Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Let's take a stroll into the Yellow Vault. Why is
Speaker 1: it yellow this time? It must be of all this
Speaker 1: dispersed stuff in the air. Oh goodness, I'm breathing an
Speaker 1: ind to Uh. This is an episode that we did
Speaker 1: on May seventeen about the possibility of life on Venus.
Speaker 1: We don't usually think about Venus, do we. That's right,
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that's that's that's pretty awesome
Speaker 1: about this episode. You know, all eyes are on Mars
Speaker 1: for a for a few different reasons, some that are
Speaker 1: very scientific, but others that are purely cultural and have
Speaker 1: to do with our history of gazing at the red
Speaker 1: planet and dreaming about what and misinterpreting what might be there.
Speaker 1: But meanwhile, we have Venus over here, which, yes, is
Speaker 1: an awful hell world, but that doesn't mean that it
Speaker 1: never had life or couldn't according to some experts, potentially
Speaker 1: have some form of life in certain areas. Let's jump
Speaker 1: right in. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, you, welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick and Robert. I've got a question for
Speaker 1: you today. Hit me in your opinion. What is the
Speaker 1: creepiest image photograph produced by human space exploration. Well, since
Speaker 1: we're talking about exploration, I imagine this rules out weapons tests. No, no,
Speaker 1: no, no no, I'm not interested in any clear bombs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because we have some pretty creepy new test footage such
Speaker 1: as nineteen sixties Operation UH Dominique, which was involved the
Speaker 1: atmospheric sort of slash space detonation of nukes. I don't
Speaker 1: think I've ever seen that. Oh yeah, it's For instance,
Speaker 1: there was the Starfish Prime event in which a one
Speaker 1: point for megatun bomb detonated two fifty miles or four
Speaker 1: and two kilometers above the planet, and that's above the
Speaker 1: Carmen line. So like that's pretty disturbing when you when
Speaker 1: you think about it, like a Cold War UH space
Speaker 1: detonation test. But as far as like pure space exploration goes,
Speaker 1: I'm always a sucker for stuff like the you know,
Speaker 1: the so called Martian face, or even something like the
Speaker 1: hexagon of Saturn, something that just inspires this sense of
Speaker 1: mystery where you're asking, like, what what is this place? Really? Oh?
Speaker 1: The hexagon on the I believe it's the north pole
Speaker 1: of Saturn. It's either the north or the South pole.
Speaker 1: I can't recall believe it's north. We we talked about
Speaker 1: it in one of our previous episodes, Haunted Geography and
Speaker 1: Haunted Geometry, very love Craft in Yeah, I guess they're forbidden.
Speaker 1: Geometry is all through the Lovecraft Cosmos, right, you know it.
Speaker 1: But I've got a different answer my and for a
Speaker 1: long time this has been my answer. My favorite creepy
Speaker 1: space images have got to be the photos taken by
Speaker 1: the Venera thirteen lander, Robert, I've got them in the
Speaker 1: notes here, But have you ever looked at these? For yes,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not sure i've seen the color corrected ones,
Speaker 1: but but certainly i've seen the the the other ones
Speaker 1: that have that that deep kind of reddish orange tinge
Speaker 1: to them. Yeah. I mean, it's funny to try to
Speaker 1: explain what's disturbing about them, because they're just pictures of
Speaker 1: some rocks. You know, it's just you're you're looking at
Speaker 1: some rocks and soil. Now, what the Venera Landers were,
Speaker 1: it was a series of space missions to the planet
Speaker 1: Venus that was done by the Soviet Space Program. They
Speaker 1: launched these missions to put landers down on the surface
Speaker 1: of Venus for the first time. There had mid Landers
Speaker 1: sending things back from Venus or the surface of Venus
Speaker 1: before this, but they sent a bunch of missions in
Speaker 1: the seventies and the eighties. And one of the things
Speaker 1: about landing on Venus, and we'll definitely get more into
Speaker 1: this in the episode, is that you've got a very
Speaker 1: short window of time to send stuff back because Venus
Speaker 1: is a death trap. It will destroy you, even for
Speaker 1: highly shielded powerful machines. You put a machine down there
Speaker 1: and it's a suicide mission. The machine is going to
Speaker 1: gather some data and transmit as long as it can,
Speaker 1: but eventually the crushing heat and pressure of the atmosphere
Speaker 1: of Venus will kill that robot and it will only
Speaker 1: have this last sort of death note to send back
Speaker 1: to Earth. And one of these missions managed to send
Speaker 1: some really striking pictures as that last death note. Specifically,
Speaker 1: it was the Venera thirteen lander, which was launched on
Speaker 1: October one, and it landed on Venus on March first.
Speaker 1: So even the idea of a lander setting down on Venus,
Speaker 1: if you know anything about the Venusian atmosphere, is kind
Speaker 1: of creepy to imagine, because first you're going into this
Speaker 1: haze of sulfurous clouds, but as you go further and
Speaker 1: further down, the atmospheric pressure gets so much and so
Speaker 1: dense and so thick that it's almost more like sinking
Speaker 1: into a liquid uh. And so you've got to imagine
Speaker 1: this lander sinking down into this atmospheric ocean surrounding Venus,
Speaker 1: this boiling hot, lead melting atmospheric ocean of of carbon
Speaker 1: dioxide and nitrogen, with all this sulfur everywhere. And then
Speaker 1: finally it sets down on the surface and takes these
Speaker 1: images and sends them back to Earth. And there's almost
Speaker 1: nothing in the images. You just see the edge of
Speaker 1: the lander in the foreground, and it has some appropriately
Speaker 1: creepy looking triangular teeth all around it, and then beyond
Speaker 1: that there's some soil and some flat rocks. But nevertheless,
Speaker 1: something about these images messes with me. I find them
Speaker 1: absolutely creepy and haunting. They have this dirty grindhouse kind
Speaker 1: of yellow film effect to them. Uh. And that's of
Speaker 1: course the atmospheric effects that we see from from the
Speaker 1: glow of Venus. Uh, it's almost as if we're looking
Speaker 1: at everything through an evil haze. For me, I think
Speaker 1: it's because it's the It's like the last known photograph
Speaker 1: from from from the from the very you know, borders
Speaker 1: of the known world. Yeah. Um, it's like if somebody
Speaker 1: went to the Texas Chainsaw Mascre house and took a
Speaker 1: picture of their feet by accident, and then that's all
Speaker 1: you had to go on. So, you know, do you
Speaker 1: know something terrible happened afterwards? You don't have a lot
Speaker 1: of details, but you have this picture of somebody's feet
Speaker 1: on a front porch in Texas. That's exactly right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it feels like that. And another creepy thing about them
Speaker 1: is that you notice a difference that unlike Mars, where
Speaker 1: if you see images back from the surface of Mars,
Speaker 1: they can sometimes look kind of creepy, but it can
Speaker 1: also just look kind of like, I don't know, a
Speaker 1: desert on kind of an overcast day, it was just
Speaker 1: a very bare in area with sand and rocks and
Speaker 1: kind of a gray white sky. But unlike on Mars,
Speaker 1: one thing you'll notice is the effects of sunlight and
Speaker 1: the directionality of the sunlight. Where there's a thing sticking
Speaker 1: out of the rover, you can see it casting a
Speaker 1: shadow on the ground. These these pictures have no indication
Speaker 1: of shadows really, you know, looking at them again, as
Speaker 1: we podcast here, I do think there is a sense
Speaker 1: of one taking a picture of one's own feet here.
Speaker 1: So there's an incompleteness to it, you know, it's it
Speaker 1: just it just gets at you. Whereas at least with
Speaker 1: it with the Mars images, we have more of a true,
Speaker 1: uh you know, panoramic vision of what's going on there. Well,
Speaker 1: Mars has been thoroughly explored on the surface at this point.
