WEBVTT - Airships Over Venus 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:05.280 My Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of 0:00:05.360 --> 0:00:14.120 My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:14.160 --> 0:00:17.759 your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. 0:00:17.800 --> 0:00:19.759 And Hey Rob, it has been a while since we 0:00:19.880 --> 0:00:22.479 checked in on the air Frier Planet. So what do 0:00:22.520 --> 0:00:25.600 you say we talked about Venus today? Yeah, I think 0:00:25.640 --> 0:00:28.200 it is high time that we return to Venus, uh 0:00:28.280 --> 0:00:30.840 for for a few different reasons. First of all, even 0:00:30.840 --> 0:00:33.839 though we have covered Venus in the past, there's just 0:00:33.960 --> 0:00:38.279 so much weird and wonderful stuff to discuss about the 0:00:38.320 --> 0:00:42.680 planet that we had to return. Also, in the past year, 0:00:42.960 --> 0:00:48.199 we've had some developments concerning Venus, and also there's a 0:00:48.200 --> 0:00:53.479 particular plan of a project in the in the works 0:00:53.640 --> 0:00:56.240 that I'd like to discuss in more detail. Really, just 0:00:56.320 --> 0:00:59.920 like Venus is just such a wild and wonderful plan 0:01:00.040 --> 0:01:03.080 it and our attempts to understand how we might might 0:01:03.080 --> 0:01:05.720 be able to further explore it, and also our history 0:01:05.760 --> 0:01:08.680 of exploring it is just fascinating. So we just had 0:01:08.720 --> 0:01:10.720 to return. Well, you know what we always say here 0:01:10.760 --> 0:01:13.200 with reference to Venus, I am the doorway. We are 0:01:13.240 --> 0:01:16.080 both the doorway. So let's open ourselves and and walk 0:01:16.160 --> 0:01:19.880 through into some thoughts about the second planet. Yeah, nice 0:01:20.040 --> 0:01:23.520 Stephen King reference there. All right. So, I guess one 0:01:23.520 --> 0:01:25.759 of the things with with Venus, you know, that I've 0:01:25.760 --> 0:01:28.560 been thinking about recently is like the idea of of 0:01:28.720 --> 0:01:31.600 terra firma, you know, of the solid ground beneath our feet. 0:01:32.240 --> 0:01:33.920 And when I think about this, i'ten find it a 0:01:33.920 --> 0:01:36.639 bit weird because, on one hand, the idea of firm 0:01:36.800 --> 0:01:40.679 earth beneath us is truly reassuring, and knowing that the 0:01:40.720 --> 0:01:43.720 Earth is round only makes it more so, at least 0:01:43.720 --> 0:01:46.280 to my mind, because in some respects it means that 0:01:46.319 --> 0:01:48.560 it's Earth all the way down underneath this, you know, 0:01:48.960 --> 0:01:50.480 like the Earth might not be the center of the 0:01:50.560 --> 0:01:54.000 universe or even the Solar System, but the center of 0:01:54.000 --> 0:01:56.600 the Earth is still a center, you know what I mean. Yeah, 0:01:56.640 --> 0:02:00.280 it can't. The Earth can't like collapse and fall throw 0:02:00.360 --> 0:02:04.320 into a space beneath itself, because being a sphere, there 0:02:04.400 --> 0:02:06.680 is no space beneath it. You just you go down 0:02:06.760 --> 0:02:11.000 until you hit the center. Yeah. Now the sky, of course, 0:02:11.040 --> 0:02:13.239 and if you're in the sky, that that's not terra firma. 0:02:13.280 --> 0:02:15.160 And the same goes for the surface of the ocean. 0:02:15.440 --> 0:02:18.280 Despite the fact that the ocean reminds us that terra 0:02:18.360 --> 0:02:21.120 firma isn't all it's cracked up to be. Much of 0:02:21.120 --> 0:02:25.240 of of Earth is crushed beneath an ocean, hidden in darkness, 0:02:25.600 --> 0:02:28.600 and other proportions are covered in ice or propelled so 0:02:28.680 --> 0:02:31.000 far up into the atmosphere by mountain peaks that it 0:02:31.200 --> 0:02:35.200 pushes beyond what is a reasonable environment for humans. Sure, 0:02:36.120 --> 0:02:38.400 and then when we think of other worlds, it gets 0:02:38.400 --> 0:02:42.840 even weirder. Right that gas giants uh boast no terra 0:02:42.919 --> 0:02:46.200 firma at all. And then there's Venus on Venus Terra 0:02:46.280 --> 0:02:49.760 firma or Venus firma more accurately would be a high pressure, 0:02:49.840 --> 0:02:53.720 