News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Phosphine detected in the atmosphere of Venus – an indica... by wolfram74 on Monday September 14, 2020 @09:15AM (#24469727)
I mean, I wouldn't call support for panspermia /boring/ exactly, but I agree that a wholly separate abiogenesis event would be pretty astounding.
Re:Phosphine detected in the atmosphere of Venus – an indica... by eloff on Monday September 14, 2020 @10:42AM (#24470711)
It would mean primitive life must be everywhere in the universe of it happened twice on adjacent planets independently.

Very, very unlikely outcome.

Re:Phosphine detected in the atmosphere of Venus – an indica... by rsynnott on Monday September 14, 2020 @10:45AM (#24470742)
Well, we don't know how unlikely it is. It increasingly looks like life showed up on earth almost as soon as it was geologically possible for it to show up, which, if true, would indicate either that abiogenesis is pretty easy or that panspermia is a thing.
Re:Phosphine detected in the atmosphere of Venus – an indica... by eloff on Monday September 14, 2020 @12:32PM (#24472082)
It would indicate that, but it's also somewhat expected if we're around to make that observation, which tempers how much information we can take away from it.

However, happening on two adjacent planets would really affect our estimations of the likelihood of abiogenesis.

Re:Phosphine detected in the atmosphere of Venus – an indica... by Jweb_Guru on Monday September 14, 2020 @02:34PM (#24473482)
> It would indicate that, but it's also somewhat expected if we're around to make that observation, which tempers how much information we can take away from it.

Life could have arisen on Earth much later than it did and we could still have been around to see it (or if not us, something like us) so the anthropic principle doesn't apply here. The fact that it arose so early is meaningful.

Re:Phosphine detected in the atmosphere of Venus – an indica... by eloff on Monday September 14, 2020 @05:20PM (#24475283)
It is, but it's also sample size of 1. So yes, it indicates something but the confidence interval is really wide. Still, like you point out it's not meaningless as some people do try to argue.
Re:Phosphine detected in the atmosphere of Venus – an indica... by baja_blast on Tuesday September 15, 2020 @05:36PM (#24486995)
If you take a bayesian approach to the problem it's far more likely that abiogenesis is common. This youtube video does a great job of explaining it: https://youtu.be/iLbbpRYRW5Y
Re:Phosphine detected in the atmosphere of Venus – an indica... by Bud on Monday September 14, 2020 @05:18PM (#24475264)
We have basically zero data to tell us whether this outcome is "unlikely" or not. It could very easily turn out that this outcome is overwhelmingly likely.
Re:Phosphine detected in the atmosphere of Venus – an indica... by beders on Monday September 14, 2020 @01:41PM (#24472870)
No need to invoke panspermia. The inner planets have exchanged material such as rocks since the beginning of their existence.

I would assume it is DNA-based life. It would be a major surprise if it would be RNA-based life or something not resembling our tree of life.