WEBVTT - From the Vault: Airships Over Venus 0:00:05.720 --> 0:00:07.920 Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. This 0:00:07.960 --> 0:00:11.200 is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. 0:00:11.280 --> 0:00:14.240 Time for a Vault episode. This one originally aired December 0:00:14.280 --> 0:00:18.400 one and it was called Airships over Venus. I think 0:00:18.400 --> 0:00:20.920 it was sort of a grab bag of interesting stuff 0:00:20.960 --> 0:00:24.320 we've been reading about the clouds of Venus. Yeah, different 0:00:24.320 --> 0:00:29.680 proposed and um and in some cases executed missions to Venus. 0:00:29.920 --> 0:00:32.120 So it's pretty fun, especially if you're into Venus, and 0:00:32.159 --> 0:00:35.599 you should, because Venus is a really interesting planet. Uh, 0:00:35.640 --> 0:00:41.120 then this is a great episode for you. Welcome to 0:00:41.159 --> 0:00:44.479 Stuff to Blow your Mind, production of My Heart Radio. 0:00:50.479 --> 0:00:52.320 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My 0:00:52.400 --> 0:00:56.240 name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And hey, Robin, 0:00:56.360 --> 0:00:58.240 has been a while since we checked in on the 0:00:58.280 --> 0:01:00.680 air Frier Planet. So what do you say we talked 0:01:00.680 --> 0:01:04.080 about Venus today. Yeah, I think it is high time 0:01:04.120 --> 0:01:06.440 that we return to Venus. Uh. For for a few 0:01:06.480 --> 0:01:09.360 different reasons. First of all, even though we have covered 0:01:09.480 --> 0:01:13.240 Venus in the past, there's just so much weird and 0:01:13.280 --> 0:01:17.520 wonderful stuff to discuss about the planet that we had 0:01:17.560 --> 0:01:21.280 to return. Also, in the past, year, we've had some 0:01:22.040 --> 0:01:29.360 developments concerning Venus, and also there's a particular plan of 0:01:29.520 --> 0:01:31.679 a project in the in the works that I'd like 0:01:31.680 --> 0:01:34.640 to discuss in more detail. Really, just like Venus is 0:01:34.680 --> 0:01:38.840 just such a wild and wonderful planet, and our attempts 0:01:38.840 --> 0:01:41.520 to understand how we might might be able to further 0:01:41.600 --> 0:01:44.880 explore it, and also our history of exploring it is 0:01:44.920 --> 0:01:47.280 just fascinating. So we just had to return. Well, you 0:01:47.360 --> 0:01:49.400 know what we always say here with reference to Venus, 0:01:49.640 --> 0:01:51.760 I am the doorway. We are both the doorway. So 0:01:51.840 --> 0:01:54.960 let's open ourselves and and walk through into some thoughts 0:01:54.960 --> 0:01:58.840 about the second planet. Yeah, nice, Stephen King reference there 0:01:59.680 --> 0:02:02.840 are right. So, I guess one of the things with Venus, 0:02:02.880 --> 0:02:05.120 you know, that I've been thinking about recently is like 0:02:05.160 --> 0:02:07.600 the idea of of terra firma, you know, of the 0:02:07.640 --> 0:02:10.880 solid ground beneath our feet. And when I think about this, 0:02:10.919 --> 0:02:12.800 iten find it a bit weird, because, on one hand, 0:02:13.040 --> 0:02:17.320 the idea of firm earth beneath us is truly reassuring, 0:02:17.320 --> 0:02:20.320 and knowing that the Earth is round only makes it 0:02:20.520 --> 0:02:22.840 more so, at least to my mind, because in some 0:02:22.919 --> 0:02:25.200 respects it means that it's Earth all the way down 0:02:25.320 --> 0:02:27.560 underneath this. You know, like the Earth might not be 0:02:27.600 --> 0:02:29.800 the center of the universe or even the Solar System, 0:02:29.880 --> 0:02:32.920 but the center of the Earth is still a center, 0:02:32.960 --> 0:02:35.640 you know what I mean. Yeah, it can't. The Earth 0:02:35.680 --> 0:02:39.799 can't like collapse and fall through into a space beneath itself, 0:02:39.880 --> 0:02:43.120 because being a sphere, there is no space beneath it. 0:02:43.200 --> 0:02:46.880 You just you go down until you hit the center. Yeah. 0:02:47.000 --> 0:02:49.560 Now the sky, of course, and if you're in the sky, 0:02:49.720 --> 0:02:51.680 that that's not terra firma. And the same goes for 0:02:51.720 --> 0:02:54.360 the surface of the ocean. Despite the fact that the 0:02:54.400 --> 