This seems really optimistic.

“Our findings suggest that when the atmosphere is bathed in sunlight the phosphine is destroyed,” Clements said. “All that we can say is that phosphine is there. We don’t know what’s producing it. It may be chemistry that we don’t understand. Or possibly life.”

Either way, the discovery of the source or mechanism should prove highly illuminating to the study of exobiology. Pretty exciting, imo.

Indeed,

“If they really confirm phosphine and ammonia robustly it raises the chances of biological origin. The natural next thing will be new people will look at it and give support or counter-arguments. The story will be resolved by more data.”

He added: “All of this is grounds for optimism. If they can demonstrate the signals are there, good for them.”

Makes me think the Soviets may have been correct in their obsession over Venus, if only by sheer luck.

Venus needs more attention. Mars is boring. Luna is boring. Venus might have some action.

And what about Europa?

Europa is orbiting Jupiter.

Jupiter puts out a lot of radiation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40978670

For sure, Venus needs exploration. I'd like to see an orbiting station with a 10 year mission to explore the Venusian atmosphere via drones or other methods.

Any Europan life would be in its oceans, which are more than adequately shielded from radiation by a miles-thick layer of ice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_(moon)#Subsurface_ocean

Venus definitely needs more attention but regarding outer solar system, my money is on Enceladus being the most interesting one

Enceladus is the new Europa!

And Enceladus doesn't have a no trespassing sign.

Mars is doable. Luna is convenient. Venus is pure acid under ridiculous pressure that melts any probe in minutes. Europa is too far for anything serious. Enceladus is even further away.

>Venus is pure acid under ridiculous pressure that melts any probe in minutes.

Only at the surface.

A balloon inflated at 1 bar would float around quite nicely in the venusian atmosphere.

It's an interesting concept to be sure, but is it technically feasible to make it reliable enough? The transition from orbital velocity, to atmospheric entry and blimp deployment sounds like it would involve significant stresses, and that's after being in space for half a year to even get there. One small micrometeorite and you have a leaky envelope and the mission is over.

I think there was a proposal for a solar powered winged probe which although less cool, would be probably more likely to succeed.

Some of the earlier Mars rovers used inflatable balloons to cushion the landing. They bounced around for dozens of meters on rocks without popping. Not an expert by any means, but would think it should be possible to inflate a gas bag at a certain altitude, after dumping the thermal shield and using a parachute to slow down.

A powered-flight probe would be interesting in that it could be more easily directed to specific areas and have the ability to stay over a given area. A balloon would likely not be as controllable.

But would be happy with any Venus mission, even a low altitude orbiter would be cool.

We had a false alarm about Venusian phosphine (as the article mentions) a few years back. It would be very exciting to get these tentative detections confirmed.

There is a lot of microbial life on Earth living in clouds, almost all of it uncharacterized. Microbes have been found living high up into the stratosphere. At the very least, a search for life in the clouds of Venus would prompt us to learn more about this fascinating ecosystem here at home.

Review article on terrestrial life in the stratosphere for those interested: https://www.mdpi.com/1467-3045/38/1/8

Does microbial life "live" there, or is it deposited there by other means?

Both. Some stuff its thought to be an evolved dispersal strategy.

I believe the question of whether there's life that's entirely confined to clouds is open.

Doesn’t make much evolutionary sense on Earth where the high atmosphere is one of the least hospitable places to be. Makes more sense on Venus, where the high atmosphere is the least hellish place one can be.

We can, in the meantime, investigate strategies for collecting our own cloud-dwellers so we can build a probe that does the same on Venus while it descends a little through the atmosphere before launching back a sample recovery capsule.

Heat shield, parachute, balloon, stay for a couple hours collecting samples of the atmosphere, filtering particulates, making nice movies, and so on, then pop the balloon right before launching the return vehicle?

It’s not unreasonable to have microbial life floating around our atmosphere when you consider the fact that there is microbial life deep in the trenches of the ocean

Here’s an annoying question: how would one play the discovery of Venusian life into personal gain? I’m thinking “startup/invest in space” as a starting point, but surely there’s a more fun/rediculous way.

Let’s assume that these signals are indeed based in life, and that that life is mostly boring to laymen — some type of bacteria or lava tube denizen with minimal complexity, say

That's what these researchers are doing. There's vanishingly little possibility of life on Venus; they're fishing for research funds in leu of proposing kinetic mechanisms for the phosphine.

B a bullshitter like https://astronomy.fas.harvard.edu/people/avi-loeb

Its the right question to ask: speculation breeds innovation and nothing else has motivated humans to bother

the merely curious get nowhere, the financially incentivized risk takers with asymmetric upside have a selective evolution of failures and successes towards a couple that find an edge

Maybe get started by speculating in real estate and mineral (gas?) rights. Don’t forget some sort of platform for managing space start up company HR training video sharing across different planetary time codes. It couldn’t hurt to try to patent whatever atmospheric components are on Venus just to establish some claim to ownership. Oh and interstellar crypto - duh.

Found a new religion based on transpermia. Discovery of life on another planet would shake things up a little in the theology department.

Not really. I think most religions don't have an issue with the premise of alien life. They would simply fold it into their existing theology, as they have every new paradigm-shifting discovery about reality. Even the Catholic Church's stance is that if aliens exist, they're just another part of God's design.

And there are already plenty of cults and religions that incorporate aliens (cough Scientology cough.) It's going to be difficult to compete against Nordics and Greys and hyperdimensional ascended masters and Xenu with some Venusian moss on a rock.

Weyland-Yutani found a way to exploit alien life and eventually got acquired by Walmart.

Hasn't phosphine been ruled out as sulphur dioxide? (Very similar peak in spectrum)

For sci-fi fans, Stephen Baxter wrote a very cool short story about possible Venetian life. It's part of this collection, and I don't particularly want to spoil anything about it: https://isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?332397

Venusian. Venetian is entirely different: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetian

Whoops, you're right. That would be a whole different flavor of story.

I think it is this paper? For the phosphine detections.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.05160 ("Venus, Phosphine and the Possibility of Life")

Hopefully the Rocket Lab mission can confirm this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_Life_Finder

After 50 years mimicking rocks to remain unnoticed by earth predators, Lieutenant Slimy Greentacle couldn't control its third sphincter for more time and had to fart.