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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Let's take a stroll into the Yellow Vault. Why is

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Speaker 1: it yellow this time? It must be of all this

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Speaker 1: dispersed stuff in the air. Oh goodness, I'm breathing an

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Speaker 1: ind to Uh. This is an episode that we did

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Speaker 1: on May seventeen about the possibility of life on Venus.

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Speaker 1: We don't usually think about Venus, do we. That's right,

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Speaker 1: that's one of the things that's that's that's pretty awesome

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Speaker 1: about this episode. You know, all eyes are on Mars

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Speaker 1: for a for a few different reasons, some that are

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Speaker 1: very scientific, but others that are purely cultural and have

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Speaker 1: to do with our history of gazing at the red

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Speaker 1: planet and dreaming about what and misinterpreting what might be there.

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Speaker 1: But meanwhile, we have Venus over here, which, yes, is

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Speaker 1: an awful hell world, but that doesn't mean that it

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Speaker 1: never had life or couldn't according to some experts, potentially

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Speaker 1: have some form of life in certain areas. Let's jump

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Speaker 1: right in. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from

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Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, you, welcome to Stuff

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Speaker 1: to blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and

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Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick and Robert. I've got a question for

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Speaker 1: you today. Hit me in your opinion. What is the

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Speaker 1: creepiest image photograph produced by human space exploration. Well, since

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Speaker 1: we're talking about exploration, I imagine this rules out weapons tests. No, no,

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Speaker 1: no, no no, I'm not interested in any clear bombs. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: because we have some pretty creepy new test footage such

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Speaker 1: as nineteen sixties Operation UH Dominique, which was involved the

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Speaker 1: atmospheric sort of slash space detonation of nukes. I don't

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Speaker 1: think I've ever seen that. Oh yeah, it's For instance,

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Speaker 1: there was the Starfish Prime event in which a one

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Speaker 1: point for megatun bomb detonated two fifty miles or four

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Speaker 1: and two kilometers above the planet, and that's above the

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Speaker 1: Carmen line. So like that's pretty disturbing when you when

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Speaker 1: you think about it, like a Cold War UH space

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Speaker 1: detonation test. But as far as like pure space exploration goes,

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Speaker 1: I'm always a sucker for stuff like the you know,

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Speaker 1: the so called Martian face, or even something like the

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Speaker 1: hexagon of Saturn, something that just inspires this sense of

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Speaker 1: mystery where you're asking, like, what what is this place? Really? Oh?

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Speaker 1: The hexagon on the I believe it's the north pole

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Speaker 1: of Saturn. It's either the north or the South pole.

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Speaker 1: I can't recall believe it's north. We we talked about

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Speaker 1: it in one of our previous episodes, Haunted Geography and

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Speaker 1: Haunted Geometry, very love Craft in Yeah, I guess they're forbidden.

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Speaker 1: Geometry is all through the Lovecraft Cosmos, right, you know it.

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Speaker 1: But I've got a different answer my and for a

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Speaker 1: long time this has been my answer. My favorite creepy

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Speaker 1: space images have got to be the photos taken by

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Speaker 1: the Venera thirteen lander, Robert, I've got them in the

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Speaker 1: notes here, But have you ever looked at these? For yes,

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Speaker 1: you know, I'm not sure i've seen the color corrected ones,

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Speaker 1: but but certainly i've seen the the the other ones

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Speaker 1: that have that that deep kind of reddish orange tinge

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Speaker 1: to them. Yeah. I mean, it's funny to try to

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Speaker 1: explain what's disturbing about them, because they're just pictures of

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Speaker 1: some rocks. You know, it's just you're you're looking at

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Speaker 1: some rocks and soil. Now, what the Venera Landers were,

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Speaker 1: it was a series of space missions to the planet

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Speaker 1: Venus that was done by the Soviet Space Program. They

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Speaker 1: launched these missions to put landers down on the surface

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Speaker 1: of Venus for the first time. There had mid Landers

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Speaker 1: sending things back from Venus or the surface of Venus

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Speaker 1: before this, but they sent a bunch of missions in

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Speaker 1: the seventies and the eighties. And one of the things

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Speaker 1: about landing on Venus, and we'll definitely get more into

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Speaker 1: this in the episode, is that you've got a very

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Speaker 1: short window of time to send stuff back because Venus

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Speaker 1: is a death trap. It will destroy you, even for

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Speaker 1: highly shielded powerful machines. You put a machine down there

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Speaker 1: and it's a suicide mission. The machine is going to

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Speaker 1: gather some data and transmit as long as it can,

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Speaker 1: but eventually the crushing heat and pressure of the atmosphere

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Speaker 1: of Venus will kill that robot and it will only

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Speaker 1: have this last sort of death note to send back

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Speaker 1: to Earth. And one of these missions managed to send

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Speaker 1: some really striking pictures as that last death note. Specifically,

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Speaker 1: it was the Venera thirteen lander, which was launched on

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Speaker 1: October one, and it landed on Venus on March first.

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Speaker 1: So even the idea of a lander setting down on Venus,

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Speaker 1: if you know anything about the Venusian atmosphere, is kind

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Speaker 1: of creepy to imagine, because first you're going into this

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Speaker 1: haze of sulfurous clouds, but as you go further and

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Speaker 1: further down, the atmospheric pressure gets so much and so

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Speaker 1: dense and so thick that it's almost more like sinking

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Speaker 1: into a liquid uh. And so you've got to imagine

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Speaker 1: this lander sinking down into this atmospheric ocean surrounding Venus,

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Speaker 1: this boiling hot, lead melting atmospheric ocean of of carbon

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Speaker 1: dioxide and nitrogen, with all this sulfur everywhere. And then

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Speaker 1: finally it sets down on the surface and takes these

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Speaker 1: images and sends them back to Earth. And there's almost

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Speaker 1: nothing in the images. You just see the edge of

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Speaker 1: the lander in the foreground, and it has some appropriately

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Speaker 1: creepy looking triangular teeth all around it, and then beyond

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Speaker 1: that there's some soil and some flat rocks. But nevertheless,

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Speaker 1: something about these images messes with me. I find them

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Speaker 1: absolutely creepy and haunting. They have this dirty grindhouse kind

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Speaker 1: of yellow film effect to them. Uh. And that's of

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Speaker 1: course the atmospheric effects that we see from from the

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Speaker 1: glow of Venus. Uh, it's almost as if we're looking

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Speaker 1: at everything through an evil haze. For me, I think

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Speaker 1: it's because it's the It's like the last known photograph

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Speaker 1: from from from the from the very you know, borders

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Speaker 1: of the known world. Yeah. Um, it's like if somebody

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Speaker 1: went to the Texas Chainsaw Mascre house and took a

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Speaker 1: picture of their feet by accident, and then that's all

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Speaker 1: you had to go on. So, you know, do you

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Speaker 1: know something terrible happened afterwards? You don't have a lot

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Speaker 1: of details, but you have this picture of somebody's feet

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Speaker 1: on a front porch in Texas. That's exactly right. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it feels like that. And another creepy thing about them

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Speaker 1: is that you notice a difference that unlike Mars, where

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Speaker 1: if you see images back from the surface of Mars,

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Speaker 1: they can sometimes look kind of creepy, but it can

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Speaker 1: also just look kind of like, I don't know, a

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Speaker 1: desert on kind of an overcast day, it was just

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Speaker 1: a very bare in area with sand and rocks and

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Speaker 1: kind of a gray white sky. But unlike on Mars,

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Speaker 1: one thing you'll notice is the effects of sunlight and

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Speaker 1: the directionality of the sunlight. Where there's a thing sticking

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Speaker 1: out of the rover, you can see it casting a

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Speaker 1: shadow on the ground. These these pictures have no indication

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Speaker 1: of shadows really, you know, looking at them again, as

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Speaker 1: we podcast here, I do think there is a sense

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Speaker 1: of one taking a picture of one's own feet here.

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Speaker 1: So there's an incompleteness to it, you know, it's it

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Speaker 1: just it just gets at you. Whereas at least with

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Speaker 1: it with the Mars images, we have more of a true,

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Speaker 1: uh you know, panoramic vision of what's going on there. Well,

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Speaker 1: Mars has been thoroughly explored on the surface at this point.

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Speaker 1: I mean, we have all kinds of pictures of what

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Speaker 1: Mars looks like at different times of day, different times

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Speaker 1: of the year, you know, from multiple different landers and rovers.

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Speaker 1: Mars almost feels like, I don't mean to pooh pooh Mars.

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Speaker 1: I mean, Mars is still fascinating and mysterious and wonderful,

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Speaker 1: but it's it's very much more explored territory at this point. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: We know, as we've mentioned before, we have more detailed

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Speaker 1: information about the surface of Mars than we have about

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Speaker 1: the bottom of the ocean. In some ways, that is

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Speaker 1: definitely true, um, but the surface of Venus is like,

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Speaker 1: it's this mystery hell, you know, it's this hazy mystery

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Speaker 1: that's beyond the gate. And because it feels like this

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Speaker 1: hazy mystery that's beyond the gate, for some reason, the

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Speaker 1: idea of life on Venus has always seemed more creepy

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Speaker 1: and interesting and tantalizing a possibility to me than the

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Speaker 1: idea of life on Mars RS. I don't know if

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Speaker 1: you feel the same way. Yeah, I definitely think so.

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Speaker 1: I think v it's kind of a shame that Venus

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Speaker 1: doesn't get more attention, especially in terms of our our

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Speaker 1: science fiction, because when you think of life on another

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Speaker 1: planet within our Solar system, you think of really the

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Speaker 1: rich history of imagining life on Mars, both in the

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Speaker 1: future and the past, because you have everything from of

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Speaker 1: course the old Edgar Rice Burrows novels to uh total

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Speaker 1: to Total Recall. I mean, you have just there's there's

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Speaker 1: so much great stuff there. But when you start looking

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Speaker 1: for really cool examples of life on Venus, there are

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Speaker 1: some great examples, but there there aren't as many. It's

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Speaker 1: not it's not the place that the human imagination instantly

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Speaker 1: goes to, but as we'll discuss in this episode. We

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Speaker 1: really should, because there's a there there are some strong

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Speaker 1: cases to be made for life on Venus, either now

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Speaker 1: or in the past. Yeah, and so that's going to

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Speaker 1: be the main subject of today's episode. If there are,

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Speaker 1: or if there have been, creatures of Venus, what are

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Speaker 1: they like and how would we know about them now?

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Speaker 1: If we just turned to fiction for a few examples. Uh,

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Speaker 1: we don't have time to catalog everything, but I wanted

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Speaker 1: to mention a few that came to my mind. Anyway,

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Speaker 1: there is an HP Lovecraft story from ninety nine that

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Speaker 1: he wrote with Kenneth Sterling titled in the Walls of Rics,

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Speaker 1: which features a muddy jungle Venus and a maze with

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Speaker 1: invisible walls. That feels about right. Yeah, it's pretty good.

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Speaker 1: I remember I remember dating that story when I read it. Uh. C. S.

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Speaker 1: Lewis took us to a Venusian paradise in his novel Paralandra. Uh.

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Speaker 1: This involves an alien Adam and Eve and there and

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Speaker 1: then of course you have the devil show up as well,

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Speaker 1: possessing the body of a character by the name of

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Speaker 1: Professor Weston. Professor Weston, I wonder if that's named after

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Speaker 1: Jesse Weston, who wrote the book about the Grail legend

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Speaker 1: that was so popular in the early twentieth century. You know,

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Speaker 1: I don't I don't remember, but that it's a Paralandro was.