0:02:57.640 ocean reminds us that terra firma isn't all it's cracked 0:02:57.680 --> 0:03:00.600 up to be. Much of of of Earth is crushed 0:03:00.639 --> 0:03:04.320 beneath an ocean, hidden in darkness, and other proportions are 0:03:04.360 --> 0:03:07.120 covered in ice or propelled so far up into the 0:03:07.120 --> 0:03:10.240 atmosphere by mountain peaks that it pushes beyond what is 0:03:10.280 --> 0:03:14.320 a reasonable environment for humans. Sure, and then when we 0:03:14.360 --> 0:03:18.520 think of other worlds, it gets even weirder. Right, gas giants, 0:03:18.680 --> 0:03:22.000 uh boast no terra firma at all. And then there's 0:03:22.080 --> 0:03:25.880 venus on venus terra firma or venus firma more accurately 0:03:26.160 --> 0:03:29.840 would be a high pressure, high temperature hellscape, but higher 0:03:29.880 --> 0:03:32.640 up in its atmosphere or you know, in or above 0:03:32.680 --> 0:03:36.240 the clouds of Venus. This is the region, ironically, that 0:03:36.360 --> 0:03:40.840 we might find metaphorical Terra firma on the planet that 0:03:41.000 --> 0:03:45.040 is Terra's strange sibling. M hmm, interesting thought. Okay, so 0:03:45.080 --> 0:03:48.680 we're gonna be talking about the atmosphere of Venus today. Uh, now, 0:03:48.960 --> 0:03:51.240 this is this is a subject that's not entirely new 0:03:51.320 --> 0:03:54.600 to us. We've visited this in uh some explorations before. 0:03:54.640 --> 0:03:56.600 We did one episode a couple of years ago about 0:03:56.680 --> 0:03:59.560 the possibility of life on Venus where we discussed the 0:03:59.720 --> 0:04:03.440 pros and cons and various scientific speculation about what form 0:04:03.480 --> 0:04:06.320 that could take if it were to exist. And one 0:04:06.320 --> 0:04:08.680 of the things that kept coming up there was about 0:04:08.760 --> 0:04:12.000 the difference between the surface of Venus and the atmosphere 0:04:12.000 --> 0:04:15.400 of Venus um. And so, well, maybe we should just 0:04:15.400 --> 0:04:17.919 do a brief refresher on on Venus itself. Tell me 0:04:17.960 --> 0:04:20.160 about the planet, like I'm going on a blind date 0:04:20.200 --> 0:04:22.200 with Venus? What what what have you got to sell 0:04:22.240 --> 0:04:25.560 me on this? Alright, So, Venus is the second planet 0:04:25.600 --> 0:04:27.960 from the Sun, and it's just slightly smaller than Earth 0:04:28.480 --> 0:04:31.159 size and surface area is quite similar to our own world, 0:04:31.160 --> 0:04:32.640 and in many ways it can be seen as an 0:04:32.680 --> 0:04:36.520 alternative Earth. The two planets may have had very similar origins, 0:04:36.560 --> 0:04:40.000 but they parted ways long ago. Venus may have once 0:04:40.040 --> 0:04:43.440 had oceans, and may have once or even still we'll 0:04:43.480 --> 0:04:46.720 get into this supported life forms. But today it's this 0:04:46.960 --> 0:04:51.520 dully lit, high pressure world with volcanic mountains and ashen 0:04:51.680 --> 0:04:55.479 plains are runaway. Greenhouse effect boiled away the oceans long 0:04:55.520 --> 0:04:58.479 ago and they were lost to space. There are no 0:04:58.560 --> 0:05:01.000 plate tectonics that we know off on Venus and its 0:05:01.040 --> 0:05:04.920 volcanoes to spring up wherever instead of emerging along plate 0:05:05.000 --> 0:05:08.480 borders as they do on Earth. The high pressure, high 0:05:08.520 --> 0:05:12.719 temperature atmosphere is more than nine carbon dioxide and three 0:05:12.720 --> 0:05:16.360 point five percent molecular nitrogen, with trace amounts of other gases. 0:05:16.760 --> 0:05:18.720 If you're standing on the surface of Venus, it would 0:05:18.720 --> 0:05:22.080 be roughly ninety times the pressure of sea level on Earth. 