Re:Signs of Life discovered on Venus and atmosphere
by YeGoblynQueenne on Tuesday September 15, 2020 @05:03AM
(#24479234)
Well, the cat is out of the bag now, as they say, and there was an announcement by the Royal Society, no less. If you're right, there's going to be some very poignant egg on some very prominent faces.
Honestly, I have no ability to judge this way or that in this thing. It's completely outside my expertise. Also, I have no idea of how common it is for people to make unsubstantiated claims in astronomy (or is it astrobiology in this case?). In my field, AI, it's common for people to use big words and say big things they can't really back up with anything concrete. I hope that's not the way it is in astronomy. I'm a little concerned by your turn of phrase "the pathological nature of the science community today". If this announcement turns out to be a dud it might make some damage, I guess.
Re:Signs of Life discovered on Venus and atmosphere
by throwaway316943 on Tuesday September 15, 2020 @07:28AM
(#24479997)
My question would be if the phosphine is being constantly produced from phosphate minerals does that mean that Venus at one point had an oxidizing atmosphere that produced those phosphates?
People need to think less about people's university credentials when they assess credibility. Especially at places like MIT which burn through them like kindling.
Clara is a postdoc@MIT, and an expert in the _spectral lines_ of phosphine. The paper she refers to about known abiotic routes is really cursory and by no means exhaustively searches for routes to phosphine (https://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018....). It considers a handful of reactions for a compound which has millions of chemical equilibria. The most obvious omission is hydrogen sulfide which is all over venus.