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Speaker 1: It was a book I really loved when I was younger,

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Speaker 1: and we'll probably read again at some at some point

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Speaker 1: I ever read it. But that seems interesting to explore,

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Speaker 1: especially because you've got, I mean, you've got multiple mythic

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Speaker 1: associations with Venus throughout history. You know, you've got the

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Speaker 1: god of love and the arrows in the Venus aphrodite

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Speaker 1: kind of association, but you've also got the Lucifer association. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: and both are explored in Peralandra. In Perilandro, Venus is

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Speaker 1: also a water world, and they're like these kind of

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Speaker 1: floating wraths of land that everyone is everyone it's like

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Speaker 1: three or four people, three or four individuals, anyway they

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Speaker 1: lived there. But yeah, it's it's a It is an

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Speaker 1: interesting take on Venus as well. Stephen King took us

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Speaker 1: to Venus twice, as it turns out, once in a

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixties self published short story titled The Cursed Expedition,

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Speaker 1: which I have not read. I'm not sure that's one

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Speaker 1: that's actually readily available, or it's kind of like a

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Speaker 1: you know, a vault story of kings uh. And then there's,

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Speaker 1: of course, is one short story, I Am the Doorway,

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Speaker 1: which doesn't actually visit the planet, but a character is

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Speaker 1: It takes part in a manned Vena fly by and

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Speaker 1: comes back and essentially infected with an alien organism. Well,

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Speaker 1: it's interesting to think about that this is a time

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Speaker 1: period at which the Venera missions were underway. Yeah, there's

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Speaker 1: also a similar Outer Limits episode from nineteen four titled

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Speaker 1: Cold Hands, Warm Heart that actually stars William Shatner. So

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Speaker 1: Shot goes to Venus or he's from Venus or what.

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Speaker 1: I haven't seen this episode, but he is involved in

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Speaker 1: some sort of space mission involving Venus. So you can't

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Speaker 1: give me the deets on the chat. I mean, things go,

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Speaker 1: you know weird. That's that's the Again, this is not

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Speaker 1: an Outer Limits episode that I've seen, but perhaps we

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Speaker 1: have listeners you can chime in on it. And then,

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Speaker 1: of course Venus plays an important role in the expanse

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Speaker 1: Uh TV series adaptation of the novels. No spoilers, but

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Speaker 1: it does have a pretty cool plot line involving life

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Speaker 1: and Venus. And there's also early mentioned in the books

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Speaker 1: and perhaps the TV series as well about a failed

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Speaker 1: attempt by humans to established cloud colonies there. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: that is an interesting idea I've read about the idea

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Speaker 1: of trying to create um I don't know whether you

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Speaker 1: call them aerostatic or hydrostatic, basically floating colonies. That would

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Speaker 1: be not too hard to do, actually, because of how

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Speaker 1: dense the atmosphere is. Yeah, cloud City right out of Empire. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: except I don't know, best Bin didn't look all that

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Speaker 1: cloudy compared to Venus. Yeah. Well, I mean they were

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Speaker 1: up there, right, It's been a long time since they've

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Speaker 1: seen Empire, so I don't remember how cloudy was or

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Speaker 1: if it became more cloudy in the special editions that

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Speaker 1: came out. Who knows. Oh yeah, they're really cged some

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Speaker 1: more clouds in there. It's it was worth it. Uh No.

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Speaker 1: I think it's interesting that Venus doesn't get as much

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Speaker 1: attention as Mars does in terms of the possibility of

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Speaker 1: finding microbial life forms. I mean, you know, way back

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Speaker 1: in the day, people used to think, before we'd explored

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Speaker 1: Mars that there, you know, there might be whole civilizations there.

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Speaker 1: People would look through telescopes and see what looked like

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Speaker 1: canals on Mars, and they'd say, oh, you know, there

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Speaker 1: are people on Mars, just like there are people here.

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Speaker 1: Now we pretty much can rule that out. I wonder

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Speaker 1: if part of it is because we went from being

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Speaker 1: so geocentric, the idea that the Earth is the center

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Speaker 1: of all things, and then we went to a heliocentric model,

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Speaker 1: and then of course we expanded beyond that. But if

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Speaker 1: if we're still kind of thinking heliocentrically, So the Sun

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Speaker 1: is the center of of our solar system, and therefore

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Speaker 1: it's kind of a center of order and and the known.

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Speaker 1: And this is not doesn't something not not something that

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Speaker 1: actually matches up necessarily with our our scientific understanding of everything,

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Speaker 1: But it is. It is a center. And therefore Venus

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Speaker 1: is closer to the center, It's closer to the center

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Speaker 1: of the known, whereas Mars is a little beyond us,

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Speaker 1: like Mars is a little more on the outskirts. And

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Speaker 1: therefore it makes this more it makes more sense that

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Speaker 1: it would have more mystery to it. That's where the

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Speaker 1: that's where the ghosts and goblins are going to live,

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Speaker 1: right they're not gonna live in the middle of the city,

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Speaker 1: They're gonna live on the outskirts of town. Well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's the outer limits. You don't talking about the or limit. Though.

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Speaker 1: I do really enjoy science fiction that that goes inward

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Speaker 1: instead of goes outward. Actually, I mean, this is something

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Speaker 1: I really liked about that movie Sunshine that came out,

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Speaker 1: which you know, I had a lot of problems. I

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Speaker 1: think some of the writing kind of fell apart in

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Speaker 1: the third part of the movie, but it explored the

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Speaker 1: idea that there was this deep, kind of ghostly mystery

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Speaker 1: to the Sun, and as you come closer and closer

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Speaker 1: to the Sun, it's sort of activates these instincts within

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Speaker 1: you that are sort of borderline supernatural, but at least

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Speaker 1: seemed to go deeper than the human or mammalian parts

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Speaker 1: of your nervous system, where you know, where the Sun

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Speaker 1: is the closest thing to a literal god there is

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Speaker 1: in the physical universe, right, it's the creator of us. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think that ye coupled with the fact that every

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Speaker 1: humans just want to keep going out and it's one

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Speaker 1: of the reasons probably that more people have been to

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Speaker 1: the Moon than to the bottom of than to the

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Speaker 1: deepest portions of the ocean. Well, I think we should

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Speaker 1: ignore this impulse to go out and we should go in.

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Speaker 1: Let's go in towards Venus, get closer to the Sun,

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Speaker 1: move one orbit in and start looking at this hothouse planet. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Why go to a planet that doesn't have enough atmosphere

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Speaker 1: when instead you can take your your dreams and your

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Speaker 1: imagination to a place that has more atmosphere than you

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Speaker 1: can handle. Let's take a quick break and when we

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Speaker 1: come back, we will explore the surface of Venus. Thank alright,

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Speaker 1: we're back now. You're probably familiar with some of the

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Speaker 1: most basic features of Venus as a planet, right that

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Speaker 1: it's very much known as an Earth analog, and that

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Speaker 1: is a fair way to characterize it. It's very close

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Speaker 1: to the size and mass of the Earth. It's gonna

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Speaker 1: you know, it was created around the same time and

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Speaker 1: the accretion disk of the inner rocky planets um so

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Speaker 1: in many ways, it is a lot like the Earth

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Speaker 1: until you get down into the atmosphere. So, Robert, can

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Speaker 1: you take me on a tour of the surface of Venus. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I actually chatted with astrobiologist David Grinspoon about the surface

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Speaker 1: of Venus several years back, as well as with JPL

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Speaker 1: scientists Susanne smrit Car. So, I want to run through

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Speaker 1: some of the attributes of the planet here that they

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Speaker 1: stressed to me. All right, let's take a stroll through

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Speaker 1: the toxic soup. Alright. So, so Grinsman pointed out that

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Speaker 1: first and foremost, this is a planet that's very rich

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Speaker 1: and volcanoes and mountains and tech tonic features. Now not

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Speaker 1: to be confused with tectonic activity. We'll get back to that.

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Speaker 1: You won't find signs of water erosion. Uh, probably unless

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Speaker 1: they're very, very ancient. And a lot of the topography

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Speaker 1: is dominated by a sort of low aligned rolling planes

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Speaker 1: that are largely ash. And this is punctuated by some

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Speaker 1: high volcanic mountains and some other sort of high plateaus

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Speaker 1: of titanically disrupted areas with with flows of ash. So

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Speaker 1: this is a planet surface that has been sort of

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Speaker 1: like hit and paved by volcanic activity. Yes, yeah, they're also,

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Speaker 1: he says, they're seemingly steady, slow winds, always blowing east

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Speaker 1: to west. And uh, as we've already touched on, the

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Speaker 1: atmospheric pressure is very high now One interesting thing about

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Speaker 1: the directionality of the movement of the atmosphere there is

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Speaker 1: that Venus rotates opposite of the way that most of

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Speaker 1: the planets in our Solar system rotate. It rotates in

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Speaker 1: a retrograde way to its orbit, so the sun actually

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Speaker 1: rises in the west and sets in the east on Venus. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's it's interesting. It also has an extremely slow rotation

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Speaker 1: two forty three terrestrial days, that's how long it takes,

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Speaker 1: but its atmosphere only needs four days to rot to rotate.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, there's already you can tell there's a lot

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Speaker 1: of a lot of by the from a terrestrial standpoint,

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Speaker 1: a lot of screwy things going on with Venus. If

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Speaker 1: you were approaching the this is like approaching the Texas

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Speaker 1: chainsaw mask or house and finding all sorts of bone

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Speaker 1: based you know, voodoo doo. Dad's hanging in trees and bushes, right,

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Speaker 1: some skull furniture. So the pressure is high, roughly ninety

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Speaker 1: times the pressure at sea level on Earth. That's a

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Speaker 1: lot of pressure of coal. Of course, is going to

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Speaker 1: vary though depending on you know exactly what altitude you're

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Speaker 1: at on Venus. We've already touched on the light a

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Speaker 1: little bit, you'd find very dull light. Grinsman says that

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Speaker 1: if you were suddenly transported to Venus, you would notice

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Speaker 1: that the light is very different. It's always cloudy, and

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Speaker 1: there's a very thick uh, the very thick atmosphere. So

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Speaker 1: light is, he says, is kind of diffused and gathered

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Speaker 1: so so much that it's a it's kind of reddish.

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Speaker 1: And there, as you said, no shadows because there's no

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Speaker 1: direct sunlight. It's all just clouds and scattered light. He

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Speaker 1: says that there would be enough daylight to see, but

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Speaker 1: it will be like a heavily overcast day on Earth.

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Speaker 1: And of course on the night side it would be dark.

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Speaker 1: Aside from whatever kind of like you you would probably

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Speaker 1: notice the dull red glow of the red hot rocks

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Speaker 1: in the ground lighting things a bit creepy. And he

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Speaker 1: pointed out that it is pretty much Earth's alter ego.

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Speaker 1: It's the only Earth sized planet in our Solar system only, uh,

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Speaker 1: and the only other roughly Earth sized planet that we

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Speaker 1: can send a spa acecraft two and study in detail. Uh,

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Speaker 1: that will and that's going to be true for a

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Speaker 1: long long time. And uh, indeed, Earth and Venus probably

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Speaker 1: had similar origins. Uh, it could have been, and they

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Speaker 1: could have been a nearly identical states in the beginning,

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Speaker 1: and yet we have gone down very difficerent routes in

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Speaker 1: terms of how our climates and surface conditions have turned out. So, yeah,

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Speaker 1: we started in similar states. What happened to Venus to

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Speaker 1: make it so different from us? Well, runaway greenhouse effect

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Speaker 1: boiled away the oceans long ago and they were lost

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Speaker 1: to space, and then it it became essentially stuck with

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Speaker 1: its present climate. It's so it's it's often touted as

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Speaker 1: kind of a worst case example of what climate change

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Speaker 1: on Earth could amount to. Yeah, now you might have

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Speaker 1: heard of this idea of the runaway greenhouse effect invoked,

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Speaker 1: but if you're wondering exactly how that works, Basically what

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Speaker 1: happens is you've got some liquid on the surface of

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Speaker 1: your planet. You've got like a liquid water oceans, and

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Speaker 1: if you heat the oceans up to much, they begin

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Speaker 1: to evaporate a lot of water vapor into the atmosphere.

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Speaker 1: But of course water vapor is an excellent greenhouse gas.