0:05:22.880 --> 0:05:25.240 Um of course, it's going to vary depending on altitude, 0:05:25.240 --> 0:05:28.640 but that's sort of the ballpark. The clouds are often 0:05:28.640 --> 0:05:32.320 described as being concentrated sulfuric acid, or more specifically sulfur 0:05:32.360 --> 0:05:36.120 dioxide with drops of sulfuric acid within it. Yes, that 0:05:36.120 --> 0:05:38.400 that is what the mist is, So it's a carbon 0:05:38.400 --> 0:05:42.200 dioxide atmosphere. But the droplets that are suspended to make 0:05:42.200 --> 0:05:47.840 the clouds sulfuric acid have fun Batman. So when we 0:05:47.839 --> 0:05:49.840 we think about Venus, one of the cool things that 0:05:49.880 --> 0:05:52.040 we've touched on this before is that when we think 0:05:52.040 --> 0:05:55.279 about life on Venus, either life that could still reside 0:05:55.320 --> 0:05:58.680 there now, native life, or the possibility which we'll get 0:05:58.680 --> 0:06:01.760 into later in the episode, of of its sustaining our 0:06:01.800 --> 0:06:04.600 life in one way or another, we end up not 0:06:04.640 --> 0:06:09.160 looking to that hell hellish surface, to the actual Venus firma. Now. 0:06:09.200 --> 0:06:12.400 Instead we look to the clouds above, or even the 0:06:12.440 --> 0:06:15.599 space a little above the clouds. Yes, and this brings 0:06:15.680 --> 0:06:17.840 us to one of the main things that we wanted 0:06:17.880 --> 0:06:22.120 to talk about today, which was that there was what 0:06:22.279 --> 0:06:26.599 looks like some really major news on the subject of 0:06:26.680 --> 0:06:29.400 possible life on Venus just a couple of months ago. 0:06:29.880 --> 0:06:31.640 So the story turned out to be one of those 0:06:31.640 --> 0:06:34.800 cases of possible scientific whiplash. What we'll get into the 0:06:34.839 --> 0:06:38.080 complications as we move on, but but let's just take 0:06:38.120 --> 0:06:41.599 a look. If you're ready, let's do it. Okay, So 0:06:42.279 --> 0:06:44.920 for obvious reasons, the reasons we've just been talking about, 0:06:44.960 --> 0:06:48.279 the surface of Venus is just clearly sterile. There is 0:06:48.360 --> 0:06:50.479 no way you would expect to find any kind of 0:06:50.560 --> 0:06:54.440 organized life form living at I was gonna say sea level, 0:06:54.480 --> 0:06:57.279 not sea level. The surface level of Venus. You know, again, 0:06:57.480 --> 0:07:00.960 temperatures over nine degrees fair and it somewhere between like 0:07:01.000 --> 0:07:04.839 four hundred and five hundred degrees celsius. Extreme pressure, like 0:07:04.880 --> 0:07:07.000 you just had something like ninety or a hundred times 0:07:07.040 --> 0:07:10.040 the atmospheric pressure at sea level on Earth. It's sort 0:07:10.040 --> 0:07:13.000 of equivalent to going like, you know, hundreds of meters 0:07:13.040 --> 0:07:17.800 down under the water, very very high pressure. Um. It 0:07:17.920 --> 0:07:21.520 is difficult to imagine under these conditions that any sort 0:07:21.520 --> 0:07:25.960 of organized, self replicating structures would be able to survive, 0:07:26.080 --> 0:07:27.840 and there are a few reasons for that. One thing 0:07:27.960 --> 0:07:31.920 is that you know, like, uh, information containing molecules tend 0:07:31.920 --> 0:07:35.440 to be pretty fragile, and they would be probably disrupted 0:07:35.480 --> 0:07:38.960 by heat of that kind. Also, you can't have water there, 0:07:39.000 --> 0:07:41.400 and it's hard for us to imagine what a life 0:07:41.400 --> 0:07:44.600 form that did not incorporate water would look like because 0:07:44.640 --> 0:07:47.600 water is a very water is the necessary solvent that 0:07:47.640 --> 0:07:51.080 makes the existence of cells possible, allows it allows the 0:07:51.120 --> 0:07:56.280 transportation of different types of nutrients and molecules across membranes 0:07:56.440 --> 0:07:59.400 and stuff like that. Like you can't have life as 0:07:59.400 --> 0:08:01.640 we know it with water, and you can't have water 0:08:01.720 --> 0:08:04.240 on the surface of Venus. But as we've discussed on 0:08:04.280 --> 0:08:06.760 the show before, it is not impossible to imagine that 0:08:06.880 --> 0:08:10.200 life could exist higher up in the atmosphere of Venus. 0:08:10.240 --> 0:08:13.880 So this would be micro organisms floating in the clouds 0:08:13.960 --> 0:08:18.080 where at higher altitudes the climate is relatively temperate, And 0:08:18.120 --> 0:08:21.120 this would not even be without precedent and known biology. 