Speaker 1: I mean, we have all kinds of pictures of what
Speaker 1: Mars looks like at different times of day, different times
Speaker 1: of the year, you know, from multiple different landers and rovers.
Speaker 1: Mars almost feels like, I don't mean to pooh pooh Mars.
Speaker 1: I mean, Mars is still fascinating and mysterious and wonderful,
Speaker 1: but it's it's very much more explored territory at this point. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We know, as we've mentioned before, we have more detailed
Speaker 1: information about the surface of Mars than we have about
Speaker 1: the bottom of the ocean. In some ways, that is
Speaker 1: definitely true, um, but the surface of Venus is like,
Speaker 1: it's this mystery hell, you know, it's this hazy mystery
Speaker 1: that's beyond the gate. And because it feels like this
Speaker 1: hazy mystery that's beyond the gate, for some reason, the
Speaker 1: idea of life on Venus has always seemed more creepy
Speaker 1: and interesting and tantalizing a possibility to me than the
Speaker 1: idea of life on Mars RS. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you feel the same way. Yeah, I definitely think so.
Speaker 1: I think v it's kind of a shame that Venus
Speaker 1: doesn't get more attention, especially in terms of our our
Speaker 1: science fiction, because when you think of life on another
Speaker 1: planet within our Solar system, you think of really the
Speaker 1: rich history of imagining life on Mars, both in the
Speaker 1: future and the past, because you have everything from of
Speaker 1: course the old Edgar Rice Burrows novels to uh total
Speaker 1: to Total Recall. I mean, you have just there's there's
Speaker 1: so much great stuff there. But when you start looking
Speaker 1: for really cool examples of life on Venus, there are
Speaker 1: some great examples, but there there aren't as many. It's
Speaker 1: not it's not the place that the human imagination instantly
Speaker 1: goes to, but as we'll discuss in this episode. We
Speaker 1: really should, because there's a there there are some strong
Speaker 1: cases to be made for life on Venus, either now
Speaker 1: or in the past. Yeah, and so that's going to
Speaker 1: be the main subject of today's episode. If there are,
Speaker 1: or if there have been, creatures of Venus, what are
Speaker 1: they like and how would we know about them now?
Speaker 1: If we just turned to fiction for a few examples. Uh,
Speaker 1: we don't have time to catalog everything, but I wanted
Speaker 1: to mention a few that came to my mind. Anyway,
Speaker 1: there is an HP Lovecraft story from ninety nine that
Speaker 1: he wrote with Kenneth Sterling titled in the Walls of Rics,
Speaker 1: which features a muddy jungle Venus and a maze with
Speaker 1: invisible walls. That feels about right. Yeah, it's pretty good.
Speaker 1: I remember I remember dating that story when I read it. Uh. C. S.
Speaker 1: Lewis took us to a Venusian paradise in his novel Paralandra. Uh.
Speaker 1: This involves an alien Adam and Eve and there and
Speaker 1: then of course you have the devil show up as well,
Speaker 1: possessing the body of a character by the name of
Speaker 1: Professor Weston. Professor Weston, I wonder if that's named after
Speaker 1: Jesse Weston, who wrote the book about the Grail legend
Speaker 1: that was so popular in the early twentieth century. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't remember, but that it's a Paralandro was.
Speaker 1: It was a book I really loved when I was younger,
Speaker 1: and we'll probably read again at some at some point
Speaker 1: I ever read it. But that seems interesting to explore,
Speaker 1: especially because you've got, I mean, you've got multiple mythic
Speaker 1: associations with Venus throughout history. You know, you've got the
Speaker 1: god of love and the arrows in the Venus aphrodite
Speaker 1: kind of association, but you've also got the Lucifer association. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and both are explored in Peralandra. In Perilandro, Venus is
Speaker 1: also a water world, and they're like these kind of
Speaker 1: floating wraths of land that everyone is everyone it's like
Speaker 1: three or four people, three or four individuals, anyway they
Speaker 1: lived there. But yeah, it's it's a It is an
Speaker 1: interesting take on Venus as well. Stephen King took us
Speaker 1: to Venus twice, as it turns out, once in a
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties self published short story titled The Cursed Expedition,
Speaker 1: which I have not read. I'm not sure that's one
Speaker 1: that's actually readily available, or it's kind of like a
Speaker 1: you know, a vault story of kings uh. And then there's,
Speaker 1: of course, is one short story, I Am the Doorway,
Speaker 1: which doesn't actually visit the planet, but a character is
Speaker 1: It takes part in a manned Vena fly by and
Speaker 1: comes back and essentially infected with an alien organism. Well,
Speaker 1: it's interesting to think about that this is a time
Speaker 1: period at which the Venera missions were underway. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: also a similar Outer Limits episode from nineteen four titled
Speaker 1: Cold Hands, Warm Heart that actually stars William Shatner. So
Speaker 1: Shot goes to Venus or he's from Venus or what.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen this episode, but he is involved in
Speaker 1: some sort of space mission involving Venus. So you can't
Speaker 1: give me the deets on the chat. I mean, things go,
Speaker 1: you know weird. That's that's the Again, this is not
Speaker 1: an Outer Limits episode that I've seen, but perhaps we
Speaker 1: have listeners you can chime in on it. And then,
Speaker 1: of course Venus plays an important role in the expanse
Speaker 1: Uh TV series adaptation of the novels. No spoilers, but
Speaker 1: it does have a pretty cool plot line involving life
Speaker 1: and Venus. And there's also early mentioned in the books
Speaker 1: and perhaps the TV series as well about a failed
Speaker 1: attempt by humans to established cloud colonies there. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that is an interesting idea I've read about the idea
Speaker 1: of trying to create um I don't know whether you
Speaker 1: call them aerostatic or hydrostatic, basically floating colonies. That would
Speaker 1: be not too hard to do, actually, because of how
Speaker 1: dense the atmosphere is. Yeah, cloud City right out of Empire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: except I don't know, best Bin didn't look all that
Speaker 1: cloudy compared to Venus. Yeah. Well, I mean they were
Speaker 1: up there, right, It's been a long time since they've
Speaker 1: seen Empire, so I don't remember how cloudy was or
Speaker 1: if it became more cloudy in the special editions that
Speaker 1: came out. Who knows. Oh yeah, they're really cged some
Speaker 1: more clouds in there. It's it was worth it. Uh No.
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting that Venus doesn't get as much
Speaker 1: attention as Mars does in terms of the possibility of
Speaker 1: finding microbial life forms. I mean, you know, way back
Speaker 1: in the day, people used to think, before we'd explored
Speaker 1: Mars that there, you know, there might be whole civilizations there.
Speaker 1: People would look through telescopes and see what looked like
Speaker 1: canals on Mars, and they'd say, oh, you know, there
Speaker 1: are people on Mars, just like there are people here.
Speaker 1: Now we pretty much can rule that out. I wonder
Speaker 1: if part of it is because we went from being
Speaker 1: so geocentric, the idea that the Earth is the center
Speaker 1: of all things, and then we went to a heliocentric model,
Speaker 1: and then of course we expanded beyond that. But if
Speaker 1: if we're still kind of thinking heliocentrically, So the Sun
Speaker 1: is the center of of our solar system, and therefore
Speaker 1: it's kind of a center of order and and the known.
Speaker 1: And this is not doesn't something not not something that
Speaker 1: actually matches up necessarily with our our scientific understanding of everything,
Speaker 1: But it is. It is a center. And therefore Venus
Speaker 1: is closer to the center, It's closer to the center
Speaker 1: of the known, whereas Mars is a little beyond us,
Speaker 1: like Mars is a little more on the outskirts. And
Speaker 1: therefore it makes this more it makes more sense that
Speaker 1: it would have more mystery to it. That's where the
Speaker 1: that's where the ghosts and goblins are going to live,
Speaker 1: right they're not gonna live in the middle of the city,
Speaker 1: They're gonna live on the outskirts of town. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the outer limits. You don't talking about the or limit. Though.