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Speaker 1: And then when there's a lot of water vapor in

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Speaker 1: the atmosphere, because it's a greenhouse gas, sunlight can pass

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Speaker 1: through it one way, coming in to heat the Earth

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Speaker 1: or heat the planet, but then it does not allow

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Speaker 1: as much energy to reflect back off of the planet

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Speaker 1: and radiate back out into space. So like other greenhouse gases,

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Speaker 1: this water vapor let's energy in but not back out,

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Speaker 1: and this warms the planet even more. As the planet warms,

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Speaker 1: the water vapor just keeps evaporating even more because it's

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Speaker 1: getting hotter and hotter, making the effect worse and worse

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Speaker 1: in this net positive feedback loop. So there's sort of

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Speaker 1: these tipping points for planets with liquid on the surface.

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Speaker 1: You don't want to get the water hotter than a

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Speaker 1: certain level because if you do, it's just going to

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Speaker 1: create this runaway effect that you kind of can't stop. Now.

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Speaker 1: I mentioned plate tectonics earlier. There are no plate tectonics

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Speaker 1: that we know of on Venus of all, but the

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Speaker 1: certainly there's a lot of volcanic activity. The volcanoes, though,

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Speaker 1: don't spring up along plate borders like they do on Earth.

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Speaker 1: They just pop up all over, so it's just kind

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Speaker 1: of surprise volcano. Yeah. So yeah, it's it's a different

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Speaker 1: pattern of convection, uh or so it seems according to Grinspoon.

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Speaker 1: Now in addition to the greenhouse gas issue, uh he

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Speaker 1: did drive home that a lot of the differences may

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Speaker 1: also just be due to orbit. You know. Obviously Venus

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Speaker 1: is more of an inner planet than Earth, and and

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Speaker 1: they're just going to be uh certain differences in place

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Speaker 1: just on where you are in relation to the Sun. Right,

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Speaker 1: So it is closer to the Sun than us, but

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Speaker 1: that's that's not the only thing that plays a role, because,

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Speaker 1: for example, the surface of Venus is hotter than the

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Speaker 1: surface of Mercury, which is closer to the Sun than

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Speaker 1: Venus is. Uh So, definitely, the atmosphere plays a huge

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Speaker 1: role in what surface conditions are like. Right, And we

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Speaker 1: already hit on the fact that the the atmosphere of

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Speaker 1: Venus is pretty incredible. The clouds of Venus are concentrated

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Speaker 1: sulfuric acid. Yeah, uh yeah, Now that's not to say

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Speaker 1: that the atmosphere is concentrated sulfuric acid. The atmosphere is

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Speaker 1: about ninety eight point five carbon dioxide carbon dioxide with

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Speaker 1: like three point five percent nitrogen or so, and then

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Speaker 1: it's got these aerosol ized sulfuric acid particles like colloidal

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Speaker 1: sulfuric acid suspended in the atmosphere. Needless to say, you

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Speaker 1: wouldn't want to breathe it. Noddy, we we touch on

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Speaker 1: exactly how hot the surface is. I'm not sure we did.

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Speaker 1: That's worth mentioning because it's it's it's hotter than you think, Dad,

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Speaker 1: hotter than you think. Yeah. Susan Spreaker pointed out that

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Speaker 1: the surface temperature is around nine hundred degrees fahrenheit or

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Speaker 1: four eight two celsius. That is, it's an often sided

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Speaker 1: fact hot enough to melt lead. These are almost like

425
00:22:53,040 --> 00:22:56,240
Speaker 1: metal works kind of conditions. Yeah. And another cool thing

426
00:22:56,320 --> 00:22:58,040
Speaker 1: that she pointed out is like, Okay, assume you're on

427
00:22:58,080 --> 00:23:00,360
Speaker 1: the on the surface, you're wearing some sort of high

428
00:23:00,400 --> 00:23:02,840
Speaker 1: tech suit that prevents you from having to worry about

429
00:23:03,440 --> 00:23:07,679
Speaker 1: melting or being crushed. Uh. She She points out that

430
00:23:07,760 --> 00:23:09,800
Speaker 1: walking on the surface would be really weird because it

431
00:23:09,800 --> 00:23:12,320
Speaker 1: would be like walking It would be more like walking

432
00:23:12,320 --> 00:23:14,760
Speaker 1: through a fluid than what we think of as as

433
00:23:14,800 --> 00:23:17,480
Speaker 1: an atmosphere. And this is again due to that high

434
00:23:17,760 --> 00:23:22,240
Speaker 1: pressure super critical c O two. So in some aspects,

435
00:23:22,280 --> 00:23:24,760
Speaker 1: some aspects of a fluid would be present as well

436
00:23:24,760 --> 00:23:27,159
Speaker 1: as some aspects of a gas. I wonder if that

437
00:23:27,200 --> 00:23:30,960
Speaker 1: atmospheric density is part of what contributes to the creepiness

438
00:23:30,960 --> 00:23:34,359
Speaker 1: of those photos taken by the Venera thirteen lander. I

439
00:23:34,400 --> 00:23:37,120
Speaker 1: don't know, like, is that queuing something in my eyes

440
00:23:37,200 --> 00:23:41,040
Speaker 1: to somehow the air look wrong, it looks heavier or something. Yeah,

441
00:23:41,160 --> 00:23:44,399
Speaker 1: I wonder now. Smart Car also pointed out that one

442
00:23:44,440 --> 00:23:47,399
Speaker 1: of the biggest mysteries about Venus is wine doesn't have

443
00:23:47,520 --> 00:23:51,320
Speaker 1: plate tectonics. Uh. And she says that the planet completely

444
00:23:51,359 --> 00:23:54,159
Speaker 1: resurface sometime in the last billion years, and so we

445
00:23:54,200 --> 00:23:56,800
Speaker 1: have no record of what happened in those first three

446
00:23:56,840 --> 00:23:59,040
Speaker 1: and a half billion years. Now, this is premised on

447
00:23:59,080 --> 00:24:01,400
Speaker 1: the fact that Venus is basically the same age as

448
00:24:01,400 --> 00:24:04,920
Speaker 1: the Earth, that they were created in this planetary accretion process,

449
00:24:04,960 --> 00:24:07,320
Speaker 1: and both planets are about four and a half billion

450
00:24:07,400 --> 00:24:10,120
Speaker 1: years old. But something happened about a billion years ago

451
00:24:10,119 --> 00:24:13,200
Speaker 1: in Venus that resurface most of it. Uh. And hit

452
00:24:13,240 --> 00:24:15,520
Speaker 1: the evidence they were like, we gotta get this redone

453
00:24:15,760 --> 00:24:18,200
Speaker 1: and I'm sick of this old pattern. We gotta get

454
00:24:18,200 --> 00:24:21,400
Speaker 1: it repaved. But you pointed out that we really don't

455
00:24:21,440 --> 00:24:23,960
Speaker 1: know if if it was some sort of catastrophic event

456
00:24:24,040 --> 00:24:27,480
Speaker 1: that caused a huge amount of of of volcanic activity

457
00:24:28,000 --> 00:24:30,840
Speaker 1: toated occur within a relatively short period of time, or

458
00:24:30,840 --> 00:24:33,040
Speaker 1: if it's just been a steady process over the last

459
00:24:33,080 --> 00:24:37,240
Speaker 1: billion years, where volcanic activity has just been accumulating. Now,

460
00:24:37,280 --> 00:24:39,600
Speaker 1: one of the things we often talk about when considering

461
00:24:39,600 --> 00:24:42,400
Speaker 1: whether or not a planet can sustain life is what

462
00:24:42,520 --> 00:24:46,199
Speaker 1: the sort of the geomagnetic properties of the planet are. Now,

463
00:24:46,240 --> 00:24:48,840
Speaker 1: we know that Venus does have an iron core like

464
00:24:48,960 --> 00:24:51,320
Speaker 1: Earth does, But the question is if it's going to

465
00:24:51,400 --> 00:24:55,080
Speaker 1: sustain life on its surface or within its atmosphere, does

466
00:24:55,080 --> 00:24:58,600
Speaker 1: it have a magnetic field to shield it from radiation

467
00:24:58,680 --> 00:25:01,800
Speaker 1: coming from space. Well, yeah, the answer here is really

468
00:25:01,800 --> 00:25:05,640
Speaker 1: interesting because no, it does not have an internally generated magnetosphere.

469
00:25:06,119 --> 00:25:09,960
Speaker 1: The solar wind can slam directly into the atmosphere. However,

470
00:25:10,040 --> 00:25:13,400
Speaker 1: it does benefit from partial protection due to its induced

471
00:25:13,440 --> 00:25:16,280
Speaker 1: magnetic field. Now, what's that. So you have solar ultra

472
00:25:16,359 --> 00:25:20,920
Speaker 1: violent radiation removing electrons from atoms in the upper atmosphere,

473
00:25:21,400 --> 00:25:25,280
Speaker 1: creating the electrically charged gas of the ionosphere. As on Earth,

474
00:25:25,320 --> 00:25:29,200
Speaker 1: it slows and diverts the flow of particles around the planet.

475
00:25:29,200 --> 00:25:32,040
Speaker 1: Now that's interesting, But so far, I guess we should

476
00:25:32,040 --> 00:25:34,200
Speaker 1: say we've just been sort of talking about the planet

477
00:25:34,200 --> 00:25:37,280
Speaker 1: in general and kind of spitballing about what life there

478
00:25:37,320 --> 00:25:39,760
Speaker 1: could be like or or you know, things that occur

479
00:25:39,840 --> 00:25:42,440
Speaker 1: to us. What do the experts actually have to say

480
00:25:42,480 --> 00:25:45,639
Speaker 1: about the possibility of life on Venus, either in the

481
00:25:45,680 --> 00:25:48,360
Speaker 1: past or now. I mean, it's hard to imagine life

482
00:25:48,359 --> 00:25:50,840
Speaker 1: on the surface of Venus now, given how hot and

483
00:25:50,920 --> 00:25:53,439
Speaker 1: high pressure it is. But let's not prejudge the question

484
00:25:53,720 --> 00:25:57,080
Speaker 1: what what What would for example, David Grinspoon have to

485
00:25:57,119 --> 00:26:00,000
Speaker 1: say about life on Venus. Well, he's very clear about

486
00:26:00,320 --> 00:26:04,960
Speaker 1: the fact that there's nothing controversial at all about speculating, uh,

487
00:26:05,000 --> 00:26:08,520
Speaker 1: that that ancient Venus might have boasted life, because he says,

488
00:26:08,560 --> 00:26:10,720
Speaker 1: if you go back four billion years, you'll find an

489
00:26:10,840 --> 00:26:13,600
Speaker 1: environment very similar to Earth. Yeah, And so much of

490
00:26:13,600 --> 00:26:17,720
Speaker 1: our speculations of regarding life on other worlds, you know,

491
00:26:18,000 --> 00:26:21,080
Speaker 1: it centers around the question how much like Earth is it?

492
00:26:21,200 --> 00:26:24,159
Speaker 1: Or was it? Yeah? Now, of course that's premised on

493
00:26:24,200 --> 00:26:27,920
Speaker 1: the fact that we basically know of one way biochemistry

494
00:26:28,000 --> 00:26:31,639
Speaker 1: can work, and that has certain physical tolerances built into it.