high temperature hellscape, but higher up in its atmosphere or 0:02:54.120 --> 0:02:56.720 you know, in or above the clouds of Venus. This 0:02:56.760 --> 0:03:01.120 is the region, ironically, that we might find metaphorical terra 0:03:01.200 --> 0:03:05.880 firma on the planet that is Terra's strange sibling. Mm hmm, 0:03:06.000 --> 0:03:08.520 interesting thought. Okay, so we're gonna be talking about the 0:03:08.560 --> 0:03:12.040 atmosphere of Venus today. Uh. Now, this is this is 0:03:12.040 --> 0:03:14.680 a subject that's not entirely new to us. We've visited 0:03:14.720 --> 0:03:17.720 this in uh some explorations before we did one episode 0:03:17.760 --> 0:03:20.400 a couple of years ago about the possibility of life 0:03:20.480 --> 0:03:23.720 on Venus, where we discussed the pros and cons and 0:03:23.800 --> 0:03:26.520 various scientific speculation about what form that could take if 0:03:26.560 --> 0:03:29.280 it were to exist. And one of the things that 0:03:29.360 --> 0:03:32.760 kept coming up there was about the difference between the 0:03:32.800 --> 0:03:37.040 surface of Venus and the atmosphere of Venus um and so, well, 0:03:37.080 --> 0:03:39.120 maybe we should just do a brief refresher on on 0:03:39.240 --> 0:03:41.839 Venus itself. Tell me about the planet, like, I'm going 0:03:41.840 --> 0:03:44.000 on a blind date with Venus? What what? What have 0:03:44.040 --> 0:03:46.960 you got to sell me on this? Alright, So, Venus 0:03:47.000 --> 0:03:49.040 is the second planet from the Sun, and it's just 0:03:49.080 --> 0:03:52.440 slightly smaller than Earth size and surface area is quite 0:03:52.440 --> 0:03:54.240 similar to our own world, and in any ways it 0:03:54.280 --> 0:03:57.080 can be seen as an alternative Earth. The two planets 0:03:57.080 --> 0:03:59.800 may have had very similar origins, but they parted ways 0:04:00.000 --> 0:04:03.760 on ago. Venus may have once had oceans, and may 0:04:03.840 --> 0:04:07.080 have once or even still we'll get into this supported 0:04:07.120 --> 0:04:11.240 life forms. But today it's this dully lit, high pressure 0:04:11.240 --> 0:04:16.159 world with volcanic mountains and ashen planes are runaway. Greenhouse 0:04:16.200 --> 0:04:18.840 effect boiled away the oceans long ago and they were 0:04:18.880 --> 0:04:22.039 lost to space. There are no plate tectonics that we 0:04:22.120 --> 0:04:24.680 know of on Venus, and it's volcanoes to spring up 0:04:24.720 --> 0:04:28.400 wherever instead of emerging along plate borders as they do 0:04:28.480 --> 0:04:32.600 on Earth. The high pressure, high temperature atmosphere is more 0:04:32.640 --> 0:04:36.960 than nine carbon dioxide and three point five percent molecular nitrogen, 0:04:37.200 --> 0:04:39.839 with trace amounts of other gases. If you're standing on 0:04:39.880 --> 0:04:42.520 the surface of Venus, it would be roughly ninety times 0:04:42.520 --> 0:04:46.080 the pressure of sea level on Earth. Um. Of course, 0:04:46.080 --> 0:04:48.040 it's going to vary depending on altitude, but that's sort 0:04:48.080 --> 0:04:51.680 of the ballpark. The clouds are often described as being 0:04:51.720 --> 0:04:55.880 concentrated sulfuric acid, or more specifically sulfur dioxide with drops 0:04:55.880 --> 0:04:58.919 of sulfuric acid within it. Yes, that that is what 0:04:59.040 --> 0:05:02.080 the mist is, so it's a carbon dioxide atmosphere, but 0:05:02.240 --> 0:05:06.080 the droplets that are suspended to make the clouds sulfuric 0:05:06.120 --> 0:05:11.240 acid have fun Batman. So when we we think about Venus, 0:05:11.279 --> 0:05:12.880 one of the cool things that we've touched on this 0:05:12.960 --> 0:05:15.640 before is that when we think about life on Venus, 0:05:15.640 --> 0:05:19.040 either life that could still reside there now, native life, 0:05:19.440 --> 0:05:21.719 or the possibility, which we'll get into later in the 0:05:21.720 --> 0:05:25.120 episode of of its sustaining our life in one way 0:05:25.200 --> 0:05:27.760 or another. We end up not looking to that hell 0:05:27.920 --> 0:05:32.479 hellish surface to the actual Venus firma. No, Instead we 0:05:32.560 --> 0:05:35.320 look to the clouds above, or even the space a 0:05:35.360 --> 0:05:38.320 little above the clouds. Yes, And this brings us to 0:05:38.560 --> 0:05:40.560 one of the main things that we wanted to talk 0:05:40.600 --> 0:05:45.160 about today, which was that there was what looks like 0:05:45.320 --> 0:05:49.880 some really major news on the subject of possible life 0:05:49.920 --> 0:05:52.520 on Venus just a couple of months ago. So the 0:05:52.520 --> 0:05:54.479 story turned out to be one of those cases of 0:05:54.520 --> 0:05:58.120 possible scientific whiplash. But we'll get into the complications as 0:05:58.120 --> 0:06:00.760 we move on. But but let's just take a look. 0:06:00.800 --> 0:06:05.760 If you're ready, let's do it. Okay, So, for obvious reasons, 0:06:05.800 --> 0:06:07.960 the reasons we've just been talking about, the surface of 0:06:08.040 --> 0:06:11.479 Venus is just clearly sterile. There is no way you 0:06:11.480 --> 0:06:14.279 would expect to find any kind of organized life form 0:06:14.400 --> 0:06:17.479 living at I was gonna say sea level, not sea level. 0:06:17.520 --> 0:06:20.880 The surface level of Venus. You know, again, temperatures over 0:06:21.000 --> 0:06:24.240 nine degrees fahrenheits somewhere between like four hundred and five 0:06:24.320 --> 0:06:27.960 hundred degrees celsius. Extreme pressure like you just had something 0:06:28.000 --> 0:06:30.800 like ninety or hundred times the atmospheric pressure at sea 0:06:30.880 --> 0:06:33.560 level on Earth. It's sort of equivalent to going like, 0:06:33.760 --> 0:06:37.240 you know, hundreds of meters down under the water, very 0:06:37.320 --> 0:06:42.320 very high pressure um. It is difficult to imagine under 0:06:42.360 --> 0:06:46.479 these conditions that any sort of organized, self replicating structures 0:06:46.920 --> 0:06:49.080 would be able to survive, and there are a few 0:06:49.080 --> 0:06:51.960 reasons for that. One thing is that you know, like, uh, 0:06:52.000 --> 0:06:55.640 information containing molecules tend to be pretty fragile and they 0:06:55.680 --> 0:06:59.920 would be probably disrupted by heat of that kind. Also, 0:07:00.160 --> 0:07:02.320 you can't have water there, and it's hard for us 0:07:02.360 --> 0:07:05.600 to imagine what a life form that did not incorporate 0:07:05.680 --> 0:07:08.599 water would look like, because water is a very Water 0:07:08.680 --> 0:07:11.880 is the necessary solvent that makes the existence of cells possible, 0:07:11.920 --> 0:07:16.600 allows it allows the transportation of different types of nutrients 0:07:16.600 --> 0:07:20.640 and molecules across membranes and stuff like that. Like, you 0:07:20.680 --> 0:07:23.200 can't have life as we know it without water, and 0:07:23.240 --> 0:07:25.720 you can't have water on the surface of Venus. But 0:07:25.800 --> 0:07:27.680 as we've discussed on the show before, it is not 0:07:27.840 --> 0:07:31.120 impossible to imagine that life could exist higher up in 0:07:31.160 --> 0:07:34.800 the atmosphere of Venus. So this would be micro organisms 0:07:34.920 --> 0:07:38.360 floating in the clouds where at higher altitudes the climate 0:07:38.520 --> 0:07:41.840 is relatively temperate, and this would not even be without 0:07:41.880 --> 0:07:45.160 precedent and known biology. We're not talking about some kind 0:07:45.160 --> 0:07:49.360 of organism that is unimaginable from from the perspective of 0:07:49.400 --> 0:07:53.080 Earth life, because here on Earth there are bacteria such 0:07:53.120 --> 0:07:57.240 as a Pseudomonas syringy that are thought to be present 0:07:57.280 --> 0:08:01.000 at higher altitudes floating within cloud I've even read about 0:08:01.040 --> 0:08:05.840 interesting speculation that these bacteria floating in the clouds could 0:08:05.960 --> 0:08:10.360 affect weather patterns by serving as ice nucleation points that 0:08:10.560 --> 0:08:13.720 lead to precipitation. To think about that, like, what if 0:08:13.760 --> 0:08:16.679 the weather is being affected by germs up in the sky, 0:08:18.120 --> 0:08:20.680 and the idea of microbes floating in the clouds of 0:08:20.760 --> 0:08:24.640 Venus would even explain if it were true some observed 0:08:24.760 --> 0:08:27.480 features of Venus that that we