0:08:21.160 --> 0:08:23.800 We're not talking about some kind of organism that is 0:08:23.960 --> 0:08:28.280 unimaginable from from the perspective of Earth life, because here 0:08:28.320 --> 0:08:33.599 on Earth there are bacteria such as a Pseudomonas syringy 0:08:33.640 --> 0:08:36.520 that are thought to be present at higher altitudes floating 0:08:36.559 --> 0:08:41.000 within clouds. I've even read about interesting speculation that these 0:08:41.080 --> 0:08:45.280 bacteria floating in the clouds could affect weather patterns by 0:08:45.360 --> 0:08:50.240 serving as ice nucleation points that lead to precipitation. To 0:08:50.320 --> 0:08:52.200 think about that, like, what if the weather is being 0:08:52.240 --> 0:08:56.480 affected by germs up in the sky, and the idea 0:08:56.559 --> 0:08:59.080 of microbes floating in the clouds of Venus would even 0:08:59.120 --> 0:09:03.520 explain if it were true some observed features of Venus 0:09:03.600 --> 0:09:06.720 that that we don't fully know how to explain otherwise. Uh. 0:09:06.840 --> 0:09:10.240 David Grinspoons has written about this, and he's a former 0:09:10.360 --> 0:09:12.320 show guest. We we've talked to him a little bit 0:09:12.360 --> 0:09:15.040 about the signs of life on Venus that that pre 0:09:15.200 --> 0:09:18.560 date the paper that was published this year, things like 0:09:18.679 --> 0:09:22.400 recurring patterns of darkening observed in the clouds. Do you 0:09:22.480 --> 0:09:25.080 remember any of the other specifics he gets into about that. 0:09:25.600 --> 0:09:27.000 I mean that that's one of the big one. That's 0:09:27.000 --> 0:09:28.880 one of the ones we ended up focusing on. Yeah, 0:09:28.920 --> 0:09:31.240 this is this idea that it it almost thinks makes 0:09:31.240 --> 0:09:33.200 you think about oh, some sort of uh, you know, 0:09:33.880 --> 0:09:38.080 plankton type life form thriving in the in the atmosphere there, 0:09:38.240 --> 0:09:43.040 like atmospheric algal blooms or something. Yeah. Um. But the 0:09:43.080 --> 0:09:45.920 other thing is that there is evidence that Venus was 0:09:46.200 --> 0:09:49.200 quite possibly once more hospitable than it is now. You 0:09:49.240 --> 0:09:52.440 mentioned this earlier, the possibility of surface water. Now there 0:09:52.520 --> 0:09:55.560 is definitely not surface water on Venus right now would 0:09:55.600 --> 0:09:59.559 instantly boil, but the evidence makes it look highly plausible 0:09:59.600 --> 0:10:02.360 that v this once had liquid water at its surface. 0:10:02.440 --> 0:10:05.880 Even oceans, maybe as recently as a billion years ago 0:10:06.040 --> 0:10:09.080 or so. That's not ah, I believe that's not a 0:10:09.200 --> 0:10:13.400 known fact, but it seems highly plausible. So if there 0:10:13.480 --> 0:10:17.640 once was a full biosphere on Venus that was eventually 0:10:17.640 --> 0:10:20.679 wiped out at the surface level by the runaway greenhouse effect, 0:10:21.280 --> 0:10:25.040 it's possible that the last remnant of that archaic biological 0:10:25.080 --> 0:10:29.920 world is microorganisms that can live their whole lives floating 0:10:29.960 --> 0:10:33.439 in the clouds. Though it's worth noting that these clouds 0:10:33.480 --> 0:10:37.800 again consist primarily of suspended droplets of sulfuric acid, so 0:10:37.840 --> 0:10:43.880 these would need to be special kinds of extremophile type organisms. Now, 0:10:43.880 --> 0:10:47.000 while these possibilities are very cool, this has always been 0:10:47.040 --> 0:10:50.680 totally speculative right there. There has never been any actual, direct, 0:10:50.840 --> 0:10:55.000 strong evidence for the presence of life on Venus. There has. 0:10:54.840 --> 0:10:58.840 It's just been that we've observed things that could be 0:10:59.280 --> 0:11:03.040 consistent with the presence of life in interesting and surprising ways. 0:11:03.880 --> 0:11:06.320 That is their space for life as we know it, 0:11:06.920 --> 0:11:10.560 within what we know of Venus. Yeah, and the answer is, well, 0:11:10.679 --> 0:11:13.360 maybe more space than you might think. That we didn't 0:11:13.400 --> 0:11:15.640 have direct evidence that would say it looks like there 0:11:15.760 --> 0:11:19.520 is life. That picture got a little bit more complicated 0:11:19.559 --> 0:11:23.480 in September of this year. Uh, now, there's gonna be 0:11:23.640 --> 0:11:27.360 a very big caveat