495
00:26:31,880 --> 00:26:36,000
Speaker 1: Biochemistry can work in a carbon based way with water

496
00:26:36,160 --> 00:26:38,680
Speaker 1: as a solvent, and so we know that can only

497
00:26:38,720 --> 00:26:40,560
Speaker 1: happen in a place where there's the right kind of

498
00:26:40,560 --> 00:26:43,080
Speaker 1: temperature to have liquid water, where it doesn't freeze or

499
00:26:43,119 --> 00:26:46,359
Speaker 1: boil um and you've got you know, you've got the

500
00:26:46,440 --> 00:26:49,920
Speaker 1: right kind of organic molecules present, so that sets these

501
00:26:49,960 --> 00:26:52,760
Speaker 1: tolerances there. But then again, there are other ways we

502
00:26:52,880 --> 00:26:56,960
Speaker 1: maybe aren't even imagining that biochemistry could work. Just don't

503
00:26:57,000 --> 00:26:59,800
Speaker 1: based on our limited imagination, but still based on what

504
00:26:59,840 --> 00:27:04,360
Speaker 1: we know, there's nothing wrong with saying, well, life could

505
00:27:04,400 --> 00:27:06,920
Speaker 1: have existed on Venus. I mean, you know, a place

506
00:27:07,000 --> 00:27:10,639
Speaker 1: like Earth can have life, And Grinspoon says, it's even

507
00:27:10,680 --> 00:27:13,760
Speaker 1: conceivable that life could have begun on Venus, and then

508
00:27:13,800 --> 00:27:17,200
Speaker 1: we're all essentially the Venusians. Uh. You know, it points

509
00:27:17,200 --> 00:27:20,000
Speaker 1: out that you have rocks being blasted between the planets,

510
00:27:20,480 --> 00:27:23,760
Speaker 1: so there was contact. So some form of pants burmia

511
00:27:23,880 --> 00:27:28,919
Speaker 1: is possible, uh, possible uh, concerning life on Earth and

512
00:27:29,119 --> 00:27:31,719
Speaker 1: possible life on Venus, and that's something people bring up

513
00:27:31,720 --> 00:27:34,040
Speaker 1: as a possibility, but not to say that there's a

514
00:27:34,080 --> 00:27:37,520
Speaker 1: strong reason to favor that hypothesis right now. Some of

515
00:27:37,560 --> 00:27:40,600
Speaker 1: are really a lot of the key theories regarding life

516
00:27:40,600 --> 00:27:43,800
Speaker 1: on Venus do in the past revolve around the idea

517
00:27:44,000 --> 00:27:47,280
Speaker 1: that there may have been oceans there in the past, right,

518
00:27:47,320 --> 00:27:50,439
Speaker 1: and we still don't have definitive proof. I think that

519
00:27:50,480 --> 00:27:52,879
Speaker 1: there were oceans on Venus in the past, but there's

520
00:27:53,320 --> 00:27:55,520
Speaker 1: there are pretty strong reasons to think that it at

521
00:27:55,560 --> 00:27:58,000
Speaker 1: least might have had oceans. I was looking at one

522
00:27:58,000 --> 00:28:01,800
Speaker 1: study by our no Salvador at all from the Journal

523
00:28:01,800 --> 00:28:06,600
Speaker 1: of Geophysical Research Planets in and this was kind of interesting.

524
00:28:06,640 --> 00:28:09,040
Speaker 1: So the background on the study is that they talk

525
00:28:09,080 --> 00:28:11,919
Speaker 1: about how early in the history of a Solar system,

526
00:28:12,119 --> 00:28:14,960
Speaker 1: you've got young inner planets and they get bombarded by

527
00:28:15,000 --> 00:28:18,439
Speaker 1: lots of impacts from rocky objects orbiting the Sun. Right

528
00:28:18,880 --> 00:28:21,720
Speaker 1: the early the early Solar system is very dirty and

529
00:28:21,760 --> 00:28:25,080
Speaker 1: it's very full of stuff, and over long periods of time,

530
00:28:25,119 --> 00:28:27,719
Speaker 1: eventually it gets kind of cleaned up. But early in

531
00:28:27,760 --> 00:28:31,200
Speaker 1: the Solar System, you've got big rocks slamming into young planets,

532
00:28:31,640 --> 00:28:33,919
Speaker 1: and they slam into them from space and can actually

533
00:28:33,960 --> 00:28:37,119
Speaker 1: heat planets up a lot, and big enough impacts can

534
00:28:37,200 --> 00:28:40,120
Speaker 1: even melt large portions of the mass of the planet

535
00:28:40,320 --> 00:28:43,720
Speaker 1: which surrounds it in this ocean of melted rock. But

536
00:28:43,920 --> 00:28:47,560
Speaker 1: after this happens, the molten ocean cools and then releases

537
00:28:47,680 --> 00:28:51,520
Speaker 1: volatile compounds to create the atmosphere, and in this study,

538
00:28:51,560 --> 00:28:54,880
Speaker 1: the authors create a model where they can sort of

539
00:28:55,000 --> 00:28:58,320
Speaker 1: play with model planets in this state. Right, You've got

540
00:28:58,800 --> 00:29:02,360
Speaker 1: model planets in early stages of formation that are releasing

541
00:29:02,360 --> 00:29:05,480
Speaker 1: certain amounts of C O two or water onto their surface,

542
00:29:05,840 --> 00:29:07,920
Speaker 1: and that's affecting you know, what kind of whether it

543
00:29:07,960 --> 00:29:10,720
Speaker 1: has oceans or what the atmosphere looks like. And so

544
00:29:10,760 --> 00:29:12,840
Speaker 1: that you can place a model planet like that in

545
00:29:13,000 --> 00:29:15,440
Speaker 1: orbit at different distances from a host star and then

546
00:29:15,480 --> 00:29:18,000
Speaker 1: predict what kind of surface the planet will evolve in

547
00:29:18,040 --> 00:29:21,160
Speaker 1: its geohistory. And their models suggests, based on what we

548
00:29:21,200 --> 00:29:23,760
Speaker 1: know about Venus today that it could have had water

549
00:29:23,840 --> 00:29:26,920
Speaker 1: oceans earlier in its history. That it's consistent with what

550
00:29:26,960 --> 00:29:29,520
Speaker 1: they've found now the presence of some sort of an

551
00:29:29,560 --> 00:29:32,320
Speaker 1: alien Adam and Eve. That there's no proof in that,

552
00:29:32,640 --> 00:29:34,600
Speaker 1: you have to leave that to C. S. Lewis. Even

553
00:29:34,640 --> 00:29:36,920
Speaker 1: though it might be hard to know for sure whether

554
00:29:37,000 --> 00:29:39,520
Speaker 1: there was life on Venus a long time ago, we

555
00:29:39,560 --> 00:29:42,240
Speaker 1: can at least get good clues about whether there would

556
00:29:42,240 --> 00:29:46,080
Speaker 1: have been windows of opportunity for it, Right, Yeah, According

557
00:29:46,080 --> 00:29:48,840
Speaker 1: to a Sanjay Limay and co authors in a two

558
00:29:48,880 --> 00:29:52,880
Speaker 1: thousand eighteen astrobiology paper Venus could have boasted a habitable

559
00:29:52,880 --> 00:29:56,040
Speaker 1: climate and liquid water for as long as two billion years.

560
00:29:56,560 --> 00:29:59,560
Speaker 1: That's that's that's longer than it might have occurred on

561
00:29:59,640 --> 00:30:02,560
Speaker 1: march Us. So you have a pretty pretty long period

562
00:30:02,560 --> 00:30:05,760
Speaker 1: of time there. Uh, that is enough time based on

563
00:30:05,800 --> 00:30:11,000
Speaker 1: our terrestrial model, for at least simple life to emerge. Yeah.

564
00:30:11,080 --> 00:30:14,200
Speaker 1: Now if you look at that period of time on Earth,

565
00:30:14,560 --> 00:30:17,800
Speaker 1: you're not really getting beyond single celled organisms. Yeah. I

566
00:30:17,840 --> 00:30:20,320
Speaker 1: mean to put that in perspective. Two billion years of

567
00:30:20,360 --> 00:30:22,720
Speaker 1: life on Earth was enough to get us from the

568
00:30:22,840 --> 00:30:26,440
Speaker 1: deep sea vent life to single celled life, you know,

569
00:30:26,560 --> 00:30:28,400
Speaker 1: be able to get us to photo since this and

570
00:30:28,680 --> 00:30:32,040
Speaker 1: atmospheric oxygen. But you need another one point five billion

571
00:30:32,120 --> 00:30:35,440
Speaker 1: years of Earth life to get to like multicellular life

572
00:30:35,440 --> 00:30:39,080
Speaker 1: and sexual reproduction. So is there based on the Earth model,

573
00:30:39,160 --> 00:30:42,640
Speaker 1: was their life on Venus? Maybe? Was there sex on Venus?

574
00:30:42,720 --> 00:30:46,080
Speaker 1: Probably not, but maybe maybe? Okay, imagine on Venus for

575
00:30:46,120 --> 00:30:49,640
Speaker 1: some reason, life evolves faster, Maybe there's maybe there's a

576
00:30:49,640 --> 00:30:53,000
Speaker 1: faster mutation rate, something like that. I want to by

577
00:30:53,040 --> 00:30:55,040
Speaker 1: the end of this episode, I want to be imagining

578
00:30:55,440 --> 00:30:57,520
Speaker 1: what it could have been like if there was fully

579
00:30:57,560 --> 00:31:00,800
Speaker 1: evolved intelligent civilization on Venus that doesn't now just paved

580
00:31:00,920 --> 00:31:04,080
Speaker 1: over by volcanic activity and we can't see any trace

581
00:31:04,120 --> 00:31:06,600
Speaker 1: of it. Well, it would be a shame, wouldn't that

582
00:31:06,760 --> 00:31:09,480
Speaker 1: the planet name for the goddess of Love would have

583
00:31:09,840 --> 00:31:13,400
Speaker 1: never known sexual reproduction it was just all a sexual

584
00:31:13,560 --> 00:31:16,880
Speaker 1: That would be a cruel irony. Well anyway, So we've

585
00:31:16,880 --> 00:31:19,560
Speaker 1: been exploring this question of whether whether life could have

586
00:31:19,560 --> 00:31:22,280
Speaker 1: existed on Venus in the past, but we should transition

587
00:31:22,320 --> 00:31:26,200
Speaker 1: to talk about whether life exists on Venus today. Yeah,

588
00:31:26,200 --> 00:31:29,920
Speaker 1: because this is where we really get into the the

589
00:31:29,920 --> 00:31:34,400
Speaker 1: the imagination capturing aspects of of of exploring Venus, the

590
00:31:34,440 --> 00:31:37,200
Speaker 1: idea that we could send something there, some sort of

591
00:31:37,240 --> 00:31:42,320
Speaker 1: probe and discover life like actually harness and study an

592
00:31:42,360 --> 00:31:47,120
Speaker 1: example of of life on another world. Now you're probably thinking, no,

593
00:31:47,280 --> 00:31:50,080
Speaker 1: wait a second. Earlier, didn't you say that the surface

594
00:31:50,080 --> 00:31:54,120
Speaker 1: of Venus had ninety times the pressure of Earth's atmosphere

595
00:31:54,160 --> 00:31:57,640
Speaker 1: at the surface and was like five hundred degrees celsius

596
00:31:57,720 --> 00:32:00,840
Speaker 1: or like nine hundred degrees fahrenheit. So you may be

597
00:32:00,960 --> 00:32:04,160
Speaker 1: thinking skeptically, you're not suggesting that life exists on the

598
00:32:04,200 --> 00:32:07,480
Speaker 1: surface of Venus, or are you will not on the surface.

599
00:32:07,480 --> 00:32:09,520
Speaker 1: We've got to get our heads in the clouds. That's

600
00:32:09,520 --> 00:32:11,880
Speaker 1: where things become more tolerable, at least in terms of

601
00:32:11,920 --> 00:32:14,760
Speaker 1: modern Venus. All right, we will explore that when we

602
00:32:14,800 --> 00:32:19,520
Speaker 1: come back from this break. Than alright, we're back. We've

603
00:32:19,520 --> 00:32:23,440
Speaker 1: been talking about the conditions on Venus as we know

604
00:32:23,520 --> 00:32:28,320
Speaker 1: them today, conditions on Venus in the ancient past. And

605
00:32:28,640 --> 00:32:32,560
Speaker 1: the big question was their life on Venus and is

606
00:32:32,600 --> 00:32:35,080
Speaker 1: their life on Venus. So we've speculated on the possibility

607
00:32:35,080 --> 00:32:37,920
Speaker 1: that there could have been life on Venus in its

608
00:32:37,920 --> 00:32:42,080
Speaker 1: ancient oceans, if they existed. But when we look at

609
00:32:42,080 --> 00:32:47,000
Speaker 1: the planet today, the surface again is just an intolerable hellscape.