don't fully know how 0:08:27.520 --> 0:08:31.440 to explain otherwise. Uh. David Grinspoon has written about this, 0:08:31.480 --> 0:08:33.960 and he's a former show guest. We we've talked to 0:08:34.040 --> 0:08:36.280 him a little bit about the signs of life on 0:08:36.400 --> 0:08:39.160 Venus that that pre date the paper that was published 0:08:39.240 --> 0:08:43.440 this year, things like recurring patterns of darkening observed in 0:08:43.480 --> 0:08:46.240 the clouds. Do you remember any of the other specifics 0:08:46.280 --> 0:08:48.760 he gets into about that. I mean that that's one 0:08:48.760 --> 0:08:49.959 of the big one that's one of the ones we 0:08:50.040 --> 0:08:52.400 ended up focusing on. Yeah, this is this idea that 0:08:52.480 --> 0:08:54.440 it it almost thinks makes you think about all some 0:08:54.480 --> 0:08:58.920 sort of u you know, plankton type life form thriving 0:08:58.960 --> 0:09:01.960 in the in the atmosp here. They're like atmospheric algal 0:09:02.000 --> 0:09:06.120 blooms or something. Yeah. Um. But the other thing is 0:09:06.200 --> 0:09:09.640 that there is evidence that Venus was quite possibly once 0:09:09.720 --> 0:09:12.559 more hospitable than it is now. You mentioned this earlier, 0:09:12.600 --> 0:09:15.840 the possibility of surface water. Now there is definitely not 0:09:16.000 --> 0:09:19.520 surface water on Venus right now would instantly boil, But 0:09:19.760 --> 0:09:22.960 the evidence makes it look highly plausible that Venus once 0:09:23.000 --> 0:09:26.439 had liquid water at its surface, even oceans, maybe as 0:09:26.480 --> 0:09:30.280 recently as a billion years ago or so. That's not ah, 0:09:30.520 --> 0:09:33.280 I believe that's not a known fact, but it seems 0:09:33.360 --> 0:09:38.640 highly plausible. So if there once was a full biosphere 0:09:38.640 --> 0:09:41.240 on Venus that was eventually wiped out at the surface 0:09:41.320 --> 0:09:44.640 level by the runaway greenhouse effect, it's possible that the 0:09:44.760 --> 0:09:49.920 last remnant of that archaic biological world is microorganisms that 0:09:50.040 --> 0:09:53.880 can live their whole lives floating in the clouds. Though 0:09:53.960 --> 0:09:57.560 it's worth noting that these clouds again consist primarily of 0:09:57.600 --> 0:10:00.920 suspended droplets of sulfuric acid. So these would need to 0:10:00.960 --> 0:10:06.720 be special kinds of extremophile type organisms. Now, while these 0:10:06.760 --> 0:10:10.560 possibilities are very cool, this has always been totally speculative 0:10:10.640 --> 0:10:13.600 right there. There has never been any actual, direct, strong 0:10:13.760 --> 0:10:17.400 evidence for the presence of life on Venus. There has. 0:10:17.200 --> 0:10:21.280 It's just been that we've observed things that could be 0:10:21.640 --> 0:10:25.400 consistent with the presence of life in interesting and surprising ways. 0:10:26.240 --> 0:10:28.720 That is their space for life as we know it, 0:10:29.280 --> 0:10:32.920 within what we know of Venus. Yeah, and the answer is, well, 0:10:33.040 --> 0:10:35.760 maybe more space than you might think. That we didn't 0:10:35.760 --> 0:10:38.000 have direct evidence that would say it looks like there 0:10:38.120 --> 0:10:41.800 is life. That picture got a little bit more complicated 0:10:41.920 --> 0:10:45.599 in September of this year. Uh Now, there's going to 0:10:45.679 --> 0:10:49.400 be a very big caveat coming with this paper. But 0:10:49.480 --> 0:10:52.280 first I just want to present the evidence that we 0:10:52.480 --> 0:10:55.440 that emerged back in September. And so there is a 0:10:55.440 --> 0:11:00.680 paper published in Nature Astronomy in September by Jane Grieves, 0:11:00.720 --> 0:11:06.160 Anita Ms Richards, William Baines, Paul by Rimmer, Hideosagawa, David L. Clemens, 0:11:06.320 --> 0:11:10.480 and Sarah Seeger at All called Phosphine Gas in the 0:11:10.520 --> 0:11:15.400 Cloud Decks of Venus. Now, this paper deals with UH 0:11:15.640 --> 0:11:19.120 analysis of spectral data collected through a couple of telescopes. 