Speaker 1: I do really enjoy science fiction that that goes inward
Speaker 1: instead of goes outward. Actually, I mean, this is something
Speaker 1: I really liked about that movie Sunshine that came out,
Speaker 1: which you know, I had a lot of problems. I
Speaker 1: think some of the writing kind of fell apart in
Speaker 1: the third part of the movie, but it explored the
Speaker 1: idea that there was this deep, kind of ghostly mystery
Speaker 1: to the Sun, and as you come closer and closer
Speaker 1: to the Sun, it's sort of activates these instincts within
Speaker 1: you that are sort of borderline supernatural, but at least
Speaker 1: seemed to go deeper than the human or mammalian parts
Speaker 1: of your nervous system, where you know, where the Sun
Speaker 1: is the closest thing to a literal god there is
Speaker 1: in the physical universe, right, it's the creator of us. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that ye coupled with the fact that every
Speaker 1: humans just want to keep going out and it's one
Speaker 1: of the reasons probably that more people have been to
Speaker 1: the Moon than to the bottom of than to the
Speaker 1: deepest portions of the ocean. Well, I think we should
Speaker 1: ignore this impulse to go out and we should go in.
Speaker 1: Let's go in towards Venus, get closer to the Sun,
Speaker 1: move one orbit in and start looking at this hothouse planet. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Why go to a planet that doesn't have enough atmosphere
Speaker 1: when instead you can take your your dreams and your
Speaker 1: imagination to a place that has more atmosphere than you
Speaker 1: can handle. Let's take a quick break and when we
Speaker 1: come back, we will explore the surface of Venus. Thank alright,
Speaker 1: we're back now. You're probably familiar with some of the
Speaker 1: most basic features of Venus as a planet, right that
Speaker 1: it's very much known as an Earth analog, and that
Speaker 1: is a fair way to characterize it. It's very close
Speaker 1: to the size and mass of the Earth. It's gonna
Speaker 1: you know, it was created around the same time and
Speaker 1: the accretion disk of the inner rocky planets um so
Speaker 1: in many ways, it is a lot like the Earth
Speaker 1: until you get down into the atmosphere. So, Robert, can
Speaker 1: you take me on a tour of the surface of Venus. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I actually chatted with astrobiologist David Grinspoon about the surface
Speaker 1: of Venus several years back, as well as with JPL
Speaker 1: scientists Susanne smrit Car. So, I want to run through
Speaker 1: some of the attributes of the planet here that they
Speaker 1: stressed to me. All right, let's take a stroll through
Speaker 1: the toxic soup. Alright. So, so Grinsman pointed out that
Speaker 1: first and foremost, this is a planet that's very rich
Speaker 1: and volcanoes and mountains and tech tonic features. Now not
Speaker 1: to be confused with tectonic activity. We'll get back to that.
Speaker 1: You won't find signs of water erosion. Uh, probably unless
Speaker 1: they're very, very ancient. And a lot of the topography
Speaker 1: is dominated by a sort of low aligned rolling planes
Speaker 1: that are largely ash. And this is punctuated by some
Speaker 1: high volcanic mountains and some other sort of high plateaus
Speaker 1: of titanically disrupted areas with with flows of ash. So
Speaker 1: this is a planet surface that has been sort of
Speaker 1: like hit and paved by volcanic activity. Yes, yeah, they're also,
Speaker 1: he says, they're seemingly steady, slow winds, always blowing east
Speaker 1: to west. And uh, as we've already touched on, the
Speaker 1: atmospheric pressure is very high now One interesting thing about
Speaker 1: the directionality of the movement of the atmosphere there is
Speaker 1: that Venus rotates opposite of the way that most of
Speaker 1: the planets in our Solar system rotate. It rotates in
Speaker 1: a retrograde way to its orbit, so the sun actually
Speaker 1: rises in the west and sets in the east on Venus. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting. It also has an extremely slow rotation
Speaker 1: two forty three terrestrial days, that's how long it takes,
Speaker 1: but its atmosphere only needs four days to rot to rotate.
Speaker 1: So yeah, there's already you can tell there's a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of by the from a terrestrial standpoint,
Speaker 1: a lot of screwy things going on with Venus. If
Speaker 1: you were approaching the this is like approaching the Texas
Speaker 1: chainsaw mask or house and finding all sorts of bone
Speaker 1: based you know, voodoo doo. Dad's hanging in trees and bushes, right,
Speaker 1: some skull furniture. So the pressure is high, roughly ninety
Speaker 1: times the pressure at sea level on Earth. That's a
Speaker 1: lot of pressure of coal. Of course, is going to
Speaker 1: vary though depending on you know exactly what altitude you're
Speaker 1: at on Venus. We've already touched on the light a
Speaker 1: little bit, you'd find very dull light. Grinsman says that
Speaker 1: if you were suddenly transported to Venus, you would notice
Speaker 1: that the light is very different. It's always cloudy, and
Speaker 1: there's a very thick uh, the very thick atmosphere. So
Speaker 1: light is, he says, is kind of diffused and gathered
Speaker 1: so so much that it's a it's kind of reddish.
Speaker 1: And there, as you said, no shadows because there's no
Speaker 1: direct sunlight. It's all just clouds and scattered light. He
Speaker 1: says that there would be enough daylight to see, but
Speaker 1: it will be like a heavily overcast day on Earth.
Speaker 1: And of course on the night side it would be dark.
Speaker 1: Aside from whatever kind of like you you would probably
Speaker 1: notice the dull red glow of the red hot rocks
Speaker 1: in the ground lighting things a bit creepy. And he
Speaker 1: pointed out that it is pretty much Earth's alter ego.
Speaker 1: It's the only Earth sized planet in our Solar system only, uh,
Speaker 1: and the only other roughly Earth sized planet that we
Speaker 1: can send a spa acecraft two and study in detail. Uh,
Speaker 1: that will and that's going to be true for a
Speaker 1: long long time. And uh, indeed, Earth and Venus probably
Speaker 1: had similar origins. Uh, it could have been, and they
Speaker 1: could have been a nearly identical states in the beginning,
Speaker 1: and yet we have gone down very difficerent routes in
Speaker 1: terms of how our climates and surface conditions have turned out. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: we started in similar states. What happened to Venus to
Speaker 1: make it so different from us? Well, runaway greenhouse effect
Speaker 1: boiled away the oceans long ago and they were lost
Speaker 1: to space, and then it it became essentially stuck with
Speaker 1: its present climate. It's so it's it's often touted as
Speaker 1: kind of a worst case example of what climate change
Speaker 1: on Earth could amount to. Yeah, now you might have
Speaker 1: heard of this idea of the runaway greenhouse effect invoked,
Speaker 1: but if you're wondering exactly how that works, Basically what
Speaker 1: happens is you've got some liquid on the surface of
Speaker 1: your planet. You've got like a liquid water oceans, and
Speaker 1: if you heat the oceans up to much, they begin
Speaker 1: to evaporate a lot of water vapor into the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: But of course water vapor is an excellent greenhouse gas.
Speaker 1: And then when there's a lot of water vapor in
Speaker 1: the atmosphere, because it's a greenhouse gas, sunlight can pass
Speaker 1: through it one way, coming in to heat the Earth
Speaker 1: or heat the planet, but then it does not allow
Speaker 1: as much energy to reflect back off of the planet
Speaker 1: and radiate back out into space. So like other greenhouse gases,
Speaker 1: this water vapor let's energy in but not back out,
Speaker 1: and this warms the planet even more. As the planet warms,
Speaker 1: the water vapor just keeps evaporating even more because it's
Speaker 1: getting hotter and hotter, making the effect worse and worse
Speaker 1: in this net positive feedback loop. So there's sort of
Speaker 1: these tipping points for planets with liquid on the surface.