610
00:32:47,280 --> 00:32:49,400
Speaker 1: But when we get up into the clouds, that's where

611
00:32:49,400 --> 00:32:53,720
Speaker 1: we start seeing uh conditions that makes sense for life

612
00:32:53,760 --> 00:32:55,720
Speaker 1: as we know it now, to be fair to the

613
00:32:55,760 --> 00:32:58,160
Speaker 1: surface of Venus. Of course, the surface of Venus, like

614
00:32:58,280 --> 00:33:00,800
Speaker 1: the surface of Earth, is not actually the same from

615
00:33:00,840 --> 00:33:04,080
Speaker 1: equator to poll right, yeah. It. In fact, it has

616
00:33:04,120 --> 00:33:08,400
Speaker 1: been proposed that Venus might boast acidic polar cs. Back

617
00:33:08,400 --> 00:33:11,880
Speaker 1: in nine seventy, Joseph sec Bach and W. F. Libby

618
00:33:12,040 --> 00:33:16,040
Speaker 1: suggested that photosynthetic life could exist in such an environment,

619
00:33:16,280 --> 00:33:19,440
Speaker 1: based on experiments with algae grown in pure C O

620
00:33:19,560 --> 00:33:24,160
Speaker 1: two under pressure with an accidic nutrient medium at elevated temperatures.

621
00:33:24,200 --> 00:33:27,360
Speaker 1: And I mean we've seen extreme aphile organisms on Earth

622
00:33:27,400 --> 00:33:31,720
Speaker 1: that survive in in highly pressurized environments and very very

623
00:33:31,720 --> 00:33:36,480
Speaker 1: hot environments, that live in geysers or around geothermal vents.

624
00:33:36,520 --> 00:33:40,400
Speaker 1: You know, these are conditions of life that US surface

625
00:33:40,440 --> 00:33:43,480
Speaker 1: dwelling land lovers can't really imagine. But certain single healed

626
00:33:43,600 --> 00:33:46,960
Speaker 1: organisms are simpler life forms have evolved to specialize in

627
00:33:47,000 --> 00:33:50,120
Speaker 1: these types of extreme conditions. They're usually called extreme aphiles.

628
00:33:50,120 --> 00:33:52,040
Speaker 1: Now we don't know if that's actually possible in the

629
00:33:52,080 --> 00:33:54,479
Speaker 1: surface of Venus. I mean, the surface of Venus is

630
00:33:54,880 --> 00:33:57,480
Speaker 1: maybe too extreme for even the most extreme extreme a

631
00:33:57,560 --> 00:34:00,640
Speaker 1: file you can imagine. But the tolerances of life, if

632
00:34:00,640 --> 00:34:03,600
Speaker 1: you expand your definition of life, go far beyond what

633
00:34:03,640 --> 00:34:05,840
Speaker 1: you might imagine just looking at the life forms that

634
00:34:05,840 --> 00:34:09,359
Speaker 1: inhabit You're nearby forests, are looking into a tide pool. Yeah, yeah,

635
00:34:09,360 --> 00:34:11,160
Speaker 1: I mean, certainly when you start looking at a deep

636
00:34:11,200 --> 00:34:16,080
Speaker 1: hydrothermal vent uh environments you start looking at the creatures

637
00:34:16,120 --> 00:34:20,640
Speaker 1: that thrive there, it does shift your expectations a little.

638
00:34:20,920 --> 00:34:23,160
Speaker 1: And then also when you get outside of because when

639
00:34:23,200 --> 00:34:24,480
Speaker 1: you look at those vents. I think one of the

640
00:34:24,520 --> 00:34:27,439
Speaker 1: things about deep hydrothermal of vent environments that are really

641
00:34:27,480 --> 00:34:29,920
Speaker 1: captivating is you get to see things like the hof crab,

642
00:34:30,440 --> 00:34:33,200
Speaker 1: you know, the it's not really a crab, it's more

643
00:34:33,239 --> 00:34:37,239
Speaker 1: a variety of lobster. But these pale crustaceans that that

644
00:34:37,440 --> 00:34:41,680
Speaker 1: swarm around these vents. Um Like that captures our imagination

645
00:34:41,680 --> 00:34:43,120
Speaker 1: because we can say, we can look at that and

646
00:34:43,160 --> 00:34:45,000
Speaker 1: we can say, okay, it's a crab, it's an animal.

647
00:34:45,480 --> 00:34:48,080
Speaker 1: Uh I can I can relate to that more. But

648
00:34:48,120 --> 00:34:51,160
Speaker 1: when you're just breaking it down to to to to

649
00:34:51,320 --> 00:34:57,320
Speaker 1: microbes and simpler life forms, then it's um. It's it's life,

650
00:34:57,560 --> 00:34:59,239
Speaker 1: but it's not the it's not the kind of of

651
00:34:59,360 --> 00:35:02,520
Speaker 1: life that we necessarily dream about discovering on other world

652
00:35:02,960 --> 00:35:05,440
Speaker 1: I'm sorry I haven't heard your last couple of sentences, Robert,

653
00:35:05,440 --> 00:35:07,799
Speaker 1: because you got me googling half crept. Yeah, the half

654
00:35:07,800 --> 00:35:11,600
Speaker 1: crabs are incredible. There's like squat little lobster creatures. It

655
00:35:11,640 --> 00:35:16,880
Speaker 1: looks like a mountain of skulls. Is like on a

656
00:35:16,960 --> 00:35:19,359
Speaker 1: mountain of skulls in the Castle of Pain, I sat

657
00:35:19,400 --> 00:35:22,560
Speaker 1: on a throne of blood. Yeah, basically they're there if

658
00:35:22,560 --> 00:35:25,000
Speaker 1: you look at pictures of these guys, they're jocking position

659
00:35:25,560 --> 00:35:28,160
Speaker 1: for their jocking for position in order to get closest

660
00:35:28,200 --> 00:35:32,080
Speaker 1: to the superheated water because that's where they're going to

661
00:35:32,160 --> 00:35:35,360
Speaker 1: find the little creatures that they eat. This is crazy.

662
00:35:35,360 --> 00:35:37,960
Speaker 1: I've never seen that. Well anyway, I'm sorry, but yes, yes,

663
00:35:38,000 --> 00:35:40,319
Speaker 1: so I should acknowledge your point. The more willing we

664
00:35:40,360 --> 00:35:43,759
Speaker 1: are to think of organisms less and less inherently like us,

665
00:35:44,400 --> 00:35:48,560
Speaker 1: the farther out into the extremes of physics and of

666
00:35:48,719 --> 00:35:51,680
Speaker 1: nature that life can extend. Yeah, as they said earlier,

667
00:35:52,400 --> 00:35:54,960
Speaker 1: we really have to look at the clouds, the the

668
00:35:55,080 --> 00:35:57,120
Speaker 1: atmosphere of Venus. That is where you can get away

669
00:35:57,120 --> 00:36:00,200
Speaker 1: from those hellish surface conditions and you encounter on our

670
00:36:00,760 --> 00:36:03,640
Speaker 1: conditions that are are far more in line with what

671
00:36:03,680 --> 00:36:08,520
Speaker 1: we typically think of his life sustaining conditions. Grinspoon has

672
00:36:08,520 --> 00:36:10,960
Speaker 1: written a number of papers on this. He points out

673
00:36:11,000 --> 00:36:13,480
Speaker 1: that there are pockets of Venus that you quote can't

674
00:36:13,480 --> 00:36:16,160
Speaker 1: completely rule out his habitats for life based on what

675
00:36:16,239 --> 00:36:18,960
Speaker 1: we know, and in particular, the clouds of Venus are

676
00:36:18,960 --> 00:36:22,279
Speaker 1: really interesting environments because, unlike the surface, they are not

677
00:36:22,320 --> 00:36:25,800
Speaker 1: particularly hot, and they are a continuous and sort of

678
00:36:25,880 --> 00:36:29,960
Speaker 1: chemically and energetically lively environment in terms of the sort

679
00:36:30,000 --> 00:36:35,240
Speaker 1: of availability of possible nutrients and availability of energy sources

680
00:36:35,320 --> 00:36:39,800
Speaker 1: and liquid media and the biogenic elements. And he also

681
00:36:39,840 --> 00:36:42,520
Speaker 1: pointed out this is this I found super interesting. In

682
00:36:42,560 --> 00:36:48,440
Speaker 1: his book Venus Revealed, he proposed that a photosynthetic pigment

683
00:36:48,880 --> 00:36:53,600
Speaker 1: may serve as the quote unknown ultra violent absorber. Uh.

684
00:36:53,600 --> 00:36:55,759
Speaker 1: And this is this is what may represent one of

685
00:36:55,800 --> 00:36:59,960
Speaker 1: four possible signs of life on Venus, along with absorbed

686
00:37:00,160 --> 00:37:02,799
Speaker 1: of solar energy by micro organisms as a driving force

687
00:37:02,840 --> 00:37:06,360
Speaker 1: for super rotation, the presence of larger and irregularly shaped

688
00:37:06,400 --> 00:37:10,600
Speaker 1: cloud particles that maybe quote unquote creatures, and the presence

689
00:37:10,600 --> 00:37:13,839
Speaker 1: of of bright radar signatures on the mountaintops which may

690
00:37:13,880 --> 00:37:16,040
Speaker 1: be covered with life. So that's another thing to keep

691
00:37:16,080 --> 00:37:19,440
Speaker 1: in mind when you're talking about the hellish surface of Venus.

692
00:37:19,880 --> 00:37:22,880
Speaker 1: There are there are peaks, there are places that are

693
00:37:22,880 --> 00:37:27,279
Speaker 1: gonna be be elevated from the from the truly like

694
00:37:27,400 --> 00:37:32,080
Speaker 1: pressure cooker environment that you find find lower down. Absolutely,

695
00:37:32,080 --> 00:37:35,000
Speaker 1: And I think in your talk with the Susanne Smurkar,

696
00:37:35,160 --> 00:37:39,520
Speaker 1: she also mentioned that the cloud environments of Venus could

697
00:37:39,520 --> 00:37:43,680
Speaker 1: host microbes, right, yeah, Yeah. The interesting thing is this

698
00:37:43,760 --> 00:37:46,719
Speaker 1: isn't crazy, Like we don't often stop to consider this,

699
00:37:46,760 --> 00:37:50,320
Speaker 1: but here on Earth, life is actually not confined strictly

700
00:37:50,360 --> 00:37:52,719
Speaker 1: to the surface of the planet and the water that's

701
00:37:52,760 --> 00:37:55,040
Speaker 1: beneath the oceans. You know, of course, we know we've

702
00:37:55,080 --> 00:37:57,480
Speaker 1: got flying birds and so forth, But there's plenty of

703
00:37:57,520 --> 00:38:00,360
Speaker 1: evidence that if you were to fly up into the

704
00:38:00,360 --> 00:38:02,440
Speaker 1: clouds and sort of take a bite out of a cloud,

705
00:38:02,880 --> 00:38:05,440
Speaker 1: you would probably end up with some life forms in

706
00:38:05,440 --> 00:38:09,839
Speaker 1: your mouth. Yeah, breathe deep, Yeah, dirty clouds. Uh. There's

707
00:38:09,880 --> 00:38:12,960
Speaker 1: a great article by Leslie Evans Ogden called Life in

708
00:38:13,000 --> 00:38:17,560
Speaker 1: the Clouds in the October issue of Bioscience. Uh. This

709
00:38:17,600 --> 00:38:19,719
Speaker 1: is a fun read and it talks about clouds full

710
00:38:19,719 --> 00:38:25,200
Speaker 1: of bacterium called Pseudomonas syringe a. It's bacteria that seemed

711
00:38:25,200 --> 00:38:29,080
Speaker 1: to float up into the clouds and perhaps spur ice nucleation,

712
00:38:29,480 --> 00:38:31,919
Speaker 1: which gives them enough weight to come falling back down

713
00:38:31,960 --> 00:38:34,520
Speaker 1: to the surface. And the article discusses the idea that

714
00:38:34,840 --> 00:38:38,000
Speaker 1: microorganisms living in clouds might play a major role in

715
00:38:38,200 --> 00:38:40,920
Speaker 1: weather and rain cycles on Earth, and this is known

716
00:38:40,920 --> 00:38:44,680
Speaker 1: as the bio precipitation theory. Yeah, people often forget that

717
00:38:44,719 --> 00:38:48,920
Speaker 1: when you're dealing with drops of precipitation, rain, snow, frost, etcetera.

