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Aliens on Venus

16 September 2020
Biology

This was also sent in by Venus. William may also have sent in a link. At https://news.sky.com/story/signs-of-alien-life-detected-on-venus-12071625 … signs of alien life detected on Venus. In spite of the headline, this is not true. Alien life has not been detected. What they have found, after actually setting out to search for it, is phosphine molecules – which consist of hydrogen and phosphorous atoms. You might ask why did they set out to look for phosphine. The obvious answer is to read the full article – rather than the offerings of a Sky pundit. The real mystery is – when did the phosphine come from. What made it. The report goes on to claim that dark streaks seen in clouds in the atmosphere of Venus could be colonies of microbes. On the other hand, they may not be. The idea of vermin with an origin in the atmosphere of Venus was one of the themes of Velikovsky in Worlds in Collision. His worlds did not actually collide, the publisher wanted a dramatic book title, but transferences from one atmosphere to the other were seen as a possibility. Velikovsky's vermin were such things as flies, and insects that he did not like. The phosphine is quite different – and so would any microbe (bacteria).

The same story is at www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/09/possible-sign-of-life-on-venu… … possible signs of life on Venus – phosphine gas (which puts it into perspective). Other scientists are, it seems, sceptical that the phosphine observations are real. The signal is faint. The team needed to perform of lot of processing to pull the rabbit out of the hat. However, they do concede the team took the right steps to verify the signal. If it is real, its a cool report, we are told.

Over at https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/09/15/venus-possible-evidence-of-life-i… … possible evidence of life in the clouds of Venus. Astronomers detected signs of a toxic gas that is made by microbes. There is a lot of phosphine – enough that something must be actively producing it. Is this evidence of extra terrestrial life? We are not saying it's life, says astronomer Jane Greaves of Cardiff University. We are saying it's a possible sign of life – 50km above the surface of Venus. A look at the full paper at https://sci-hub.tw/10.1109/ICBBE.2010.5516429 … seems to show that iron that contains phospherous could release phosphine. Lots of comments. Some are trite but others appear to be made by knowledgeable people in the field of science. The occasional troll is flicked away as they seem to be non-science based and easily swatted.

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