Speaker 1: You don't want to get the water hotter than a
Speaker 1: certain level because if you do, it's just going to
Speaker 1: create this runaway effect that you kind of can't stop. Now.
Speaker 1: I mentioned plate tectonics earlier. There are no plate tectonics
Speaker 1: that we know of on Venus of all, but the
Speaker 1: certainly there's a lot of volcanic activity. The volcanoes, though,
Speaker 1: don't spring up along plate borders like they do on Earth.
Speaker 1: They just pop up all over, so it's just kind
Speaker 1: of surprise volcano. Yeah. So yeah, it's it's a different
Speaker 1: pattern of convection, uh or so it seems according to Grinspoon.
Speaker 1: Now in addition to the greenhouse gas issue, uh he
Speaker 1: did drive home that a lot of the differences may
Speaker 1: also just be due to orbit. You know. Obviously Venus
Speaker 1: is more of an inner planet than Earth, and and
Speaker 1: they're just going to be uh certain differences in place
Speaker 1: just on where you are in relation to the Sun. Right,
Speaker 1: So it is closer to the Sun than us, but
Speaker 1: that's that's not the only thing that plays a role, because,
Speaker 1: for example, the surface of Venus is hotter than the
Speaker 1: surface of Mercury, which is closer to the Sun than
Speaker 1: Venus is. Uh So, definitely, the atmosphere plays a huge
Speaker 1: role in what surface conditions are like. Right, And we
Speaker 1: already hit on the fact that the the atmosphere of
Speaker 1: Venus is pretty incredible. The clouds of Venus are concentrated
Speaker 1: sulfuric acid. Yeah, uh yeah, Now that's not to say
Speaker 1: that the atmosphere is concentrated sulfuric acid. The atmosphere is
Speaker 1: about ninety eight point five carbon dioxide carbon dioxide with
Speaker 1: like three point five percent nitrogen or so, and then
Speaker 1: it's got these aerosol ized sulfuric acid particles like colloidal
Speaker 1: sulfuric acid suspended in the atmosphere. Needless to say, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to breathe it. Noddy, we we touch on
Speaker 1: exactly how hot the surface is. I'm not sure we did.
Speaker 1: That's worth mentioning because it's it's it's hotter than you think, Dad,
Speaker 1: hotter than you think. Yeah. Susan Spreaker pointed out that
Speaker 1: the surface temperature is around nine hundred degrees fahrenheit or
Speaker 1: four eight two celsius. That is, it's an often sided
Speaker 1: fact hot enough to melt lead. These are almost like
Speaker 1: metal works kind of conditions. Yeah. And another cool thing
Speaker 1: that she pointed out is like, Okay, assume you're on
Speaker 1: the on the surface, you're wearing some sort of high
Speaker 1: tech suit that prevents you from having to worry about
Speaker 1: melting or being crushed. Uh. She She points out that
Speaker 1: walking on the surface would be really weird because it
Speaker 1: would be like walking It would be more like walking
Speaker 1: through a fluid than what we think of as as
Speaker 1: an atmosphere. And this is again due to that high
Speaker 1: pressure super critical c O two. So in some aspects,
Speaker 1: some aspects of a fluid would be present as well
Speaker 1: as some aspects of a gas. I wonder if that
Speaker 1: atmospheric density is part of what contributes to the creepiness
Speaker 1: of those photos taken by the Venera thirteen lander. I
Speaker 1: don't know, like, is that queuing something in my eyes
Speaker 1: to somehow the air look wrong, it looks heavier or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wonder now. Smart Car also pointed out that one
Speaker 1: of the biggest mysteries about Venus is wine doesn't have
Speaker 1: plate tectonics. Uh. And she says that the planet completely
Speaker 1: resurface sometime in the last billion years, and so we
Speaker 1: have no record of what happened in those first three
Speaker 1: and a half billion years. Now, this is premised on
Speaker 1: the fact that Venus is basically the same age as
Speaker 1: the Earth, that they were created in this planetary accretion process,
Speaker 1: and both planets are about four and a half billion
Speaker 1: years old. But something happened about a billion years ago
Speaker 1: in Venus that resurface most of it. Uh. And hit
Speaker 1: the evidence they were like, we gotta get this redone
Speaker 1: and I'm sick of this old pattern. We gotta get
Speaker 1: it repaved. But you pointed out that we really don't
Speaker 1: know if if it was some sort of catastrophic event
Speaker 1: that caused a huge amount of of of volcanic activity
Speaker 1: toated occur within a relatively short period of time, or
Speaker 1: if it's just been a steady process over the last
Speaker 1: billion years, where volcanic activity has just been accumulating. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the things we often talk about when considering
Speaker 1: whether or not a planet can sustain life is what
Speaker 1: the sort of the geomagnetic properties of the planet are. Now,
Speaker 1: we know that Venus does have an iron core like
Speaker 1: Earth does, But the question is if it's going to
Speaker 1: sustain life on its surface or within its atmosphere, does
Speaker 1: it have a magnetic field to shield it from radiation
Speaker 1: coming from space. Well, yeah, the answer here is really
Speaker 1: interesting because no, it does not have an internally generated magnetosphere.
Speaker 1: The solar wind can slam directly into the atmosphere. However,
Speaker 1: it does benefit from partial protection due to its induced
Speaker 1: magnetic field. Now, what's that. So you have solar ultra
Speaker 1: violent radiation removing electrons from atoms in the upper atmosphere,
Speaker 1: creating the electrically charged gas of the ionosphere. As on Earth,
Speaker 1: it slows and diverts the flow of particles around the planet.
Speaker 1: Now that's interesting, But so far, I guess we should
Speaker 1: say we've just been sort of talking about the planet
Speaker 1: in general and kind of spitballing about what life there
Speaker 1: could be like or or you know, things that occur
Speaker 1: to us. What do the experts actually have to say
Speaker 1: about the possibility of life on Venus, either in the
Speaker 1: past or now. I mean, it's hard to imagine life
Speaker 1: on the surface of Venus now, given how hot and
Speaker 1: high pressure it is. But let's not prejudge the question
Speaker 1: what what What would for example, David Grinspoon have to
Speaker 1: say about life on Venus. Well, he's very clear about
Speaker 1: the fact that there's nothing controversial at all about speculating, uh,
Speaker 1: that that ancient Venus might have boasted life, because he says,
Speaker 1: if you go back four billion years, you'll find an
Speaker 1: environment very similar to Earth. Yeah, And so much of
Speaker 1: our speculations of regarding life on other worlds, you know,
Speaker 1: it centers around the question how much like Earth is it?
Speaker 1: Or was it? Yeah? Now, of course that's premised on
Speaker 1: the fact that we basically know of one way biochemistry
Speaker 1: can work, and that has certain physical tolerances built into it.