718
00:38:49,200 --> 00:38:51,400
Speaker 1: It has to form around something, it has to condense

719
00:38:51,440 --> 00:38:54,480
Speaker 1: around something. There has to be a starting point, and

720
00:38:54,640 --> 00:38:58,680
Speaker 1: that point can be a microbe. Yeah and yeah, and

721
00:38:58,719 --> 00:39:01,680
Speaker 1: so it's obviously the case that with very light microbes,

722
00:39:01,760 --> 00:39:04,200
Speaker 1: they contend to be buoyant within the atmosphere. Like a

723
00:39:04,480 --> 00:39:07,600
Speaker 1: turbulent air current can churn up a bunch of dust

724
00:39:07,760 --> 00:39:10,480
Speaker 1: that has microbes living within it, and that can get

725
00:39:10,560 --> 00:39:13,400
Speaker 1: sent up into the atmosphere and suddenly you are a

726
00:39:13,480 --> 00:39:16,600
Speaker 1: macro organism that is miles above the ground and you're

727
00:39:16,719 --> 00:39:18,920
Speaker 1: up here in the cloud. How are you going to

728
00:39:19,000 --> 00:39:21,399
Speaker 1: get back down to a place that's better for you

729
00:39:21,480 --> 00:39:24,680
Speaker 1: in terms of reproduction, because the upper atmosphere of Earth

730
00:39:24,719 --> 00:39:27,120
Speaker 1: is probably not a good home for micro organisms on

731
00:39:27,160 --> 00:39:29,920
Speaker 1: a permanent basis. Right high up in the atmosphere is

732
00:39:29,960 --> 00:39:32,560
Speaker 1: often very cold, they can be very dry, you can

733
00:39:32,600 --> 00:39:36,799
Speaker 1: get desiccated if you're a cellular organism that needs liquid water,

734
00:39:37,160 --> 00:39:40,120
Speaker 1: and there's exposure to high levels of UV radiation from

735
00:39:40,120 --> 00:39:42,400
Speaker 1: the sun, which of course can burn your life away.

736
00:39:42,680 --> 00:39:44,279
Speaker 1: But it's a great plate way to get from one

737
00:39:44,280 --> 00:39:45,919
Speaker 1: place to the other. Right It's kind of like when

738
00:39:46,000 --> 00:39:49,680
Speaker 1: humans fly up into the upper atmosphere. It's it's it's

739
00:39:49,719 --> 00:39:52,799
Speaker 1: about getting from one point on the surface to another

740
00:39:52,840 --> 00:39:55,200
Speaker 1: point on the surface. Yeah, that's actually really interesting. It's

741
00:39:55,200 --> 00:39:58,920
Speaker 1: been sort of hypothesized that what if air currents like

742
00:39:58,960 --> 00:40:02,239
Speaker 1: the jet stream in a way, can could function to

743
00:40:02,480 --> 00:40:08,680
Speaker 1: transport interesting bacterial mutations from one population of of bacteria

744
00:40:08,760 --> 00:40:11,960
Speaker 1: somewhere to another, sort of like a gene conveyor belt.

745
00:40:12,680 --> 00:40:15,400
Speaker 1: But even if it is useful for for the genetic

746
00:40:15,400 --> 00:40:18,680
Speaker 1: diversity of a bacterial population around the world, like that,

747
00:40:19,360 --> 00:40:22,359
Speaker 1: microorganisms that travel in the Earth's clouds don't generally want

748
00:40:22,400 --> 00:40:26,200
Speaker 1: to live there forever. But Venus's atmosphere is actually not

749
00:40:26,239 --> 00:40:29,240
Speaker 1: the same as Earth's, as we've been discussing, and despite

750
00:40:29,280 --> 00:40:33,120
Speaker 1: how hostile Venus is, in many ways, Venus's atmosphere might

751
00:40:33,160 --> 00:40:37,680
Speaker 1: be a better place for organisms than Earth's atmosphere. Organisms

752
00:40:37,680 --> 00:40:40,080
Speaker 1: that might dwell within it, of course, are also different

753
00:40:40,200 --> 00:40:42,719
Speaker 1: from the organisms that live on Earth and might make

754
00:40:42,760 --> 00:40:46,040
Speaker 1: their living in a different biochemical way. So, Robert, you

755
00:40:46,080 --> 00:40:48,600
Speaker 1: mentioned a paper earlier by Sanjay Lemia at All, the

756
00:40:48,640 --> 00:40:53,640
Speaker 1: one that's in astrobiology this year, and that the earlier

757
00:40:53,719 --> 00:40:55,360
Speaker 1: thing that we talked about from that paper was the

758
00:40:55,400 --> 00:40:58,760
Speaker 1: conclusion that Venus might have had oceans for two billion years,

759
00:40:58,800 --> 00:41:01,520
Speaker 1: which you give plenty of time for organisms to possibly

760
00:41:01,600 --> 00:41:04,759
Speaker 1: evolved there. But the authors of this paper also talk

761
00:41:04,840 --> 00:41:08,080
Speaker 1: about the possibility that there are organisms living in the

762
00:41:08,120 --> 00:41:11,440
Speaker 1: clouds of Venus today, just like Grinspoon was talking about.

763
00:41:11,440 --> 00:41:13,640
Speaker 1: So the authors note that there are lots of good

764
00:41:13,680 --> 00:41:17,400
Speaker 1: reasons to look for life forms in the lower cloud

765
00:41:17,520 --> 00:41:20,440
Speaker 1: layer of Venus, which is about forty seven point five

766
00:41:20,560 --> 00:41:23,920
Speaker 1: to fifty point five kilometers from the surface. Now, if

767
00:41:23,960 --> 00:41:26,520
Speaker 1: you look at this layer of the atmosphere, it's got

768
00:41:26,600 --> 00:41:30,000
Speaker 1: very moderate temperatures roughly sixty degrees celsius, which is about

769
00:41:30,040 --> 00:41:33,480
Speaker 1: a hundred and forty degrees fahrenheit. It's got moderate pressure,

770
00:41:33,480 --> 00:41:38,640
Speaker 1: it's like one Earth atmosphere roughly, it's got moderate radiation exposure.

771
00:41:38,680 --> 00:41:41,600
Speaker 1: They write that the UV levels in the upper atmosphere

772
00:41:41,600 --> 00:41:44,279
Speaker 1: of Venus are probably similar to the UV levels of

773
00:41:44,320 --> 00:41:47,399
Speaker 1: the Archaean Earth's surface, where of course we know micro

774
00:41:47,560 --> 00:41:51,480
Speaker 1: organisms thrived without being destroyed by radiation. And they mentioned

775
00:41:51,480 --> 00:41:55,759
Speaker 1: that it has quote micron sized sulfuric acid aerosols, which

776
00:41:55,760 --> 00:42:01,240
Speaker 1: are water droplets containing sulfuric acid dispersed throughout the cloud. Yeah. Really,

777
00:42:01,239 --> 00:42:04,280
Speaker 1: when you when you think about it, the the atmosphere

778
00:42:04,280 --> 00:42:06,719
Speaker 1: of Venus is kind of it's more it's more like

779
00:42:06,760 --> 00:42:10,040
Speaker 1: the surface of Earth in many respects, you know, uh,

780
00:42:10,200 --> 00:42:12,879
Speaker 1: or at least what we think without a ground. Yes,

781
00:42:12,960 --> 00:42:16,439
Speaker 1: but but really when you when you think of Earth though,

782
00:42:16,800 --> 00:42:18,200
Speaker 1: I think of the fact when if you're dealing with

783
00:42:18,239 --> 00:42:21,520
Speaker 1: the hard surface of Earth, most of the hard surface

784
00:42:21,520 --> 00:42:24,520
Speaker 1: of Earth is a is it is it is a cold,

785
00:42:24,800 --> 00:42:29,839
Speaker 1: lightless desert environment. Uh, that is underneath the ocean. That's

786
00:42:29,840 --> 00:42:31,640
Speaker 1: a very good point. Maybe you should think about the

787
00:42:31,680 --> 00:42:35,359
Speaker 1: atmosphere of Venus being less like the atmosphere of Earth

788
00:42:35,360 --> 00:42:38,200
Speaker 1: and more like the waters of the oceans on Earth.

789
00:42:38,880 --> 00:42:41,000
Speaker 1: But anyway, all of this that we've been saying so

790
00:42:41,040 --> 00:42:44,120
Speaker 1: far is just to the point that it's not impossible

791
00:42:44,239 --> 00:42:47,680
Speaker 1: that there could be microorganisms living within the clouds in Venus.

792
00:42:47,760 --> 00:42:50,560
Speaker 1: You know, there there are some favorable conditions. Are there

793
00:42:50,600 --> 00:42:54,680
Speaker 1: any positive reasons to think that there might be organisms there? Well,

794
00:42:54,680 --> 00:42:57,799
Speaker 1: this comes back to the unknown you v absorber that

795
00:42:57,840 --> 00:43:01,759
Speaker 1: we talked about earlier, Right, So, there this thing that

796
00:43:01,800 --> 00:43:05,440
Speaker 1: we have observed embedded within the Venusian clouds. So let

797
00:43:05,440 --> 00:43:07,719
Speaker 1: me think that, yeah, there could be alien bacteria in

798
00:43:07,719 --> 00:43:10,759
Speaker 1: the clouds, and and when we were looking at the

799
00:43:10,840 --> 00:43:14,359
Speaker 1: unknown UV absorber, this could be it. So NASA has

800
00:43:14,400 --> 00:43:18,760
Speaker 1: studied the the unknown UV absorber for some time, and

801
00:43:18,760 --> 00:43:23,080
Speaker 1: basically we're talking about an atmospheric anomaly that where we

802
00:43:23,120 --> 00:43:26,160
Speaker 1: see UV light being absorbed by something. Right. In general,

803
00:43:26,280 --> 00:43:29,400
Speaker 1: Venus is highly reflective. It's a bright planet, like it

804
00:43:29,600 --> 00:43:32,200
Speaker 1: shines things back out into space when the sun shines

805
00:43:32,239 --> 00:43:34,799
Speaker 1: on it, and the clouds that surround it reflect a

806
00:43:34,840 --> 00:43:37,640
Speaker 1: lot of sunlight. But there is this weird, mysterious UV

807
00:43:37,880 --> 00:43:42,080
Speaker 1: absorption then creating this contrast within the clouds. They're dark

808
00:43:42,239 --> 00:43:46,120
Speaker 1: patches and patterns within the reflective clouds. And the question is, well,

809
00:43:46,120 --> 00:43:48,239
Speaker 1: what could that be? Now we can say what it

810
00:43:48,480 --> 00:43:51,080
Speaker 1: almost certainly is not. It's not going to be say,

811
00:43:51,120 --> 00:43:56,560
Speaker 1: giant atmospheric like manta rays or anything like that. You know,

812
00:43:56,640 --> 00:43:59,400
Speaker 1: it's not going to be space whales in the atmosphere

813
00:43:59,440 --> 00:44:03,280
Speaker 1: of Venus. Uh. But it could potentially be like clouds

814
00:44:03,280 --> 00:44:07,640
Speaker 1: of micro organisms, like colonies of microorganisms kind of you know,

815
00:44:07,640 --> 00:44:10,319
Speaker 1: not not to exaggerated too much, but kind of like

816
00:44:10,360 --> 00:44:13,760
Speaker 1: the krill of Venus, but with no whales coming around

817
00:44:13,760 --> 00:44:15,879
Speaker 1: to scoop them up. No, that's a very very good

818
00:44:15,880 --> 00:44:18,879
Speaker 1: point of comparison. Actually, people, in fact, the scientists who

819
00:44:18,880 --> 00:44:21,600
Speaker 1: worked on this have compared it to the way you

820
00:44:21,600 --> 00:44:24,640
Speaker 1: would look at algal blooms and bodies of water here

821
00:44:24,680 --> 00:44:27,520
Speaker 1: on Earth. Uh. That that's a good point of comparison,

822
00:44:27,560 --> 00:44:30,120
Speaker 1: because one of the most interesting things about these dark

823
00:44:30,160 --> 00:44:33,800
Speaker 1: patches is that they have this kind of shimmering, moving

824
00:44:33,880 --> 00:44:36,320
Speaker 1: kind of quality to them. Uh. A quote from Lemo

825
00:44:36,360 --> 00:44:39,120
Speaker 1: which he gave in a uh in a press releases,

826
00:44:39,160 --> 00:44:43,399
Speaker 1: he said, quote, Venus shows some episodic dark sulfuric rich

827
00:44:43,520 --> 00:44:47,320
Speaker 1: patches which contrasts up to thirty in the ultra violet

828
00:44:47,560 --> 00:44:51,440
Speaker 1: and muted in longer wavelengths. These patches persist for days,

829
00:44:51,600 --> 00:44:55,880
Speaker 1: changing their shape and contrasts continuously and appear to be

830
00:44:56,080 --> 00:44:59,720
Speaker 1: scale dependent. So yeah, they're they've got this weird dynamic

831
00:45:00,040 --> 00:45:03,000
Speaker 1: quality to them, just like a bloom of organisms in

832
00:45:03,040 --> 00:45:05,480
Speaker 1: ocean water might. Now. I know some of you are

833
00:45:05,480 --> 00:45:08,040
Speaker 1: probably remembering, well, you said that there are sulphuric acid

834
00:45:08,040 --> 00:45:10,360
Speaker 1: clouds up there. How is life thriving up there? What?

