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Astronomers ponder possible life adrift in Venus' clouds
[...] Neighboring Venus is a hostile world. Heat trapped by its dense atmosphere makes it hot enough on its surface to melt lead. But a series of space probes – launched between 1962 and 1978 – showed that temperatures and pressures at comparable heights in Venus' atmosphere (25 miles or 40 km up) don't preclude the possibility of microbial life. Now an international team of researchers has laid out a case for the atmosphere of Venus as a possible niche for extraterrestrial microbial life.
The paper [open, DOI: 10.1089/ast.2017.1783] [DX] was published online March 30, 2018, in the peer-reviewed journal Astrobiology.
From the abstract:
The lower cloud layer of Venus (47.5–50.5 km) is an exceptional target for exploration due to the favorable conditions for microbial life, including moderate temperatures and pressures (∼60°C and 1 atm), and the presence of micron-sized sulfuric acid aerosols. Nearly a century after the ultraviolet (UV) contrasts of Venus' cloud layer were discovered with Earth-based photographs, the substances and mechanisms responsible for the changes in Venus' contrasts and albedo are still unknown. While current models include sulfur dioxide and iron chloride as the UV absorbers, the temporal and spatial changes in contrasts, and albedo, between 330 and 500 nm, remain to be fully explained. Within this context, we present a discussion regarding the potential for microorganisms to survive in Venus' lower clouds and contribute to the observed bulk spectra. In this article, we provide an overview of relevant Venus observations, compare the spectral and physical properties of Venus' clouds to terrestrial biological materials, review the potential for an iron- and sulfur-centered metabolism in the clouds, discuss conceivable mechanisms of transport from the surface toward a more habitable zone in the clouds, and identify spectral and biological experiments that could measure the habitability of Venus' clouds and terrestrial analogues. Together, our lines of reasoning suggest that particles in Venus' lower clouds contain sufficient mass balance to harbor microorganisms, water, and solutes, and potentially sufficient biomass to be detected by optical methods. As such, the comparisons presented in this article warrant further investigations into the prospect of biosignatures in Venus' clouds.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 01 2018, @11:57PM
The man abruptly awoke; he was covered in sweat. Something malevolent was in the air, but he couldn't immediately discern its true identity. Then, the answer came to him: Oppression.
The man had been oppressed. It was well-known that all men had the innate ability to sense when they were being oppressed, much like a sixth sense. But this man's ability to sense oppression was especially potent. The injustice in the air was so strong that it was palpable. The man lept out of his bed and sprinted outdoors; he needed to find The Source.
He rapidly scanned his surroundings and spotted something: A woman walking down the sidewalk. He instantly understood what had happened. The woman had casually walked past the man's house as if she owned the place, thereby disrespecting him and his entire life. She was looking down on him. The man's face twisted into something which was the very incarnation of both terror and fury. He then bravely charged forth.
Slam! Slam! Slam! One by one, the woman's teeth broke. The man's heart was filled with justice, and his body was the vehicle out of which it was dispensed. Next, the woman's eyes caved in, rendering her blind. Furthermore, her nose was smashed to the point where her face was almost flat. And what's more, the man was at the brink of orgasm. He shot everything he had into the woman, violating her immensely. After his orgasm, the man thought of something truly amazing, and so he decided to keep the woman - who was barely breathing - alive.
For the next several days, the woman became a mere toy. No, since all women are merely toys, it might be more correct to say that a man had decided to play with the toy. Her screams continued for days on end before she was enveloped by an impenetrable wall of silence. Justice had been wrought.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 02 2018, @01:02AM
Next we will find out the solar wind sends a stream of these things outward that the earth passes through every so often.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 02 2018, @01:52AM (1 child)
The real question is: can you disrupt the bakery industry by baking bread with your own vaginal yeast?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 02 2018, @06:55AM
Be prepared to be "boarded" by the Warrior Amazons of Venus, you weak and sniveling human male! We will harvest your spermatozoa, and fix it, with no participation on your part, you weak and puny alt-right male! And, we will make you pay child-support, we will make you pay the tithe to support leave for new mothers, work-force training but the less privileged, and just to fuck with your sense of human male entitlement, despite the small size of your organs. Oh, for the day that Venusian Men were available, before we had to kill them all because they went Red Pillar on us, and started masturbating uncontrollably. Poor Men. We miss them so. And Human men are such a poor substitute.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 02 2018, @07:09AM
So, a nice planetary astrophysics story posted, and what do we get? Soylentils are a bunch of sick puppies, perhaps even Sad Puppies, alt-right misogynist gay-bashing anti-intellectual Trumps sucking lowlife trailer trash! Begone, you trolls! May all the billy goats you catch be rancid! May the Mightly Buzzard feast upon your entrails with gusto! And more importantly, may you be stuck with the bill for a trillion dollar tax cut, and a trillion dollar deficit budget. Sick, sad puppies, very, very dumb puppies. We are coming to take your guns, with the unexpected violent imposition, the violent imposition of sanity upon the insane. We are everywhere. We do not forget, because, you know, we can think and stuff. And we are coming. Expect us. (Especially the disturbed sniff porn artist. You have already been reported to the FBI, and the FSB, and IntelPro, and the SJWSWS, and the IRS.)