Speaker 1: Biochemistry can work in a carbon based way with water
Speaker 1: as a solvent, and so we know that can only
Speaker 1: happen in a place where there's the right kind of
Speaker 1: temperature to have liquid water, where it doesn't freeze or
Speaker 1: boil um and you've got you know, you've got the
Speaker 1: right kind of organic molecules present, so that sets these
Speaker 1: tolerances there. But then again, there are other ways we
Speaker 1: maybe aren't even imagining that biochemistry could work. Just don't
Speaker 1: based on our limited imagination, but still based on what
Speaker 1: we know, there's nothing wrong with saying, well, life could
Speaker 1: have existed on Venus. I mean, you know, a place
Speaker 1: like Earth can have life, And Grinspoon says, it's even
Speaker 1: conceivable that life could have begun on Venus, and then
Speaker 1: we're all essentially the Venusians. Uh. You know, it points
Speaker 1: out that you have rocks being blasted between the planets,
Speaker 1: so there was contact. So some form of pants burmia
Speaker 1: is possible, uh, possible uh, concerning life on Earth and
Speaker 1: possible life on Venus, and that's something people bring up
Speaker 1: as a possibility, but not to say that there's a
Speaker 1: strong reason to favor that hypothesis right now. Some of
Speaker 1: are really a lot of the key theories regarding life
Speaker 1: on Venus do in the past revolve around the idea
Speaker 1: that there may have been oceans there in the past, right,
Speaker 1: and we still don't have definitive proof. I think that
Speaker 1: there were oceans on Venus in the past, but there's
Speaker 1: there are pretty strong reasons to think that it at
Speaker 1: least might have had oceans. I was looking at one
Speaker 1: study by our no Salvador at all from the Journal
Speaker 1: of Geophysical Research Planets in and this was kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: So the background on the study is that they talk
Speaker 1: about how early in the history of a Solar system,
Speaker 1: you've got young inner planets and they get bombarded by
Speaker 1: lots of impacts from rocky objects orbiting the Sun. Right
Speaker 1: the early the early Solar system is very dirty and
Speaker 1: it's very full of stuff, and over long periods of time,
Speaker 1: eventually it gets kind of cleaned up. But early in
Speaker 1: the Solar System, you've got big rocks slamming into young planets,
Speaker 1: and they slam into them from space and can actually
Speaker 1: heat planets up a lot, and big enough impacts can
Speaker 1: even melt large portions of the mass of the planet
Speaker 1: which surrounds it in this ocean of melted rock. But
Speaker 1: after this happens, the molten ocean cools and then releases
Speaker 1: volatile compounds to create the atmosphere, and in this study,
Speaker 1: the authors create a model where they can sort of
Speaker 1: play with model planets in this state. Right, You've got
Speaker 1: model planets in early stages of formation that are releasing
Speaker 1: certain amounts of C O two or water onto their surface,
Speaker 1: and that's affecting you know, what kind of whether it
Speaker 1: has oceans or what the atmosphere looks like. And so
Speaker 1: that you can place a model planet like that in
Speaker 1: orbit at different distances from a host star and then
Speaker 1: predict what kind of surface the planet will evolve in
Speaker 1: its geohistory. And their models suggests, based on what we
Speaker 1: know about Venus today that it could have had water
Speaker 1: oceans earlier in its history. That it's consistent with what
Speaker 1: they've found now the presence of some sort of an
Speaker 1: alien Adam and Eve. That there's no proof in that,
Speaker 1: you have to leave that to C. S. Lewis. Even
Speaker 1: though it might be hard to know for sure whether
Speaker 1: there was life on Venus a long time ago, we
Speaker 1: can at least get good clues about whether there would
Speaker 1: have been windows of opportunity for it, Right, Yeah, According
Speaker 1: to a Sanjay Limay and co authors in a two
Speaker 1: thousand eighteen astrobiology paper Venus could have boasted a habitable
Speaker 1: climate and liquid water for as long as two billion years.
Speaker 1: That's that's that's longer than it might have occurred on
Speaker 1: march Us. So you have a pretty pretty long period
Speaker 1: of time there. Uh, that is enough time based on
Speaker 1: our terrestrial model, for at least simple life to emerge. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now if you look at that period of time on Earth,
Speaker 1: you're not really getting beyond single celled organisms. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean to put that in perspective. Two billion years of
Speaker 1: life on Earth was enough to get us from the
Speaker 1: deep sea vent life to single celled life, you know,
Speaker 1: be able to get us to photo since this and
Speaker 1: atmospheric oxygen. But you need another one point five billion
Speaker 1: years of Earth life to get to like multicellular life
Speaker 1: and sexual reproduction. So is there based on the Earth model,
Speaker 1: was their life on Venus? Maybe? Was there sex on Venus?
Speaker 1: Probably not, but maybe maybe? Okay, imagine on Venus for
Speaker 1: some reason, life evolves faster, Maybe there's maybe there's a
Speaker 1: faster mutation rate, something like that. I want to by
Speaker 1: the end of this episode, I want to be imagining
Speaker 1: what it could have been like if there was fully
Speaker 1: evolved intelligent civilization on Venus that doesn't now just paved
Speaker 1: over by volcanic activity and we can't see any trace
Speaker 1: of it. Well, it would be a shame, wouldn't that
Speaker 1: the planet name for the goddess of Love would have
Speaker 1: never known sexual reproduction it was just all a sexual
Speaker 1: That would be a cruel irony. Well anyway, So we've
Speaker 1: been exploring this question of whether whether life could have
Speaker 1: existed on Venus in the past, but we should transition
Speaker 1: to talk about whether life exists on Venus today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because this is where we really get into the the
Speaker 1: the imagination capturing aspects of of of exploring Venus, the
Speaker 1: idea that we could send something there, some sort of
Speaker 1: probe and discover life like actually harness and study an
Speaker 1: example of of life on another world. Now you're probably thinking, no,
Speaker 1: wait a second. Earlier, didn't you say that the surface
Speaker 1: of Venus had ninety times the pressure of Earth's atmosphere
Speaker 1: at the surface and was like five hundred degrees celsius
Speaker 1: or like nine hundred degrees fahrenheit. So you may be
Speaker 1: thinking skeptically, you're not suggesting that life exists on the
Speaker 1: surface of Venus, or are you will not on the surface.
Speaker 1: We've got to get our heads in the clouds. That's
Speaker 1: where things become more tolerable, at least in terms of
Speaker 1: modern Venus. All right, we will explore that when we
Speaker 1: come back from this break. Than alright, we're back. We've
Speaker 1: been talking about the conditions on Venus as we know
Speaker 1: them today, conditions on Venus in the ancient past. And
Speaker 1: the big question was their life on Venus and is
Speaker 1: their life on Venus. So we've speculated on the possibility
Speaker 1: that there could have been life on Venus in its
Speaker 1: ancient oceans, if they existed. But when we look at
Speaker 1: the planet today, the surface again is just an intolerable hellscape.
Speaker 1: But when we get up into the clouds, that's where
Speaker 1: we start seeing uh conditions that makes sense for life
Speaker 1: as we know it now, to be fair to the
Speaker 1: surface of Venus. Of course, the surface of Venus, like
Speaker 1: the surface of Earth, is not actually the same from
Speaker 1: equator to poll right, yeah. It. In fact, it has
Speaker 1: been proposed that Venus might boast acidic polar cs. Back
Speaker 1: in nine seventy, Joseph sec Bach and W. F. Libby
Speaker 1: suggested that photosynthetic life could exist in such an environment,
Speaker 1: based on experiments with algae grown in pure C O
Speaker 1: two under pressure with an accidic nutrient medium at elevated temperatures.
Speaker 1: And I mean we've seen extreme aphile organisms on Earth
Speaker 1: that survive in in highly pressurized environments and very very
Speaker 1: hot environments, that live in geysers or around geothermal vents.
Speaker 1: You know, these are conditions of life that US surface
Speaker 1: dwelling land lovers can't really imagine. But certain single healed
Speaker 1: organisms are simpler life forms have evolved to specialize in
Speaker 1: these types of extreme conditions. They're usually called extreme aphiles.
Speaker 1: Now we don't know if that's actually possible in the
Speaker 1: surface of Venus. I mean, the surface of Venus is
Speaker 1: maybe too extreme for even the most extreme extreme a
Speaker 1: file you can imagine. But the tolerances of life, if
Speaker 1: you expand your definition of life, go far beyond what
Speaker 1: you might imagine just looking at the life forms that
Speaker 1: inhabit You're nearby forests, are looking into a tide pool. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, certainly when you start looking at a deep
Speaker 1: hydrothermal vent uh environments you start looking at the creatures
Speaker 1: that thrive there, it does shift your expectations a little.
Speaker 1: And then also when you get outside of because when
Speaker 1: you look at those vents. I think one of the
Speaker 1: things about deep hydrothermal of vent environments that are really
Speaker 1: captivating is you get to see things like the hof crab,
Speaker 1: you know, the it's not really a crab, it's more
Speaker 1: a variety of lobster. But these pale crustaceans that that
Speaker 1: swarm around these vents. Um Like that captures our imagination
Speaker 1: because we can say, we can look at that and
Speaker 1: we can say, okay, it's a crab, it's an animal.