835
00:45:10,960 --> 00:45:13,839
Speaker 1: One of the points that the Lamait makes is that, well,

836
00:45:13,840 --> 00:45:16,560
Speaker 1: if you consider the fact that life on Earth as

837
00:45:16,600 --> 00:45:19,080
Speaker 1: we know it can thrive in acidic conditions, that it

838
00:45:19,160 --> 00:45:22,480
Speaker 1: can feed on CO two and produce sulphuric acid. Uh,

839
00:45:22,719 --> 00:45:26,360
Speaker 1: it all lines up with the environments that we we

840
00:45:26,360 --> 00:45:29,879
Speaker 1: we know to exist in the in the atmosphere of Venus. Yeah. Now,

841
00:45:30,040 --> 00:45:32,440
Speaker 1: to be clear, we're not saying that this is evidence

842
00:45:32,520 --> 00:45:35,800
Speaker 1: that there is definitely, you know, life in the clouds

843
00:45:35,800 --> 00:45:37,920
Speaker 1: of Venus. It's just that there's a lot of interesting

844
00:45:37,960 --> 00:45:42,200
Speaker 1: evidence that would line up with their being patches of

845
00:45:42,280 --> 00:45:45,319
Speaker 1: micro organisms in the clouds of Venus that are making

846
00:45:45,320 --> 00:45:47,839
Speaker 1: their living this way. Now, there there are other options too.

847
00:45:47,920 --> 00:45:50,040
Speaker 1: It could be chemical, right, maybe you've got patches of

848
00:45:50,080 --> 00:45:54,440
Speaker 1: sulfur dioxide and iron chloride absorbing u V in the atmosphere.

849
00:45:54,480 --> 00:45:57,440
Speaker 1: But that doesn't necessarily seem to explain everything we observe,

850
00:45:57,480 --> 00:46:01,440
Speaker 1: at least not to Laman the co authors. So there

851
00:46:01,480 --> 00:46:05,000
Speaker 1: are these light absorbing particles dispersed in clouds, and we

852
00:46:05,080 --> 00:46:08,920
Speaker 1: don't know for sure what they are. The idea that

853
00:46:08,960 --> 00:46:12,520
Speaker 1: their microorganisms is a very elegant and exciting hypothesis. But

854
00:46:12,640 --> 00:46:14,680
Speaker 1: is there any way we could test this to see

855
00:46:14,719 --> 00:46:18,440
Speaker 1: if it's true. There is, and we should note we

856
00:46:18,480 --> 00:46:21,600
Speaker 1: haven't gotten detested because anything we've sent through has just

857
00:46:21,760 --> 00:46:25,319
Speaker 1: has not has not had the the the equipment, or

858
00:46:25,719 --> 00:46:28,000
Speaker 1: or it has not spent the necessary amount of time

859
00:46:28,000 --> 00:46:32,080
Speaker 1: in the atmosphere. But there is at least one really

860
00:46:32,120 --> 00:46:35,759
Speaker 1: awesome proposal for studying the atmosphere of Venus, and it

861
00:46:35,800 --> 00:46:41,239
Speaker 1: involves Shatner. No, it involves vamps. Vamps, yes, and by

862
00:46:41,320 --> 00:46:44,880
Speaker 1: vamps I don't mean the space vampires of of our

863
00:46:45,320 --> 00:46:49,960
Speaker 1: favorite Toby Hooper movie Life Force. Life Force. Yes. Oh,

864
00:46:50,040 --> 00:46:53,600
Speaker 1: I thought you were gonna say Planet of the Vampires. No, No,

865
00:46:53,680 --> 00:46:56,400
Speaker 1: it doesn't involve those space vampires either, though that is

866
00:46:56,640 --> 00:46:58,680
Speaker 1: that is also a good one. Man. I love Planet

867
00:46:58,680 --> 00:47:00,640
Speaker 1: of the Vampires. They got the best bass suits, and

868
00:47:00,640 --> 00:47:03,560
Speaker 1: they do they're so styled leather space suits. But this

869
00:47:03,280 --> 00:47:06,000
Speaker 1: is this is pretty stylish too. I think, if if you'll,

870
00:47:06,239 --> 00:47:09,200
Speaker 1: if you'll allow me here to discuss the venous atmospheric

871
00:47:09,280 --> 00:47:12,800
Speaker 1: maneuverable platform or VAMP please do Robert, which is a

872
00:47:12,880 --> 00:47:18,200
Speaker 1: proposed Northrop Grumman planetary exploration vehicle, and you should. You

873
00:47:18,239 --> 00:47:19,840
Speaker 1: used to look up images of this at home. It

874
00:47:19,880 --> 00:47:23,080
Speaker 1: looks kind of like a flying wing, which is interesting

875
00:47:23,120 --> 00:47:27,240
Speaker 1: considering that Northrop Grumman made the original flying wing aircraft,

876
00:47:27,320 --> 00:47:30,959
Speaker 1: the experimental y B thirty five and y B forty nine,

877
00:47:31,360 --> 00:47:34,680
Speaker 1: the former with propellers, the ladder with the jets uh

878
00:47:34,880 --> 00:47:37,200
Speaker 1: from the from the mid to late nineteen forties. I

879
00:47:37,200 --> 00:47:38,680
Speaker 1: don't think I know what those are? What are what

880
00:47:38,719 --> 00:47:42,160
Speaker 1: are they like? They essentially imagine a big boomerang as

881
00:47:42,640 --> 00:47:45,640
Speaker 1: a nineteen forties bomber, and that's what you have with

882
00:47:45,719 --> 00:47:48,080
Speaker 1: the YB thirty five and the YP forty nine. These

883
00:47:48,080 --> 00:47:50,680
Speaker 1: are military air yes, yeah, they were designed to be

884
00:47:50,719 --> 00:47:53,839
Speaker 1: big bombers, and Northrop Grumman later came back and did

885
00:47:53,840 --> 00:47:57,120
Speaker 1: the B two Spirit stealth bomber. So if you've seen

886
00:47:57,160 --> 00:48:00,400
Speaker 1: images of the stealth bomber, then you have seen flying

887
00:48:00,440 --> 00:48:04,640
Speaker 1: wing aircraft. Yeah. So they really like the idea of

888
00:48:04,520 --> 00:48:07,319
Speaker 1: a of a flying wing and in fact, this the

889
00:48:07,400 --> 00:48:12,360
Speaker 1: VAMPS concept involves sending one to Venus. So we're talking

890
00:48:12,400 --> 00:48:16,719
Speaker 1: about a propeller driven flying wing type of craft that's

891
00:48:16,760 --> 00:48:19,799
Speaker 1: solar powered and also semi buoyant. So it's kind of

892
00:48:20,000 --> 00:48:25,000
Speaker 1: a blimp plane hybrid, but it's a prop plane in Venus. Yeah, yeah,

893
00:48:25,000 --> 00:48:28,000
Speaker 1: it's a prop plane that this Yeah, I love the

894
00:48:28,040 --> 00:48:30,280
Speaker 1: idea that that one day we could have a propeller

895
00:48:30,360 --> 00:48:34,239
Speaker 1: driven vehicle in the atmosphere of Venus. Uh. It would

896
00:48:34,280 --> 00:48:36,600
Speaker 1: have about a hundred and eighty foot or fifty five

897
00:48:36,880 --> 00:48:39,719
Speaker 1: wing span. It would fly at a mac speed of

898
00:48:40,000 --> 00:48:42,839
Speaker 1: about thirty per second or sixty seven miles per hour,

899
00:48:43,200 --> 00:48:46,240
Speaker 1: and that it's desired altitude would would be something about

900
00:48:46,440 --> 00:48:49,160
Speaker 1: fifty to seventy kilometers or thirty to forty five miles

901
00:48:49,200 --> 00:48:52,239
Speaker 1: above the hard surface of the planet. All right, So

902
00:48:52,280 --> 00:48:55,280
Speaker 1: that would put it within access to that nice range

903
00:48:55,400 --> 00:48:59,000
Speaker 1: that Lama and colleagues were talking about, right. I should

904
00:48:59,000 --> 00:49:02,080
Speaker 1: also point out that this is what's categorized as a

905
00:49:02,280 --> 00:49:06,359
Speaker 1: lifting entry atmospheric flight system or a LEAF system, which

906
00:49:06,400 --> 00:49:11,239
Speaker 1: has also been proposed for explorations on Mars and Titan Uh.

907
00:49:11,280 --> 00:49:14,880
Speaker 1: But he here's here's just a quote from the material

908
00:49:14,960 --> 00:49:17,640
Speaker 1: that North of Grumman has on the VAMP project. The

909
00:49:17,719 --> 00:49:21,920
Speaker 1: VAMP is quote an aeroshell less hypersonic entry vehicle that

910
00:49:22,040 --> 00:49:26,040
Speaker 1: transitions to a semi buoyant, maneuverable solar powered air vehicle

911
00:49:26,320 --> 00:49:30,479
Speaker 1: for flight in Venus's atmosphere. So it's an atmospheric rover

912
00:49:30,920 --> 00:49:33,400
Speaker 1: and it could last for up to a year in

913
00:49:33,520 --> 00:49:37,640
Speaker 1: Venus's atmosphere, just flying through the upper and midcloud layers

914
00:49:37,680 --> 00:49:42,160
Speaker 1: equipped with with with the atmospheric sampling equipment, including equipment

915
00:49:42,160 --> 00:49:45,120
Speaker 1: that could help us determine if there are signs of

916
00:49:45,160 --> 00:49:50,080
Speaker 1: microbial life within the skies of Venus. Loving this for

917
00:49:50,160 --> 00:49:53,279
Speaker 1: multiple reasons. Number one, I of course always just love

918
00:49:53,320 --> 00:49:57,120
Speaker 1: good space exploration. Uh and and let's look for life.

919
00:49:57,200 --> 00:49:59,160
Speaker 1: Come on. But on top of that, since it's a

920
00:49:59,160 --> 00:50:02,680
Speaker 1: prop plane, I'm imagining it's got to also have a

921
00:50:02,800 --> 00:50:06,640
Speaker 1: surly mechanic with a big wrench sticking out of the overalls.

922
00:50:06,760 --> 00:50:11,000
Speaker 1: That's like working on it. Yeah, one would imagine, um

923
00:50:11,120 --> 00:50:14,480
Speaker 1: but kind of yellow and sulfur stand right. Yeah. I

924
00:50:14,520 --> 00:50:16,680
Speaker 1: do have to point out that it's very early days

925
00:50:16,680 --> 00:50:20,040
Speaker 1: still for for VAMP, but it is one of the options.

926
00:50:20,040 --> 00:50:24,080
Speaker 1: It's very much on the table for future exploration of Venus.