coming with this paper. But first 0:11:27.440 --> 0:11:30.160 I just want to present the evidence that we that 0:11:30.240 --> 0:11:33.400 emerged back in September. And so there was a paper 0:11:33.480 --> 0:11:38.280 published in Nature Astronomy in September twenty by Jane S. Grieves, 0:11:38.320 --> 0:11:43.800 Anita MS Richards, William Baines, Paul by Rimmer, Hideosagawa, David L. Clemens, 0:11:43.920 --> 0:11:48.120 and Sarah Seeger at All called Phosphine Gas in the 0:11:48.120 --> 0:11:53.040 Cloud Decks of Venus. Now, this paper deals with uh 0:11:53.240 --> 0:11:56.760 analysis of spectral data collected through a couple of telescopes. 0:11:56.800 --> 0:12:00.840 So the lead author, Jane Grieves of card University and 0:12:00.880 --> 0:12:05.160 colleagues collected data through two major telescopes, the James Clerk 0:12:05.200 --> 0:12:10.040 Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array 0:12:10.160 --> 0:12:13.719 in Chile. And what the study reported was that they 0:12:13.720 --> 0:12:17.240 had used spectral analysis of Venus to find something really 0:12:17.280 --> 0:12:21.400 intriguing about the gas is present in the atmosphere. And 0:12:21.440 --> 0:12:25.440 what they found was at an altitude of roughly fifty 0:12:25.520 --> 0:12:27.880 kilometers above the surface. I think it was like fifty 0:12:27.880 --> 0:12:31.600 five kilometers in a concentration of about twenty parts per 0:12:31.640 --> 0:12:36.800 billion a gas called phosphene or pH three. That's one 0:12:36.880 --> 0:12:41.000 phosphorus atom with three hydrogen atoms. Now, the chemistry nerds 0:12:41.000 --> 0:12:44.160 out there, or the breaking bad nerds out there will 0:12:44.240 --> 0:12:50.160 alike know that phosphine is just nasty, highly flammable, extremely 0:12:50.280 --> 0:12:54.560 toxic gas. Uh. It's often found in conjunction with traces 0:12:54.559 --> 0:12:57.679 of die phosphine or P to H four, which makes 0:12:57.720 --> 0:13:01.520 it pyrophoric, so fond of all atomatically catching fire upon 0:13:01.600 --> 0:13:06.920 exposure to air at room temperature, lovely um. It is 0:13:06.960 --> 0:13:09.360 sometimes a product of human industry, for example in the 0:13:09.440 --> 0:13:14.720 manufacture of semiconductors, or also in the manufacture of methamphetamine. Now, 0:13:14.760 --> 0:13:17.480 no one is alleging that there are meth labs on Venus, 0:13:17.520 --> 0:13:21.679 but whatever the cause, this was a much higher level 0:13:21.720 --> 0:13:24.840 of phosphine gas than you would expect to find. At 0:13:24.840 --> 0:13:28.040 about twenty parts per billion, this is something like three 0:13:28.200 --> 0:13:31.160 orders of magnitude more phosphine than you would find in 0:13:31.280 --> 0:13:35.760 Earth's atmosphere. Now, why is it interesting to find phosphine 0:13:35.760 --> 0:13:39.480 at that concentration. You know, different planets have gases in 0:13:39.480 --> 0:13:43.160 their atmosphere at different levels. You know, Venus has much 0:13:43.200 --> 0:13:46.320 more carbon dioxide and its atmosphere than Earth does. So, 0:13:46.320 --> 0:13:48.720 so what what's the deal with phosphine Why would that 0:13:48.760 --> 0:13:53.000 catch our attention? Well, in short, the presence of high 0:13:53.120 --> 0:13:58.040 levels of phosphine gas represent a dis equilibrium. Phosphine gas 0:13:58.240 --> 0:14:02.400 is something that's kind of inherently unstable and digestible by 0:14:02.400 --> 0:14:05.640 physical processes, you know, exposure to ultra violet light and 0:14:05.720 --> 0:14:09.840 chemical reactions with other things. Phosphine gas should just naturally 0:14:09.920 --> 0:14:14.720 sort of get eliminated from atmospheres. And this ties in 0:14:14.720 --> 0:14:16.360 with something we talked about in one of our recent 0:14:16.679 --> 0:14:19.560 Anthology of Horror episodes, when we were talking about looking 0:14:19.600 --> 0:14:23.160 for signatures of a shadow biosphere on Earth. Some of 0:14:23.200 --> 0:14:26.240 the researchers there, for example, I think the planetary scientist 0:14:26.360 --> 0:14:29.560 or I can't remember she's a planetary scientist or an astronomer, 0:14:29.560 --> 0:14:33.040 but the scientist Caroline