life on Venus, once and for all
Brian Resnik
Ideally what are the next steps?
Good Caesar
Our ideal step is to send Venus into spacecraft or spacecraft, plural, to Venus, including measuring gases going into the atmosphere and confirming phosphine, finding other gases, searching for complex molecules that could signal life, and perhaps searching for life.
Brian Resnik
Anyone work on it?
Good Caesar
Rocket Lab said about a month ago that they plan to send a rocket to Venus. One phase is two NASA search class missions under competition [meaning they’re just mission proposals and need to be greenlit]. If they were selected for the launch, they would get to go. Russia and India are planning to send something there. And I have begun to lead the study of private funds. That is no mission. It’s just a study of what it will actually take.
Brian Resnik
Can we answer this question – is there life on Venus – in our lifetime?
Good Caesar
I think it is responsible for human life.
Brian Resnik
Does it take a lot of time and money to find life on Mars? Venus has been overlooked in terms of large NASA missions.
Good Caesar
Well, we don’t have infinite resources, sadly, but it would be a pleasure to see more spent on Venus. We haven’t discovered Venus in a very long time. U.S. You have to be careful when you go to Venus at the last moment. [It was the Magellan mission that launched in 1989.]
Brian Resnik
What would you like people to think about and focus on?
Good Caesar
Our solar system, our galaxy, our universe is full of mysteries. We want to solve them, but some are unfinished and they have left us long. So hopefully that won’t be the case here.
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