The risk that Venus is or was once host to some form of life, and humans deliberately contaminating Venus with life would obscure any evidence of it. That is a very serious worse-case scenario because non-earth life would be truly invaluable to biology.
It seems like a remote risk to me, but not something to shrug off. Particularly since the usefulness of introducing life to Venus is itself quite remote.
Life in temperatures that melts lead? Oh... or do you mean in the atmosphere?
For all we know the Soviet Vega missions could have introduced airborne microbial life into the high atmosphere. We may have already seeded Venus.
Either. It does seem unlikely, but the truth is we just don't know.
> Life in temperatures that melts lead?
Why not? It'd have to have different chemistry, sure, but even on Earth life exists in some pretty extreme temperature and environment ranges.
Life really starts to struggle above 100 C. I think the most heat tolerant organisms we know of top out around 130 C.
Life that could operate at 500 C is probably not water based at all, which would be very novel and certainly interesting to science.
Re:Momentum is building to explore Venus
by thebooktocome on Thursday June 06, 2019 @01:22PM
(#20116754)
Yes, that is a high risk. We're not exactly lush with accessible Earth-ish planets near the habitable zone.
Re:Momentum is building to explore Venus
by stcredzero on Thursday June 06, 2019 @01:26PM
(#20116800)
Wait, what are the risks? It's not like you're going to make Venus _more_ inhospitable than it already is.
To some weird soul out there on the Internet, this sounds like a challenge.
Worst case scenario is we'd lose some valuable scientific information about Venus in its natural state.