0:11:19.160 --> 0:11:23.240 So the lead author, Jane Grieves of Cardiff University and 0:11:23.280 --> 0:11:27.520 colleagues collected data through two major telescopes, the James Clark 0:11:27.600 --> 0:11:32.439 Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array 0:11:32.559 --> 0:11:36.079 in Chile. And what the study reported was that they 0:11:36.080 --> 0:11:39.600 had used spectral analysis of venus to find something really 0:11:39.640 --> 0:11:43.760 intriguing about the gas is present in the atmosphere. And 0:11:43.840 --> 0:11:47.800 what they found was at an altitude of roughly fifty 0:11:47.880 --> 0:11:50.240 kilometers above the surface. I think it was like fifty 0:11:50.240 --> 0:11:53.960 five kilometers in a concentration of about twenty parts per 0:11:54.000 --> 0:11:59.160 billion a gas called phosphene or pH three. That's one 0:11:59.240 --> 0:12:03.360 phosphorus them with three hydrogen atoms. Now the chemistry nerds 0:12:03.360 --> 0:12:07.160 out there, or the breaking bad nerds out there will alike, no, 0:12:07.320 --> 0:12:14.679 that phosphine is just nasty, highly flammable, extremely toxic gas. UH. 0:12:14.760 --> 0:12:18.079 It's often found in conjunction with traces of die phosphine 0:12:18.160 --> 0:12:21.440 or P to H four, which makes it pyrophoric, so 0:12:21.679 --> 0:12:25.280 fond of automatically catching fire upon exposure to air at 0:12:25.360 --> 0:12:30.280 room temperature. Lovely UM. It is sometimes a product of 0:12:30.360 --> 0:12:33.640 human industry, for example, in the manufacture of semiconductors, or 0:12:33.760 --> 0:12:37.520 also in the manufacture of methamphetamine. Now no one is 0:12:37.559 --> 0:12:41.520 alleging that there are meth labs on Venus, but whatever 0:12:41.559 --> 0:12:44.880 the cause, this was a much higher level of phosphine 0:12:44.880 --> 0:12:47.800 gas than you would expect to find. At about twenty 0:12:47.800 --> 0:12:51.040 parts per billion, this is something like three orders of 0:12:51.080 --> 0:12:55.360 magnitude more phosphine than you would find in Earth's atmosphere. Now, 0:12:55.400 --> 0:12:59.240 why is it interesting to find phosphine at that concentration. 0:12:59.320 --> 0:13:02.640 You know, different planets have gases in their atmosphere at 0:13:02.640 --> 0:13:06.720 different levels. You know, Venus has much more carbon dioxide 0:13:06.720 --> 0:13:09.680 and its atmosphere than Earth does. So so what what's 0:13:09.720 --> 0:13:13.160 the deal with phosphine? Why would that catch our attention? Well, 0:13:13.200 --> 0:13:16.840 in short, the presence of high levels of phosphine gas 0:13:16.880 --> 0:13:21.719 represent a dis equilibrium. Phosphine gas is something that's kind 0:13:21.720 --> 0:13:26.240 of inherently unstable and digestible by physical processes, you know, 0:13:26.280 --> 0:13:29.880 exposure to ultra violet light and chemical reactions with other things. 0:13:30.360 --> 0:13:35.520 Phosphine gas should just naturally sort of get eliminated from atmospheres. 0:13:36.320 --> 0:13:38.120 And this ties in with something we talked about in 0:13:38.120 --> 0:13:41.040 one of our recent anthology of Horror episodes, when we 0:13:41.040 --> 0:13:44.200 were talking about looking for signatures of a shadow biosphere 0:13:44.280 --> 0:13:47.319 on Earth. Some of the researchers there, for example, I 0:13:47.320 --> 0:13:50.199 think the planetary scientist or I can't remember she's a 0:13:50.200 --> 0:13:53.880 planetary scientist or an astronomer, but the scientist Caroline Porko. 0:13:54.240 --> 0:13:56.800 I was talking about how if you were looking for 0:13:56.920 --> 0:14:00.200 signs of a shadow biosphere, you would want to find 0:14:00.000 --> 0:14:03.880 and environments that are at a disequilibrium, things that are 0:14:03.880 --> 0:14:08.040 out of whack with like quantities of chemicals that don't 0:14:08.080 --> 0:14:11.079 seem like they would just naturally settle at that level. 