Porko, I was talking about how 0:14:33.280 --> 0:14:36.080 if you were looking for signs of a shadow biosphere, 0:14:36.440 --> 0:14:40.600 you would want to find environments that are at a disequilibrium, 0:14:40.960 --> 0:14:44.320 things that are out of whack with like quantities of 0:14:44.440 --> 0:14:47.880 chemicals that don't seem like they would just naturally settle 0:14:47.960 --> 0:14:50.320 at that level. And I was trying to come up 0:14:50.320 --> 0:14:53.800 with a good analogy to explain why it's weird. Defined 0:14:53.920 --> 0:14:57.080 phosphine like this on on venus. And so here's what 0:14:57.120 --> 0:14:59.359 I came up with. I hope this is somewhat appropriate. 0:14:59.600 --> 0:15:02.600 Imagine and you live in Florida, and you go out 0:15:02.640 --> 0:15:04.720 for a walk on a hot summer day in July. 0:15:04.960 --> 0:15:09.760 It's degrees out a hundred percent humidity, and you're walking 0:15:09.800 --> 0:15:12.160 your dog along the sidewalk, and you notice that every 0:15:12.240 --> 0:15:15.240 twenty feet or so down the sidewalk there's just a 0:15:15.280 --> 0:15:19.080 big old hunk of ice sitting on the pavement. All right, Well, 0:15:19.080 --> 0:15:24.200 that that would be suspect, I think, yeah, exactly, Florida 0:15:24.280 --> 0:15:27.760 weird but weird. Right, Yeah, the ice could be the 0:15:27.760 --> 0:15:30.360 result of a Florida man. That that would explain it. 0:15:30.360 --> 0:15:33.400 It would not make a lot of sense, even though 0:15:33.480 --> 0:15:36.720 not ice does form naturally in the environment on Earth, 0:15:37.160 --> 0:15:40.200 it would not make sense given the conditions outside in 0:15:40.240 --> 0:15:44.200 this Florida neighborhood to assume, oh, this is a chunk 0:15:44.240 --> 0:15:46.760 of polar ice that happens to be left over from 0:15:46.800 --> 0:15:50.280 the last glacial maximum period, right, because like the the 0:15:50.400 --> 0:15:55.160 environmental conditions would have already like digested and recycled that ice. 0:15:55.240 --> 0:15:58.840 The ice is unstable enough given the surrounding conditions that 0:15:58.840 --> 0:16:01.840 you wouldn't expect it to be there from a previous 0:16:01.880 --> 0:16:05.000 freeze over right. It Also, it wouldn't even make sense 0:16:05.000 --> 0:16:08.000 to say, well, it hailed one time last winter, so 0:16:08.040 --> 0:16:11.040 the ice is just sitting here left over from that. No, 0:16:11.360 --> 0:16:14.880 it would mean somebody he's going around spilling ice all 0:16:14.920 --> 0:16:17.360 over the place, or or leaving ice on purpose on 0:16:17.400 --> 0:16:20.280 the sidewalk. Yeah, there's something that there's gotta be some 0:16:20.360 --> 0:16:24.120 kind of anomalous process that's putting the ice there. And 0:16:24.200 --> 0:16:27.520 so back to Venus, if phosphine gas were truly present 0:16:27.560 --> 0:16:30.480 at something like twenty parts per billion, you would have 0:16:30.520 --> 0:16:34.440 to assume that something was continuously putting that phosphine there. 0:16:35.400 --> 0:16:39.280 And while it's possible the explanation was some geochemical or 0:16:39.280 --> 0:16:43.800 photochemical process that we don't understand yet, a very interesting 0:16:43.880 --> 0:16:49.600 candidate explanation was microbial life, because here on Earth, phosphine 0:16:49.880 --> 0:16:52.640 is when it's not made by humans, it is almost 0:16:52.720 --> 0:16:58.280 always the byproduct of microbial life, especially anaerobic microbial life. 0:16:58.600 --> 0:17:00.880 In fact, if you go way back to you know, 0:17:00.920 --> 0:17:02.760 I don't remember how many years ago this is now 0:17:03.280 --> 0:17:06.000 like five or six years ago, we did some Halloween 0:17:06.040 --> 0:17:09.080 episodes on the Will of the Whisp. Remember that there 0:17:09.080 --> 0:17:11.240 would be you know, the legend of there's a light 0:17:11.280 --> 0:17:13.919 in the bog that leads a traveler off the path, 0:17:14.600 --> 0:17:17.160 and it's often attributed to a spirit or a devil. 