Speaker 1: Uh I can I can relate to that more. But
Speaker 1: when you're just breaking it down to to to to
Speaker 1: microbes and simpler life forms, then it's um. It's it's life,
Speaker 1: but it's not the it's not the kind of of
Speaker 1: life that we necessarily dream about discovering on other world
Speaker 1: I'm sorry I haven't heard your last couple of sentences, Robert,
Speaker 1: because you got me googling half crept. Yeah, the half
Speaker 1: crabs are incredible. There's like squat little lobster creatures. It
Speaker 1: looks like a mountain of skulls. Is like on a
Speaker 1: mountain of skulls in the Castle of Pain, I sat
Speaker 1: on a throne of blood. Yeah, basically they're there if
Speaker 1: you look at pictures of these guys, they're jocking position
Speaker 1: for their jocking for position in order to get closest
Speaker 1: to the superheated water because that's where they're going to
Speaker 1: find the little creatures that they eat. This is crazy.
Speaker 1: I've never seen that. Well anyway, I'm sorry, but yes, yes,
Speaker 1: so I should acknowledge your point. The more willing we
Speaker 1: are to think of organisms less and less inherently like us,
Speaker 1: the farther out into the extremes of physics and of
Speaker 1: nature that life can extend. Yeah, as they said earlier,
Speaker 1: we really have to look at the clouds, the the
Speaker 1: atmosphere of Venus. That is where you can get away
Speaker 1: from those hellish surface conditions and you encounter on our
Speaker 1: conditions that are are far more in line with what
Speaker 1: we typically think of his life sustaining conditions. Grinspoon has
Speaker 1: written a number of papers on this. He points out
Speaker 1: that there are pockets of Venus that you quote can't
Speaker 1: completely rule out his habitats for life based on what
Speaker 1: we know, and in particular, the clouds of Venus are
Speaker 1: really interesting environments because, unlike the surface, they are not
Speaker 1: particularly hot, and they are a continuous and sort of
Speaker 1: chemically and energetically lively environment in terms of the sort
Speaker 1: of availability of possible nutrients and availability of energy sources
Speaker 1: and liquid media and the biogenic elements. And he also
Speaker 1: pointed out this is this I found super interesting. In
Speaker 1: his book Venus Revealed, he proposed that a photosynthetic pigment
Speaker 1: may serve as the quote unknown ultra violent absorber. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this is this is what may represent one of
Speaker 1: four possible signs of life on Venus, along with absorbed
Speaker 1: of solar energy by micro organisms as a driving force
Speaker 1: for super rotation, the presence of larger and irregularly shaped
Speaker 1: cloud particles that maybe quote unquote creatures, and the presence
Speaker 1: of of bright radar signatures on the mountaintops which may
Speaker 1: be covered with life. So that's another thing to keep
Speaker 1: in mind when you're talking about the hellish surface of Venus.
Speaker 1: There are there are peaks, there are places that are
Speaker 1: gonna be be elevated from the from the truly like
Speaker 1: pressure cooker environment that you find find lower down. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And I think in your talk with the Susanne Smurkar,
Speaker 1: she also mentioned that the cloud environments of Venus could
Speaker 1: host microbes, right, yeah, Yeah. The interesting thing is this
Speaker 1: isn't crazy, Like we don't often stop to consider this,
Speaker 1: but here on Earth, life is actually not confined strictly
Speaker 1: to the surface of the planet and the water that's
Speaker 1: beneath the oceans. You know, of course, we know we've
Speaker 1: got flying birds and so forth, But there's plenty of
Speaker 1: evidence that if you were to fly up into the
Speaker 1: clouds and sort of take a bite out of a cloud,
Speaker 1: you would probably end up with some life forms in
Speaker 1: your mouth. Yeah, breathe deep, Yeah, dirty clouds. Uh. There's
Speaker 1: a great article by Leslie Evans Ogden called Life in
Speaker 1: the Clouds in the October issue of Bioscience. Uh. This
Speaker 1: is a fun read and it talks about clouds full
Speaker 1: of bacterium called Pseudomonas syringe a. It's bacteria that seemed
Speaker 1: to float up into the clouds and perhaps spur ice nucleation,
Speaker 1: which gives them enough weight to come falling back down
Speaker 1: to the surface. And the article discusses the idea that
Speaker 1: microorganisms living in clouds might play a major role in
Speaker 1: weather and rain cycles on Earth, and this is known
Speaker 1: as the bio precipitation theory. Yeah, people often forget that
Speaker 1: when you're dealing with drops of precipitation, rain, snow, frost, etcetera.
Speaker 1: It has to form around something, it has to condense
Speaker 1: around something. There has to be a starting point, and
Speaker 1: that point can be a microbe. Yeah and yeah, and
Speaker 1: so it's obviously the case that with very light microbes,
Speaker 1: they contend to be buoyant within the atmosphere. Like a
Speaker 1: turbulent air current can churn up a bunch of dust
Speaker 1: that has microbes living within it, and that can get
Speaker 1: sent up into the atmosphere and suddenly you are a
Speaker 1: macro organism that is miles above the ground and you're
Speaker 1: up here in the cloud. How are you going to
Speaker 1: get back down to a place that's better for you
Speaker 1: in terms of reproduction, because the upper atmosphere of Earth
Speaker 1: is probably not a good home for micro organisms on
Speaker 1: a permanent basis. Right high up in the atmosphere is
Speaker 1: often very cold, they can be very dry, you can
Speaker 1: get desiccated if you're a cellular organism that needs liquid water,
Speaker 1: and there's exposure to high levels of UV radiation from
Speaker 1: the sun, which of course can burn your life away.
Speaker 1: But it's a great plate way to get from one
Speaker 1: place to the other. Right It's kind of like when
Speaker 1: humans fly up into the upper atmosphere. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: about getting from one point on the surface to another
Speaker 1: point on the surface. Yeah, that's actually really interesting. It's
Speaker 1: been sort of hypothesized that what if air currents like
Speaker 1: the jet stream in a way, can could function to
Speaker 1: transport interesting bacterial mutations from one population of of bacteria
Speaker 1: somewhere to another, sort of like a gene conveyor belt.
Speaker 1: But even if it is useful for for the genetic
Speaker 1: diversity of a bacterial population around the world, like that,
Speaker 1: microorganisms that travel in the Earth's clouds don't generally want
Speaker 1: to live there forever. But Venus's atmosphere is actually not
Speaker 1: the same as Earth's, as we've been discussing, and despite
Speaker 1: how hostile Venus is, in many ways, Venus's atmosphere might
Speaker 1: be a better place for organisms than Earth's atmosphere. Organisms
Speaker 1: that might dwell within it, of course, are also different
Speaker 1: from the organisms that live on Earth and might make
Speaker 1: their living in a different biochemical way. So, Robert, you
Speaker 1: mentioned a paper earlier by Sanjay Lemia at All, the
Speaker 1: one that's in astrobiology this year, and that the earlier
Speaker 1: thing that we talked about from that paper was the
Speaker 1: conclusion that Venus might have had oceans for two billion years,
Speaker 1: which you give plenty of time for organisms to possibly
Speaker 1: evolved there. But the authors of this paper also talk
Speaker 1: about the possibility that there are organisms living in the
Speaker 1: clouds of Venus today, just like Grinspoon was talking about.
Speaker 1: So the authors note that there are lots of good
Speaker 1: reasons to look for life forms in the lower cloud
Speaker 1: layer of Venus, which is about forty seven point five
Speaker 1: to fifty point five kilometers from the surface. Now, if
Speaker 1: you look at this layer of the atmosphere, it's got
Speaker 1: very moderate temperatures roughly sixty degrees celsius, which is about
Speaker 1: a hundred and forty degrees fahrenheit. It's got moderate pressure,
Speaker 1: it's like one Earth atmosphere roughly, it's got moderate radiation exposure.