0:14:11.720 --> 0:14:13.000 And I was trying to come up with a good 0:14:13.040 --> 0:14:17.040 analogy to explain why it's weird to find phosphene like 0:14:17.120 --> 0:14:19.760 this on on Venus. And so here's what I came 0:14:19.840 --> 0:14:22.720 up with. I hope this is somewhat appropriate. Imagine you 0:14:22.800 --> 0:14:25.560 live in Florida and you go out for a walk 0:14:25.600 --> 0:14:29.040 on a hot summer day in July. It's degrees out, 0:14:29.080 --> 0:14:32.840 a hundred percent humidity, and you're walking your dog along 0:14:32.840 --> 0:14:35.560 the sidewalk, and you notice that every twenty feet or 0:14:35.600 --> 0:14:38.520 so down the sidewalk there's just a big old hunk 0:14:38.560 --> 0:14:41.640 of ice sitting on the pavement. All right, Well, that 0:14:41.640 --> 0:14:45.880 that would be suspect. I think, Yeah, something weird exactly 0:14:46.160 --> 0:14:50.000 Florida weird but weird. Right, Yeah, the ice could be 0:14:50.040 --> 0:14:52.760 the result of a Florida man. That that would explain it. 0:14:52.760 --> 0:14:55.760 It would not make a lot of sense, even though 0:14:55.880 --> 0:14:59.120 not ice does form naturally in the environment on Earth, 0:14:59.520 --> 0:15:02.560 it would not makes sense, given the conditions outside in 0:15:02.600 --> 0:15:06.600 this Florida neighborhood to assume, oh, this is a chunk 0:15:06.600 --> 0:15:09.160 of polar ice that happens to be left over from 0:15:09.160 --> 0:15:12.640 the last glacial maximum period, right, because like the the 0:15:12.760 --> 0:15:17.520 environmental conditions would have already like digested and recycled that ice. 0:15:17.600 --> 0:15:21.240 The ice is unstable enough given the surrounding conditions that 0:15:21.280 --> 0:15:23.640 you wouldn't expect it to just be there from a 0:15:23.680 --> 0:15:27.080 previous freeze over right. It Also, it wouldn't even make 0:15:27.120 --> 0:15:29.800 sense to say, well, it hailed one time last winter, 0:15:30.280 --> 0:15:33.440 so the ice is just sitting here left over from that. No, 0:15:33.760 --> 0:15:37.280 it would mean somebody he's going around spilling ice all 0:15:37.280 --> 0:15:39.720 over the place, or or leaving ice on purpose on 0:15:39.760 --> 0:15:42.520 the sidewalk. Yeah, there's something that there's got to be 0:15:42.600 --> 0:15:45.640 some kind of anomalous process that's putting the ice there, 0:15:46.440 --> 0:15:49.440 and so back to Venus. If phosphine gas were truly 0:15:49.480 --> 0:15:52.760 present at something like twenty parts per billion, you would 0:15:52.760 --> 0:15:56.800 have to assume that something was continuously putting that phosphine there. 0:15:57.800 --> 0:16:01.640 And while it's possible the explanation was some geochemical or 0:16:01.680 --> 0:16:06.160 photochemical process that we don't understand yet, a very interesting 0:16:06.240 --> 0:16:12.000 candidate explanation was microbial life, because here on Earth, phosphene 0:16:12.280 --> 0:16:15.000 is when it's not made by humans, it is almost 0:16:15.080 --> 0:16:20.680 always the byproduct of microbial life, especially anaerobic microbial life. 0:16:21.000 --> 0:16:23.280 In fact, if you go way back to you know, 0:16:23.320 --> 0:16:25.120 I don't remember how many years ago, this is now 0:16:25.680 --> 0:16:28.360 like five or six years ago, we did some Halloween 0:16:28.400 --> 0:16:31.440 episodes on the Will of the Whisp. Remember that there 0:16:31.440 --> 0:16:33.600 would be you know, the legend of there's a light 0:16:33.680 --> 0:16:36.280 in the bog that leads a traveler off the path, 0:16:36.960 --> 0:16:39.560 and it's often attributed to a spirit or a devil. 0:16:39.600 --> 0:16:42.760 It's kind of a visual leshy. It's fairy fire, it's 0:16:43.120 --> 0:16:47.640 the the elf fire, the Hinky Puck or Hinky Punk. 0:16:47.840 --> 0:16:50.200 Is it Punker Puck. I don't remember. I can't remember 0:16:50.240 --> 0:16:52.680 if it's Punker Puck. Yeah, I remember the Will of 0:16:52.720 --> 0:16:55.160 the whisp. Basically, the idea of the will of the 0:16:55.160 --> 0:16:58.320 wisp has so many strange and curious names. It's that 0:16:58.400 --> 0:17:00.720 it's been given over the years in different caled That 0:17:00.800 --> 0:17:02.400 episode was a lot of fun, by the way, and 0:17:02.840 --> 0:17:05.640 you have to go back and revisit that sometime. But 0:17:05.880 --> 0:17:08.919 so people have tried to offer plausible physical explanations for 0:17:09.000 --> 0:17:10.879 sightings of the willow the whisp. Why is it that 0:17:10.960 --> 0:17:14.680 so many people