Life on Venus? Just because we found a gas in the atmosphere of Venus that might have come from microbes, does it necessarily mean it was produced by them? It is said on earth that is where the phosphine ALMOST always comes from. Phosphine is the gas we found. Just because it is almost always found being created by microbes on Earth, Venus is certainly not Earth and conditions on that planet are different. There are other sources for phosphine which are geological and we are being told there is too much of the gas on Venus for that to be the cause. So many scientists are jumping on the “this means life” bandwagon before adequate testing can be conducted to find the source, I can’t understand why? Are we so desperate to find alien life, even microbes, we will attest to them being there while disregarding adequate scientific testing? One thing I can’t help but wonder about is even if microbes exist on Venus, are they from the Earth. We sent probes to Venus. Some went into the atmosphere while others landed. In 1967 the Soviets sent Venera 4 to Venus and it entered the atmosphere, it didn’t make it to the ground. More Soviet atmospheric probes followed they were Venera 5 and Venera 6. Venera 7 was sent to Venus and landed in 1970, next was Venera 8 which also landed in 1972. In 1975 Venera 9 and Venera 10 were sent to Venus and landed in 1975. The United States then sent the Pioneer Venus Multiprobe into the atmosphere of Venus. It consisted of four probes and one made it to the surface in 1978. The Soviets then sent Venera 11 and Venera 12 to Venus and each one launched a lander in 1978. Soviets then sent Venera 13 and Venera 14 which contained landers, which landed in 1982. Next came Venera 13 and Venera 14. Each had a lander which landed in 1983. In 1985 the Soviets sent the Vega 1 and Vega 2 missions. Vega 1 released a descent craft and balloon as did Vega 2. The United States then did a lot or flybys and some orbiters but didn’t enter the atmosphere. The Soviets now the Russians were the masters of landing on Venus. With all this Russian activity on Venus, it would certainly seem possible they contaminated the planet with microbes from Earth. Same can be said for the Pioneer Venus Multiprobe from us. When it comes to sterilizing probes and landers it is a very hard thing to do and indeed some scientists claim you can never get one hundred percent sterilization. We know NASA forgot to sterilize a drill on a rover before sending it to Mars, so imagine being a Soviet scientist in the old days with your bosses demanding you get everything off on time. I would imagine some shortcuts were taken. The search for life on other planets is accelerating and it seems more countries are giving more assets to that search. One of the problems we face are our instruments insufficient and not technologically advanced enough for the job? There could be plenty of advanced races out there but the signals and such they give off may be to advanced for us to detect. Instead of looking for signs of life by certain chemicals in the atmosphere which are from what we consider an industrialized society, most of these races may have moved beyond all of that and leave no trail for us to follow. They may have advanced so much more than we have, we might not be able to spot them using our current methods. Maybe even if we do find microbes there could be other life on the same world we can’t detect. We don’t even know if we could always tell if something is alive. We have created definitions for what we consider life to be. The interesting thing is there is no consensus regarding the definition of life. An interesting scientific chart states to be alive you need the following conditions: Growth, Response, Cells, Metabolism, Homeostasis, and Heredity. Under conditions different from earth maybe only some or even none of these conditions might exist. There have been reports by cosmonauts they saw creatures in space which seemed to be composed of plasma. Could a being be composed of energy of some type? We used to think to live you needed oxygen then we found microbes which were still living after being sealed in stone for hundreds of thousands of years. Science is a process of learning and sometimes learning from mistakes. Are there other places which look more promising for life than Venus in our solar system? Aside from the controversial ones which some have seen what they call ruins on Mars and our moon, there are some moons in our solar system that scientists are holding out hope for based on the fact water on earth contains life and they have water. I look at things this way, land on earth contains life, does this mean where there is land there is life? No of course not. I believe just because water exists on other bodies in the solar system this is no guarantee of life by any means. There is an idea which has become quite popular lately that life comes from asteroids and meteorites that deposit the building blocks of life throughout the solar system. If this is true do certain conditions have to exist before life is created and are these conditions what we believe they are? We believe before life can take hold the body it is planted on must be within a certain range of Earth like conditions and if they are out of that range, life probably will not flourish. What do we really base this on, do we have any experience at all with life on other worlds? Unfortunately, the answer is no. It is hard to assess what conditions life needs to exist when the only place we know for sure life exists is Earth. This means every condition we put up for life to exist is strictly speculative. We have no comparison available yet. When we find a few planets or moons with life and examine the conditions that exist, hopefully we will have a better idea of what is needed for life to exist. Remember we got surprised to find life existing in the oceans of earth which lived near vents with boiling water and existed without being harmed from the high temperatures. This just proves scientists might be in for a big surprise when they do finally find life.
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