Speaker 1: They write that the UV levels in the upper atmosphere
Speaker 1: of Venus are probably similar to the UV levels of
Speaker 1: the Archaean Earth's surface, where of course we know micro
Speaker 1: organisms thrived without being destroyed by radiation. And they mentioned
Speaker 1: that it has quote micron sized sulfuric acid aerosols, which
Speaker 1: are water droplets containing sulfuric acid dispersed throughout the cloud. Yeah. Really,
Speaker 1: when you when you think about it, the the atmosphere
Speaker 1: of Venus is kind of it's more it's more like
Speaker 1: the surface of Earth in many respects, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: or at least what we think without a ground. Yes,
Speaker 1: but but really when you when you think of Earth though,
Speaker 1: I think of the fact when if you're dealing with
Speaker 1: the hard surface of Earth, most of the hard surface
Speaker 1: of Earth is a is it is it is a cold,
Speaker 1: lightless desert environment. Uh, that is underneath the ocean. That's
Speaker 1: a very good point. Maybe you should think about the
Speaker 1: atmosphere of Venus being less like the atmosphere of Earth
Speaker 1: and more like the waters of the oceans on Earth.
Speaker 1: But anyway, all of this that we've been saying so
Speaker 1: far is just to the point that it's not impossible
Speaker 1: that there could be microorganisms living within the clouds in Venus.
Speaker 1: You know, there there are some favorable conditions. Are there
Speaker 1: any positive reasons to think that there might be organisms there? Well,
Speaker 1: this comes back to the unknown you v absorber that
Speaker 1: we talked about earlier, Right, So, there this thing that
Speaker 1: we have observed embedded within the Venusian clouds. So let
Speaker 1: me think that, yeah, there could be alien bacteria in
Speaker 1: the clouds, and and when we were looking at the
Speaker 1: unknown UV absorber, this could be it. So NASA has
Speaker 1: studied the the unknown UV absorber for some time, and
Speaker 1: basically we're talking about an atmospheric anomaly that where we
Speaker 1: see UV light being absorbed by something. Right. In general,
Speaker 1: Venus is highly reflective. It's a bright planet, like it
Speaker 1: shines things back out into space when the sun shines
Speaker 1: on it, and the clouds that surround it reflect a
Speaker 1: lot of sunlight. But there is this weird, mysterious UV
Speaker 1: absorption then creating this contrast within the clouds. They're dark
Speaker 1: patches and patterns within the reflective clouds. And the question is, well,
Speaker 1: what could that be? Now we can say what it
Speaker 1: almost certainly is not. It's not going to be say,
Speaker 1: giant atmospheric like manta rays or anything like that. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not going to be space whales in the atmosphere
Speaker 1: of Venus. Uh. But it could potentially be like clouds
Speaker 1: of micro organisms, like colonies of microorganisms kind of you know,
Speaker 1: not not to exaggerated too much, but kind of like
Speaker 1: the krill of Venus, but with no whales coming around
Speaker 1: to scoop them up. No, that's a very very good
Speaker 1: point of comparison. Actually, people, in fact, the scientists who
Speaker 1: worked on this have compared it to the way you
Speaker 1: would look at algal blooms and bodies of water here
Speaker 1: on Earth. Uh. That that's a good point of comparison,
Speaker 1: because one of the most interesting things about these dark
Speaker 1: patches is that they have this kind of shimmering, moving
Speaker 1: kind of quality to them. Uh. A quote from Lemo
Speaker 1: which he gave in a uh in a press releases,
Speaker 1: he said, quote, Venus shows some episodic dark sulfuric rich
Speaker 1: patches which contrasts up to thirty in the ultra violet
Speaker 1: and muted in longer wavelengths. These patches persist for days,
Speaker 1: changing their shape and contrasts continuously and appear to be
Speaker 1: scale dependent. So yeah, they're they've got this weird dynamic
Speaker 1: quality to them, just like a bloom of organisms in
Speaker 1: ocean water might. Now. I know some of you are
Speaker 1: probably remembering, well, you said that there are sulphuric acid
Speaker 1: clouds up there. How is life thriving up there? What?
Speaker 1: One of the points that the Lamait makes is that, well,
Speaker 1: if you consider the fact that life on Earth as
Speaker 1: we know it can thrive in acidic conditions, that it
Speaker 1: can feed on CO two and produce sulphuric acid. Uh,
Speaker 1: it all lines up with the environments that we we
Speaker 1: we know to exist in the in the atmosphere of Venus. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: to be clear, we're not saying that this is evidence
Speaker 1: that there is definitely, you know, life in the clouds
Speaker 1: of Venus. It's just that there's a lot of interesting
Speaker 1: evidence that would line up with their being patches of
Speaker 1: micro organisms in the clouds of Venus that are making
Speaker 1: their living this way. Now, there there are other options too.
Speaker 1: It could be chemical, right, maybe you've got patches of
Speaker 1: sulfur dioxide and iron chloride absorbing u V in the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't necessarily seem to explain everything we observe,
Speaker 1: at least not to Laman the co authors. So there
Speaker 1: are these light absorbing particles dispersed in clouds, and we
Speaker 1: don't know for sure what they are. The idea that
Speaker 1: their microorganisms is a very elegant and exciting hypothesis. But
Speaker 1: is there any way we could test this to see
Speaker 1: if it's true. There is, and we should note we
Speaker 1: haven't gotten detested because anything we've sent through has just
Speaker 1: has not has not had the the the equipment, or
Speaker 1: or it has not spent the necessary amount of time
Speaker 1: in the atmosphere. But there is at least one really
Speaker 1: awesome proposal for studying the atmosphere of Venus, and it
Speaker 1: involves Shatner. No, it involves vamps. Vamps, yes, and by
Speaker 1: vamps I don't mean the space vampires of of our
Speaker 1: favorite Toby Hooper movie Life Force. Life Force. Yes. Oh,
Speaker 1: I thought you were gonna say Planet of the Vampires. No, No,
Speaker 1: it doesn't involve those space vampires either, though that is
Speaker 1: that is also a good one. Man. I love Planet
Speaker 1: of the Vampires. They got the best bass suits, and
Speaker 1: they do they're so styled leather space suits. But this
Speaker 1: is this is pretty stylish too. I think, if if you'll,
Speaker 1: if you'll allow me here to discuss the venous atmospheric
Speaker 1: maneuverable platform or VAMP please do Robert, which is a
Speaker 1: proposed Northrop Grumman planetary exploration vehicle, and you should. You
Speaker 1: used to look up images of this at home. It
Speaker 1: looks kind of like a flying wing, which is interesting
Speaker 1: considering that Northrop Grumman made the original flying wing aircraft,
Speaker 1: the experimental y B thirty five and y B forty nine,
Speaker 1: the former with propellers, the ladder with the jets uh
Speaker 1: from the from the mid to late nineteen forties. I
Speaker 1: don't think I know what those are? What are what
Speaker 1: are they like? They essentially imagine a big boomerang as
Speaker 1: a nineteen forties bomber, and that's what you have with
Speaker 1: the YB thirty five and the YP forty nine. These
Speaker 1: are military air yes, yeah, they were designed to be
Speaker 1: big bombers, and Northrop Grumman later came back and did
Speaker 1: the B two Spirit stealth bomber. So if you've seen
Speaker 1: images of the stealth bomber, then you have seen flying
Speaker 1: wing aircraft. Yeah. So they really like the idea of
Speaker 1: a of a flying wing and in fact, this the
Speaker 1: VAMPS concept involves sending one to Venus. So we're talking
Speaker 1: about a propeller driven flying wing type of craft that's
Speaker 1: solar powered and also semi buoyant. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: a blimp plane hybrid, but it's a prop plane in Venus. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a prop plane that this Yeah, I love the
Speaker 1: idea that that one day we could have a propeller
Speaker 1: driven vehicle in the atmosphere of Venus. Uh. It would
Speaker 1: have about a hundred and eighty foot or fifty five
Speaker 1: wing span. It would fly at a mac speed of
Speaker 1: about thirty per second or sixty seven miles per hour,
Speaker 1: and that it's desired altitude would would be something about
Speaker 1: fifty to seventy kilometers or thirty to forty five miles
Speaker 1: above the hard surface of the planet. All right, So
Speaker 1: that would put it within access to that nice range
Speaker 1: that Lama and colleagues were talking about, right. I should
Speaker 1: also point out that this is what's categorized as a
Speaker 1: lifting entry atmospheric flight system or a LEAF system, which
Speaker 1: has also been proposed for explorations on Mars and Titan Uh.