927
00:50:24,320 --> 00:50:26,680
Speaker 1: I like it, man, Yeah, And until we send something

928
00:50:26,719 --> 00:50:29,799
Speaker 1: like there, we just we can't say for certain when

929
00:50:29,840 --> 00:50:32,200
Speaker 1: it comes to the question of microbial life in the

930
00:50:32,239 --> 00:50:34,600
Speaker 1: clouds there. Well, I guess we'll just have to wait

931
00:50:34,640 --> 00:50:36,439
Speaker 1: and see. No, wait, we don't have to just wait

932
00:50:36,440 --> 00:50:39,600
Speaker 1: and see what we can We can publicly encourage space

933
00:50:39,640 --> 00:50:42,759
Speaker 1: exploration come on now, yeah, yeah, Now, earlier on we

934
00:50:42,760 --> 00:50:44,880
Speaker 1: were talking about the possibility of life in Venus and

935
00:50:44,920 --> 00:50:46,520
Speaker 1: you you want to step further, and you said, well,

936
00:50:46,520 --> 00:50:49,440
Speaker 1: what about intelligent life? Now, I know that's kind of

937
00:50:49,480 --> 00:50:54,759
Speaker 1: hard to imagine because let's say, according to these predictions

938
00:50:54,800 --> 00:50:57,520
Speaker 1: based on the papers we've been talking about today, that

939
00:50:57,600 --> 00:51:00,640
Speaker 1: maybe Venus had oceans for two billion years before the

940
00:51:00,680 --> 00:51:04,160
Speaker 1: runaway greenhouse effect killed all that we know from experience

941
00:51:04,200 --> 00:51:06,760
Speaker 1: in the history of the Earth that two billion years

942
00:51:06,760 --> 00:51:09,640
Speaker 1: of access to oceans is not enough time to evolve

943
00:51:09,719 --> 00:51:14,200
Speaker 1: complex multicellular organisms with brains and the ability to build

944
00:51:14,239 --> 00:51:16,759
Speaker 1: civilizations and all that. But let's just imagine things when

945
00:51:16,800 --> 00:51:20,160
Speaker 1: different there For some reason, maybe evolution happened faster. We

946
00:51:20,239 --> 00:51:25,439
Speaker 1: don't know. Um, what would things be like if say,

947
00:51:25,560 --> 00:51:28,520
Speaker 1: you have an intelligent civilization on a planet, maybe at

948
00:51:28,520 --> 00:51:32,520
Speaker 1: the level of technological achievement that human civilization is at

949
00:51:32,640 --> 00:51:37,200
Speaker 1: right now, and you realize all your scientists tell you, Okay,

950
00:51:37,239 --> 00:51:39,719
Speaker 1: we've got runaway greenhouse effect going on, We've got a

951
00:51:39,719 --> 00:51:43,520
Speaker 1: couple hundred years before things get intolerable on the surface

952
00:51:43,560 --> 00:51:48,000
Speaker 1: of this planet. What are you gonna do? And I wonder, well,

953
00:51:48,040 --> 00:51:50,279
Speaker 1: what could be done? I mean, is that just definitely

954
00:51:50,360 --> 00:51:53,319
Speaker 1: the end for the species? Or can you somehow try

955
00:51:53,320 --> 00:51:56,040
Speaker 1: to come up with some sustainable way to retreat to

956
00:51:56,080 --> 00:52:00,000
Speaker 1: the subterranean realm? Can you get can you get geothermal power?

957
00:52:00,000 --> 00:52:02,920
Speaker 1: Were uh, you know, I don't know, making lightbulbs for

958
00:52:02,960 --> 00:52:05,520
Speaker 1: you to grow plants down there. I I just like

959
00:52:05,600 --> 00:52:08,920
Speaker 1: wonder what's possible? How long can you survive on a

960
00:52:09,000 --> 00:52:13,120
Speaker 1: planet that doesn't want to host life on its surface anymore? Oh? Wow?

961
00:52:13,320 --> 00:52:16,719
Speaker 1: I mean, well, this is this is a wonderful sci

962
00:52:16,760 --> 00:52:19,520
Speaker 1: fi question. And you actually have some some fairly old

963
00:52:19,560 --> 00:52:22,680
Speaker 1: works that kind of explored a bit there. The old

964
00:52:22,800 --> 00:52:25,919
Speaker 1: William Hope Hodgson book The Night Lands. Oh I haven't

965
00:52:25,960 --> 00:52:30,200
Speaker 1: read that. It's um, it's tremendous work of early essentially

966
00:52:30,239 --> 00:52:34,680
Speaker 1: post apocalyptic literature in which the earth has grown dark.

967
00:52:35,320 --> 00:52:37,880
Speaker 1: It's it's the night Lands now. And there's this place

968
00:52:37,880 --> 00:52:40,160
Speaker 1: called the Last Rett Doubt. And so it's like a

969
00:52:40,160 --> 00:52:44,640
Speaker 1: pyramid and artificial uh structure created by humans, and it's

970
00:52:44,640 --> 00:52:48,920
Speaker 1: powered by hydrothermal power. And this is where essentially the

971
00:52:49,000 --> 00:52:54,960
Speaker 1: last remnants of humanity have have have assembled themselves and

972
00:52:55,400 --> 00:52:57,680
Speaker 1: tried to sort of hold on to life against the

973
00:52:58,200 --> 00:53:01,440
Speaker 1: darkness and the cold. Sounds bleak, Robert. It's pretty bleak.

974
00:53:01,920 --> 00:53:03,799
Speaker 1: It's it's it's kind of gorgeous in its own way,

975
00:53:03,840 --> 00:53:06,680
Speaker 1: but well, we're talking about a bleak concept. We're talking

976
00:53:06,760 --> 00:53:12,080
Speaker 1: about a life form losing its environment and having to

977
00:53:12,160 --> 00:53:14,799
Speaker 1: adapt to some sort of new take on life, either

978
00:53:14,880 --> 00:53:17,960
Speaker 1: by retreating into the darkness or finding a way to

979
00:53:18,000 --> 00:53:20,520
Speaker 1: live up in the clouds. Yeah. And then, of course

980
00:53:20,680 --> 00:53:23,839
Speaker 1: this is premised on the idea that if the scientists

981
00:53:23,840 --> 00:53:26,319
Speaker 1: of Venusian civilization did come to them and say, look,

982
00:53:26,320 --> 00:53:28,560
Speaker 1: we've only got a couple hundred years before, you know,

983
00:53:28,600 --> 00:53:30,719
Speaker 1: it's too hot to live on this planet anymore, would

984
00:53:30,760 --> 00:53:33,080
Speaker 1: people actually pay attention to them and do anything right?

985
00:53:33,080 --> 00:53:36,000
Speaker 1: It would kind of depend on what's the lifespan of

986
00:53:35,360 --> 00:53:39,600
Speaker 1: of the Venusian beings here. If it's like humans, then

987
00:53:39,960 --> 00:53:41,680
Speaker 1: if when you tell a human all right, we need

988
00:53:41,719 --> 00:53:44,120
Speaker 1: to do something because something bad happens in two hundred years,

989
00:53:44,239 --> 00:53:47,319
Speaker 1: they're going to say, well, I'm not going to be

990
00:53:47,320 --> 00:53:51,160
Speaker 1: alive for that, right. What's what's happening tomorrow, what's happening, uh,

991
00:53:51,200 --> 00:53:54,120
Speaker 1: the week after next, what's happening maybe next year. Because

992
00:53:55,239 --> 00:53:57,600
Speaker 1: we as a species don't have a great track record

993
00:53:57,640 --> 00:54:01,960
Speaker 1: for long term planning, we can maybe think, maybe thinking

994
00:54:02,000 --> 00:54:05,719
Speaker 1: to the next generation if we're being generous. Uh So,

995
00:54:05,880 --> 00:54:09,880
Speaker 1: I don't think the human model uh leaves much hope

996
00:54:10,080 --> 00:54:15,120
Speaker 1: for for what a Venusian life form might have accomplished. Yeah,

997
00:54:15,160 --> 00:54:17,279
Speaker 1: you can imagine there was a lot of oh these

998
00:54:17,400 --> 00:54:21,799
Speaker 1: you know, runaway greenhouse effect alarmists. Yeah, or two hundred years. Well,

999
00:54:21,880 --> 00:54:24,120
Speaker 1: in the next generation, they'll figure it out. Yeah. Yeah,

1000
00:54:24,160 --> 00:54:27,520
Speaker 1: the technology will come online and they'll just fix everything. Uh.

1001
00:54:27,800 --> 00:54:30,600
Speaker 1: And while they're off chatting about it, the the oceans

1002
00:54:30,640 --> 00:54:33,640
Speaker 1: boil away, and then they boil away as well. But

1003
00:54:33,760 --> 00:54:36,480
Speaker 1: maybe a few are able to crawl down into their crips,

1004
00:54:36,520 --> 00:54:38,840
Speaker 1: you know, maybe a few were able to make it

1005
00:54:38,920 --> 00:54:41,239
Speaker 1: up into their cloud cities. I don't know if they

1006
00:54:41,239 --> 00:54:43,759
Speaker 1: can keep the others from from dragging them out or

1007
00:54:43,840 --> 00:54:47,160
Speaker 1: dragging them back down. I guess this maybe deserves a

1008
00:54:47,200 --> 00:54:49,640
Speaker 1: whole episode someday we should come back and examine the

1009
00:54:49,680 --> 00:54:54,120
Speaker 1: idea of how long could a say, an ecosystem be

1010
00:54:54,239 --> 00:54:57,880
Speaker 1: maintained purely in a subterranean existence. Could you go on

1011
00:54:57,960 --> 00:55:02,200
Speaker 1: indefinitely if you had incoming energy sources. Yeah? I love

1012
00:55:02,239 --> 00:55:05,480
Speaker 1: talking about subterranean life, so that would be a great

1013
00:55:05,480 --> 00:55:09,560
Speaker 1: topic to discuss. In the meantime, Uh, we thank everybody

1014
00:55:09,600 --> 00:55:13,080
Speaker 1: for joining us on this trip to Venus and UH,

1015
00:55:13,239 --> 00:55:15,200
Speaker 1: if you if you enjoy this episode, let us know,

1016
00:55:15,320 --> 00:55:18,760
Speaker 1: let us know what other planets, so, what other moons

1017
00:55:19,120 --> 00:55:22,160
Speaker 1: even you would like us to explore in future episodes.

1018
00:55:22,480 --> 00:55:24,200
Speaker 1: You can check out all of our past episodes that

1019
00:55:24,280 --> 00:55:26,240
Speaker 1: stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's the mothership.

1020
00:55:26,440 --> 00:55:28,160
Speaker 1: That's where we will find links out to our various

1021
00:55:28,200 --> 00:55:30,880
Speaker 1: social media accounts. And I also want to remind everyone

1022
00:55:30,920 --> 00:55:32,439
Speaker 1: that if you want to support the show, a great

1023
00:55:32,480 --> 00:55:34,319
Speaker 1: way to do it is to rate and review us

1024
00:55:34,560 --> 00:55:37,440
Speaker 1: wherever you have the power to do so. Huge thanks

1025
00:55:37,440 --> 00:55:40,600
Speaker 1: as always to our excellent audio producers Alex Williams and

1026
00:55:40,600 --> 00:55:42,480
Speaker 1: Tarry Harrison. If you want to get in touch with

1027
00:55:42,560 --> 00:55:45,879
Speaker 1: us directly to suggest a topic for future episodes, uh,

1028
00:55:45,920 --> 00:55:48,000
Speaker 1: to let us know what you thought about this episode

1029
00:55:48,080 --> 00:55:50,040
Speaker 1: or any other, or just to say hi, let us

1030
00:55:50,040 --> 00:55:51,640
Speaker 1: know who you are, where you listen to the show

1031
00:55:51,680 --> 00:55:53,880
Speaker 1: from what you like about it. You can email us

1032
00:55:53,920 --> 00:56:06,640
Speaker 1: at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com

1033
00:56:06,680 --> 00:56:09,080
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is

1034
00:56:09,120 --> 00:56:21,200
Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot com. The Bigger Believe