reports seeing a you know, a blue 0:17:14.800 --> 0:17:17.920 or green light in the swamp that's dancing around as 0:17:17.920 --> 0:17:20.879 if it's a lantern carried by a ghost, And a 0:17:20.920 --> 0:17:26.800 lot of these physical explanations for that phenomena involve phosphine gas. 0:17:26.840 --> 0:17:30.600 Often the explanation is some variation on well, there's the 0:17:30.680 --> 0:17:34.000 bog or a bunch of mud, and there's rotting vegetation, 0:17:34.160 --> 0:17:37.520 and and maybe bones from animals down there that are 0:17:37.520 --> 0:17:43.160 being consumed and metabolized by anaerobic bacteria, which produced phosphine 0:17:43.200 --> 0:17:46.040 gas is a byproduct, and then this phosphine gas, in 0:17:46.119 --> 0:17:48.760 the presence of die phosphine or p to H four 0:17:49.240 --> 0:17:51.000 is sort of burping up out of the earth and 0:17:51.119 --> 0:17:55.080 is sometimes spontaneously ignited on contact with the air, or 0:17:55.119 --> 0:17:58.119 maybe it's just producing a sort of cool blue or 0:17:58.160 --> 0:18:02.199 green glow without necessarily catching on fire. But it's in 0:18:02.240 --> 0:18:05.920 the presence of some of some of the pyrophoric gas, 0:18:05.960 --> 0:18:10.240 and whatever is going on here, this glowing or chemoluminescent 0:18:10.359 --> 0:18:14.119 luminescent cloud or this flame becomes the will of the wisp. 0:18:14.320 --> 0:18:17.399 But whether or not that is the the actual explanation 0:18:17.440 --> 0:18:20.600 for will of the whisp sightings, It is absolutely true 0:18:20.680 --> 0:18:24.959 that anaerobic bacteria decomposing organic matter down in the bog 0:18:25.040 --> 0:18:28.399 will produce phosphine gas. That's just something that's known that 0:18:28.720 --> 0:18:33.240 they're known to do. Another interesting coincidence, the authors proposed 0:18:33.240 --> 0:18:36.680 that the phosphine gas detected in Venus's atmosphere was that 0:18:36.800 --> 0:18:41.320 altitudes of around fifty kilometers or like fifty kilometers. This 0:18:41.520 --> 0:18:45.200 also happens to be an altitude where environmental conditions are 0:18:45.280 --> 0:18:49.199 much more tolerable on Venus, around thirty degrees celsius or 0:18:49.240 --> 0:18:53.560 something like eighty something degrees fahrenheit and a pressure similar 0:18:53.600 --> 0:18:56.120 to Earth's atmosphere. Yeah, this is one of the key 0:18:57.640 --> 0:19:00.920 layers on Venus that we're often looking at when we're 0:19:00.960 --> 0:19:05.040 actually sending some sort of a probe there or planning 0:19:05.080 --> 0:19:08.199 for possible missions to Venus in the future, right, and 0:19:08.280 --> 0:19:11.240 so if this phosphine gas was a byproduct of the 0:19:11.280 --> 0:19:16.200 metabolism of some type of microbe, one possibility that was discussed, 0:19:16.200 --> 0:19:18.280 and this was quoted in an m I. T. Tech 0:19:18.320 --> 0:19:21.320 Review article I was reading. This is from Jane Grieves, 0:19:21.320 --> 0:19:23.720 the lead author on the study. She said, quote that 0:19:23.760 --> 0:19:27.920 suggests it's part of the global circulation pattern of the atmosphere, 0:19:28.280 --> 0:19:31.640 where gas sinks before it travels as far as the polls. 0:19:32.920 --> 0:19:35.280 So I guess a question would be, well, could something 0:19:35.359 --> 0:19:37.600 else be putting the phosphine gas there? Like with the 0:19:37.640 --> 0:19:41.240 Florida example, Uh, is there something else that could account 0:19:41.280 --> 0:19:45.160 for chunks of ice being found along the sidewalk? And 0:19:45.240 --> 0:19:47.560 you could come up with explanations. You could say, yeah, 0:19:47.640 --> 0:19:49.480 maybe I don't know, maybe there was some kind of 0:19:49.520 --> 0:19:53.439 upper atmosphere phenomena, some kind of weird anomalous hail storm, 0:19:53.560 --> 0:19:56.320 and these things fell even though it's hot outside. It 0:19:56.400 --> 0:20:00.399 just happened recently. You could come up with things. Uh, 0:20:00.760 --> 0:20:03.560 for example, we know that some amount of phosphine gas 0:20:03.600 --> 0:20:07.119 is generated by a biotic you know, non organic processes 0:20:07.200 --> 0:20:10.280 deep in the atmosphere