Speaker 1: But he here's here's just a quote from the material
Speaker 1: that North of Grumman has on the VAMP project. The
Speaker 1: VAMP is quote an aeroshell less hypersonic entry vehicle that
Speaker 1: transitions to a semi buoyant, maneuverable solar powered air vehicle
Speaker 1: for flight in Venus's atmosphere. So it's an atmospheric rover
Speaker 1: and it could last for up to a year in
Speaker 1: Venus's atmosphere, just flying through the upper and midcloud layers
Speaker 1: equipped with with with the atmospheric sampling equipment, including equipment
Speaker 1: that could help us determine if there are signs of
Speaker 1: microbial life within the skies of Venus. Loving this for
Speaker 1: multiple reasons. Number one, I of course always just love
Speaker 1: good space exploration. Uh and and let's look for life.
Speaker 1: Come on. But on top of that, since it's a
Speaker 1: prop plane, I'm imagining it's got to also have a
Speaker 1: surly mechanic with a big wrench sticking out of the overalls.
Speaker 1: That's like working on it. Yeah, one would imagine, um
Speaker 1: but kind of yellow and sulfur stand right. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: do have to point out that it's very early days
Speaker 1: still for for VAMP, but it is one of the options.
Speaker 1: It's very much on the table for future exploration of Venus.
Speaker 1: I like it, man, Yeah, And until we send something
Speaker 1: like there, we just we can't say for certain when
Speaker 1: it comes to the question of microbial life in the
Speaker 1: clouds there. Well, I guess we'll just have to wait
Speaker 1: and see. No, wait, we don't have to just wait
Speaker 1: and see what we can We can publicly encourage space
Speaker 1: exploration come on now, yeah, yeah, Now, earlier on we
Speaker 1: were talking about the possibility of life in Venus and
Speaker 1: you you want to step further, and you said, well,
Speaker 1: what about intelligent life? Now, I know that's kind of
Speaker 1: hard to imagine because let's say, according to these predictions
Speaker 1: based on the papers we've been talking about today, that
Speaker 1: maybe Venus had oceans for two billion years before the
Speaker 1: runaway greenhouse effect killed all that we know from experience
Speaker 1: in the history of the Earth that two billion years
Speaker 1: of access to oceans is not enough time to evolve
Speaker 1: complex multicellular organisms with brains and the ability to build
Speaker 1: civilizations and all that. But let's just imagine things when
Speaker 1: different there For some reason, maybe evolution happened faster. We
Speaker 1: don't know. Um, what would things be like if say,
Speaker 1: you have an intelligent civilization on a planet, maybe at
Speaker 1: the level of technological achievement that human civilization is at
Speaker 1: right now, and you realize all your scientists tell you, Okay,
Speaker 1: we've got runaway greenhouse effect going on, We've got a
Speaker 1: couple hundred years before things get intolerable on the surface
Speaker 1: of this planet. What are you gonna do? And I wonder, well,
Speaker 1: what could be done? I mean, is that just definitely
Speaker 1: the end for the species? Or can you somehow try
Speaker 1: to come up with some sustainable way to retreat to
Speaker 1: the subterranean realm? Can you get can you get geothermal power?
Speaker 1: Were uh, you know, I don't know, making lightbulbs for
Speaker 1: you to grow plants down there. I I just like
Speaker 1: wonder what's possible? How long can you survive on a
Speaker 1: planet that doesn't want to host life on its surface anymore? Oh? Wow?
Speaker 1: I mean, well, this is this is a wonderful sci
Speaker 1: fi question. And you actually have some some fairly old
Speaker 1: works that kind of explored a bit there. The old
Speaker 1: William Hope Hodgson book The Night Lands. Oh I haven't
Speaker 1: read that. It's um, it's tremendous work of early essentially
Speaker 1: post apocalyptic literature in which the earth has grown dark.
Speaker 1: It's it's the night Lands now. And there's this place
Speaker 1: called the Last Rett Doubt. And so it's like a
Speaker 1: pyramid and artificial uh structure created by humans, and it's
Speaker 1: powered by hydrothermal power. And this is where essentially the
Speaker 1: last remnants of humanity have have have assembled themselves and
Speaker 1: tried to sort of hold on to life against the
Speaker 1: darkness and the cold. Sounds bleak, Robert. It's pretty bleak.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's kind of gorgeous in its own way,
Speaker 1: but well, we're talking about a bleak concept. We're talking
Speaker 1: about a life form losing its environment and having to
Speaker 1: adapt to some sort of new take on life, either
Speaker 1: by retreating into the darkness or finding a way to
Speaker 1: live up in the clouds. Yeah. And then, of course
Speaker 1: this is premised on the idea that if the scientists
Speaker 1: of Venusian civilization did come to them and say, look,
Speaker 1: we've only got a couple hundred years before, you know,
Speaker 1: it's too hot to live on this planet anymore, would
Speaker 1: people actually pay attention to them and do anything right?
Speaker 1: It would kind of depend on what's the lifespan of
Speaker 1: of the Venusian beings here. If it's like humans, then
Speaker 1: if when you tell a human all right, we need
Speaker 1: to do something because something bad happens in two hundred years,
Speaker 1: they're going to say, well, I'm not going to be
Speaker 1: alive for that, right. What's what's happening tomorrow, what's happening, uh,
Speaker 1: the week after next, what's happening maybe next year. Because
Speaker 1: we as a species don't have a great track record
Speaker 1: for long term planning, we can maybe think, maybe thinking
Speaker 1: to the next generation if we're being generous. Uh So,
Speaker 1: I don't think the human model uh leaves much hope
Speaker 1: for for what a Venusian life form might have accomplished. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can imagine there was a lot of oh these
Speaker 1: you know, runaway greenhouse effect alarmists. Yeah, or two hundred years. Well,
Speaker 1: in the next generation, they'll figure it out. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the technology will come online and they'll just fix everything. Uh.
Speaker 1: And while they're off chatting about it, the the oceans
Speaker 1: boil away, and then they boil away as well. But
Speaker 1: maybe a few are able to crawl down into their crips,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe a few were able to make it
Speaker 1: up into their cloud cities. I don't know if they
Speaker 1: can keep the others from from dragging them out or
Speaker 1: dragging them back down. I guess this maybe deserves a
Speaker 1: whole episode someday we should come back and examine the
Speaker 1: idea of how long could a say, an ecosystem be
Speaker 1: maintained purely in a subterranean existence. Could you go on
Speaker 1: indefinitely if you had incoming energy sources. Yeah? I love
Speaker 1: talking about subterranean life, so that would be a great
Speaker 1: topic to discuss. In the meantime, Uh, we thank everybody
Speaker 1: for joining us on this trip to Venus and UH,
Speaker 1: if you if you enjoy this episode, let us know,
Speaker 1: let us know what other planets, so, what other moons
Speaker 1: even you would like us to explore in future episodes.
Speaker 1: You can check out all of our past episodes that
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Speaker 1: as always to our excellent audio producers Alex Williams and
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