0:17:17.200 --> 0:17:20.400 It's kind of a visual leshy. It's fairy fire, it's 0:17:20.760 --> 0:17:25.280 the the elf fire, the Hinky Puck or Heinky Punk. 0:17:25.440 --> 0:17:27.840 Is it Punker Puck? I don't remember. I can't remember 0:17:27.840 --> 0:17:30.320 if it's Punker Puck. Yeah, I remember the Will of 0:17:30.320 --> 0:17:32.800 the Whisp. Basically, the idea of the Will of the 0:17:32.800 --> 0:17:35.960 Wisp has so many strange and curious names. It's that 0:17:36.000 --> 0:17:38.359 it's been given over the years in different cultures. That 0:17:38.400 --> 0:17:40.080 episode was a lot of fun, by the way, and 0:17:40.480 --> 0:17:43.119 we have to go back and revisit that sometime. But 0:17:43.520 --> 0:17:46.560 so people have tried to offer plausible physical explanations for 0:17:46.640 --> 0:17:48.359 sightings to the Will of the Whisp. Why is it 0:17:48.400 --> 0:17:52.320 that so many people reports seeing, you know, a blue 0:17:52.440 --> 0:17:55.520 or green light in the swamp that's dancing around as 0:17:55.560 --> 0:17:58.520 if it's a lantern carried by a ghost, And a 0:17:58.560 --> 0:18:04.399 lot of these physical explanations for that phenomena involve phosphine gas. 0:18:04.440 --> 0:18:08.199 Often the explanation is some variation on well, there's the 0:18:08.280 --> 0:18:11.600 bog or a bunch of mud, and there's rotting vegetation, 0:18:11.800 --> 0:18:15.120 and and maybe bones from animals down there that are 0:18:15.160 --> 0:18:20.840 being consumed and metabolized by anaerobic bacteria, which produced phosphine 0:18:20.840 --> 0:18:23.680 gas is a byproduct. And then this phosphine gas and 0:18:23.720 --> 0:18:26.400 the presence of die phosphine or p to H four 0:18:26.880 --> 0:18:28.639 is sort of burping up out of the earth and 0:18:28.760 --> 0:18:32.720 is sometimes spontaneously ignited on contact with the air, or 0:18:32.760 --> 0:18:35.760 maybe it's just producing a sort of cool blue or 0:18:35.760 --> 0:18:39.840 green glow without necessarily catching on fire. But it's in 0:18:39.840 --> 0:18:43.199 the presence of some of some of the pyrophoric gas, 0:18:43.560 --> 0:18:47.880 and whatever is going on here, this glowing or chemoluminescent 0:18:48.000 --> 0:18:51.719 luminescent cloud or this flame becomes the will of the wisp. 0:18:51.920 --> 0:18:55.000 But whether or not that is the the actual explanation 0:18:55.080 --> 0:18:58.240 for will of the whisp sightings, it is absolutely true 0:18:58.280 --> 0:19:02.199 that anaerobic bacteria deco imposing organic matter down in the 0:19:02.240 --> 0:19:05.760 bog will produce phosphine gas. That's just something that's known 0:19:06.000 --> 0:19:10.360 that they're known to do. Another interesting coincidence, the authors 0:19:10.359 --> 0:19:14.240 proposed that the phosphine gas detected in Venus's atmosphere was 0:19:14.280 --> 0:19:18.800 that altitudes of around fifty kilometers or like fifty kilometers. 0:19:18.840 --> 0:19:22.639 This also happens to be an altitude where environmental conditions 0:19:22.680 --> 0:19:26.680 are much more tolerable on Venus around thirty degrees celsius 0:19:26.760 --> 0:19:30.720 or something like eighty something degrees fahrenheit and a pressure 0:19:30.800 --> 0:19:33.440 similar to Earth's atmosphere. Yeah, this is one of the 0:19:33.520 --> 0:19:37.800 key um layers on Venus that we're often looking at 0:19:37.880 --> 0:19:41.600 when we're actually sending some sort of a probe there 0:19:41.800 --> 0:19:45.240 or planning for possible missions to Venus in the future. Right, 0:19:45.680 --> 0:19:48.760 and so, if this phosphine gas was a byproduct of 0:19:48.800 --> 0:19:53.159 the metabolism of some type of microbe, one possibility that 0:19:53.240 --> 0:19:55.720 was discussed in this was quoted in an m I T. 0:19:55.720 --> 0:19:58.920 Tech Review article I was reading. This is from Jane Grieves, 0:19:58.960 --> 0:20:01.359 the lead author on the study. She said, quote that 0:20:01.400 --> 0:20:04.879 suggests it's part of the global circulation pattern of the 0:20:04.920 --> 0:20:08.640 atmosphere where gas sinks before it travels as far as 0:20:08.680 --> 0:20:12.160 the polls. So I guess a question would be, well, 0:20:12.280 --> 0:20:15.000 could something else be putting the phosphine gas there? Like 0:20:15.040 --> 0:20:18.199 with the Florida example, Uh, is there something else