of Jupiter, but Jupiter is a 0:20:10.280 --> 0:20:13.600 gas giant, and the phosphine there is produced under conditions 0:20:13.640 --> 0:20:16.320 that do not seem to be possible on Venus, at 0:20:16.359 --> 0:20:19.119 least as far as we know. So. Could it be 0:20:19.200 --> 0:20:23.280 produced by lightning or space impacts or volcanoes or some 0:20:23.359 --> 0:20:27.040 other high energy phenomena like that. Well, again, this was 0:20:27.080 --> 0:20:29.480 analyzed by the authors of the paper, and it looks 0:20:29.520 --> 0:20:32.359 like no, not as far as we know nothing. No, 0:20:32.560 --> 0:20:36.600 a biotic process we're aware of seems capable of explaining 0:20:36.640 --> 0:20:40.879 the amounts of phosphine found. So, basically, if if the 0:20:40.920 --> 0:20:44.840 findings in this original study from September are correct, there 0:20:44.960 --> 0:20:48.680 is anomalous gas present in the atmosphere of Venus, and 0:20:48.720 --> 0:20:52.560 we don't know of any photochemical or geochemical process that 0:20:52.600 --> 0:20:54.639 could have put it there in the amount that we 0:20:54.720 --> 0:20:58.080 find it. And on Earth the same gas is often 0:20:58.080 --> 0:21:02.240 the byproduct of microbial life. If so, this is not 0:21:02.520 --> 0:21:04.919 by any means proof of alien life, but it is 0:21:04.960 --> 0:21:09.399 extremely tantalizing from an astrobiological point of view. Again, kind 0:21:09.440 --> 0:21:16.040 of widens the space possible for life to exist. We 0:21:16.040 --> 0:21:18.520 would say more than that, I mean it says, here's 0:21:18.560 --> 0:21:22.400 something we observe and we know it could be explained 0:21:22.400 --> 0:21:25.280 by life and nothing else that we know of would 0:21:25.280 --> 0:21:28.840 seem to explain it very well. Yeah, but to be 0:21:29.000 --> 0:21:31.680 very clear, this is not proof. And I was reading 0:21:31.680 --> 0:21:35.359 an article in Chemical and Engineering News by Arianna Remmel 0:21:35.800 --> 0:21:38.320 who quotes an astro chemist who who had some good 0:21:38.320 --> 0:21:39.880 thoughts here. So I just want to read a quote 0:21:39.880 --> 0:21:44.000 from this article. Anthony Remission, and astro chemist to the 0:21:44.080 --> 0:21:47.600 National Radio Astronomy Observatory who is not involved in the study, 0:21:47.640 --> 0:21:50.480 says the team did a fantastic job presenting their findings, 0:21:50.520 --> 0:21:54.480 but he remains skeptical. Scientists need more spectral data to 0:21:54.600 --> 0:21:58.719 verify that the signal comes from pH three. Remission says quote, 0:21:58.920 --> 0:22:01.960 but it's a first good step in that direction. As 0:22:02.000 --> 0:22:04.439 for what could produce phosphine on venus, he says, we 0:22:04.480 --> 0:22:07.560 need a better understanding of the fundamental chemistry forming these 0:22:07.560 --> 0:22:11.959 types of molecules before calling it a biosignature. So, uh, 0:22:12.119 --> 0:22:14.800 you know, so praise for the study, but you know, 0:22:14.920 --> 0:22:17.840 caution tempering the optimism. It's not like we know there 0:22:17.840 --> 0:22:21.120 are aliens there now. And when this study was first 0:22:21.119 --> 0:22:24.480 published in September, people got really excited. A lot of 0:22:24.520 --> 0:22:27.120 listeners asked us directly to cover this on the show, 0:22:27.200 --> 0:22:29.920 especially since we've done episodes on the possibility of life 0:22:29.960 --> 0:22:33.800 on venus before and it was really cool. But I 0:22:33.880 --> 0:22:36.880 figured we should wait for the experts to chew on 0:22:36.920 --> 0:22:39.239 this a little more before we did an episode about it, 0:22:39.480 --> 0:22:42.679 and I'm glad we did wait, because while this finding 0:22:42.760 --> 0:22:46.080 remains very interesting and is by no means totally overturned, 0:22:46.520 --> 0:22:50.240 subsequent research is making the picture look more complicated and 0:22:50.400 --> 0:22:55.240 less clear. So there are reports of at least three studies, 0:22:55.320 --> 0:22:57.560 at least one of which involves one of the same 0:22:57.600 --> 0:23:01.600 authors as the original study, and this they tried to 0:23:01.640 --> 0:23:05.400