that 0:20:18.240 --> 0:20:22.200 could account for chunks of ice being found along the sidewalk, 0:20:22.640 --> 0:20:25.160 and you could come up with explanations. You could say, yeah, 0:20:25.280 --> 0:20:27.080 maybe I don't know, maybe there was some kind of 0:20:27.160 --> 0:20:31.080 upper atmosphere phenomena, some kind of weird anomalous hail storm, 0:20:31.160 --> 0:20:33.960 and these things fell even though it's hot outside. It 0:20:34.040 --> 0:20:37.840 just happened recently. You could come up with things. Uh. 0:20:38.400 --> 0:20:41.200 For example, we know that some amount of phosphine gas 0:20:41.240 --> 0:20:44.760 is generated by a biotic you know, non organic processes 0:20:44.840 --> 0:20:47.879 deep in the atmosphere of Jupiter. But Jupiter is a 0:20:47.920 --> 0:20:51.240 gas giant, and the phosphine there is produced under conditions 0:20:51.240 --> 0:20:53.919 that do not seem to be possible on Venus, at 0:20:54.000 --> 0:20:56.720 least as far as we know. So could it be 0:20:56.800 --> 0:21:00.760 produced by lightning or space impacts or Vulkar Haino's or 0:21:00.840 --> 0:21:04.439 some other high energy phenomena like that. Well, again, this 0:21:04.560 --> 0:21:06.840 was analyzed by the authors of the paper, and it 0:21:06.840 --> 0:21:10.000 looks like no, not as far as we know nothing. No, 0:21:10.160 --> 0:21:14.200 a biotic process we're aware of seems capable of explaining 0:21:14.240 --> 0:21:18.480 the amounts of phosphine found. So basically, if if the 0:21:18.560 --> 0:21:22.480 findings in this original study from September are correct, there 0:21:22.600 --> 0:21:26.320 is anomalous gas present in the atmosphere of Venus, and 0:21:26.359 --> 0:21:30.159 we don't know of any photochemical or geochemical process that 0:21:30.240 --> 0:21:32.280 could have put it there in the amount that we 0:21:32.320 --> 0:21:35.680 find it. And on Earth the same gas is often 0:21:35.720 --> 0:21:40.280 the byproduct of microbial life. So this is not by 0:21:40.320 --> 0:21:43.280 any means proof of alien life, but it is extremely 0:21:43.359 --> 0:21:47.159 tantalizing from an astrobiological point of view. Again, kind of 0:21:47.200 --> 0:21:53.679 widens the space possible for life to exist in. Well, 0:21:53.680 --> 0:21:56.160 would say more than that. I mean it says, here's 0:21:56.200 --> 0:21:59.960 something we observe and we know it could be explained 0:22:00.040 --> 0:22:02.919 by life, and nothing else that we know of would 0:22:02.920 --> 0:22:06.480 seem to explain it very well. Yeah, but to be 0:22:06.600 --> 0:22:09.320 very clear, this is not proof. And I was reading 0:22:09.320 --> 0:22:13.000 an article in Chemical and Engineering News by Arianna Remmel 0:22:13.440 --> 0:22:15.960 who quotes an astro chemist who who had some good 0:22:15.960 --> 0:22:17.520 thoughts here. So I just want to read a quote 0:22:17.520 --> 0:22:21.639 from this article. Anthony Remission, and astro chemist to the 0:22:21.720 --> 0:22:25.200 National Radio Astronomy Observatory who is not involved in the study, 0:22:25.280 --> 0:22:28.120 says the team did a fantastic job presenting their findings, 0:22:28.160 --> 0:22:32.119 but he remains skeptical. Scientists need more spectral data to 0:22:32.240 --> 0:22:36.359 verify that the signal comes from pH three remission, says quote, 0:22:36.560 --> 0:22:39.600 but it's a first good step in that direction. As 0:22:39.600 --> 0:22:42.040 for what could produce phosphine on venus, he says, we 0:22:42.119 --> 0:22:45.160 need a better understanding of the fundamental chemistry forming these 0:22:45.200 --> 0:22:49.560 types of molecules before calling it a biosignature. So, uh, 0:22:49.720 --> 0:22:52.439 you know, so praise for the study, but you know, 0:22:52.560 --> 0:22:55.440 caution tempering the optimism. It's not like we know there 0:22:55.480 --> 0:22:58.760 are aliens there now. And when this study was first 0:22:58.760 --> 0:23:02.119 published in September, people got really excited. A lot of 0:23:02.119 --> 0:23:04.760 listeners asked us directly to cover this on the show, 0:23:04.840 --> 0:23:07.600 especially since we've done episodes on the possibility of life 0:23:07.600 --> 0:23:11.439