https://spectrum.ieee.org/china-venus-mission ("News China Plans to Bring Back Samples of Venusian Clouds / A gauntlet of engineering challenges await a search for evidence of alien life")
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:jvl3hb5wle4igkd4qgzk2wrt/po...
And note that you may be able to "fish" for samples from an atmospheric floating platform; there is no specific need to get all the way down to the rocks with your rocket.
IIRC, there's only a thin layer of atmosphere where we think the microbes live, and I'm not sure if VE (or future missions) descended to that layer during aero-breaking, but it's an idea.
COULD live
That never even occurred to me! That's a brilliant idea.
The first from the top of my head would be the required length and sheer weight of the cable attached to that Teflon balloon, to say nothing of the weight of the balloon itself or its contents. Speaking of which, actually keeping the contents in that balloon might also be surprisingly tricky.
You need to drag that all the way to Venus, then decelerate enough to stop all that mass, then accelerate that again to come back to Earth, before decelerating to land here. Even without any extra weight that's actually a huge challenge due to the amount of fuel required. There's a reason none of the Mars rovers have come back.
> "90x Earth's atmospheric pressure and 450°C" — becomes Earth-like conditions at higher altitude
> "while sulfuric acid clouds would rapidly degrade balloon materials" — Teflon coatings are a solved problem; JPL did coupon tests[0]
> "The energy requirements for escape velocity from Venus are also substantially higher than Mars" — True, but you'd only need to launch a tiny, dumb payload into orbit, to rendezvous with the return craft. Like Apollo, sample returns aren't one monolithic spacecraft that does the full round-trip; think the Apollo Lunar Ascent Module, but, for ants
[0] https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/j.asr.2007.03.017 ("Prototype design and testing of a Venus long duration, high altitude balloon")
> "Although the expected sulfuric acid concentration at Venus is expected to be in the range of 75–85%, tests were conducted up to 96% to understand our design margin. The material itself was found to be unaffected by prolonged exposure to all concentrations of sulfuric acid up to a temperature of 70 °C. Adhesively taped seam samples did show some discoloration at the tape edges, but there was no evidence of acid penetration into the joint using blotter paper on the inside surface. This test confirmed that the cover tape adhesive was indeed resistant to sulfuric acid as predicted and can support a long duration balloon mission at Venus."
edit: I totally forgot—the Soviets already demonstrated that, in the 70's:
Also been done. Also, in a way, we've been doing it since before space travel, because such material occasionally reaches Earth's surface in form of meteorites. But that's of course using naturally occurring impactors.
It's the closest thing to Hell in the Solar System apart from the Sun.
There is a zone with Earth-like temperature and pressure, but the atmosphere is still poisonous & corrosive, I think. It's someplace we could probably put a human settlement, but it wouldn't be easy and would probably be as fun to maintain as the ISS.
The fact that - as the other comment mentions - life could potentially survive in the atmosphere is incredible too.
If confirmed, the only remaining big mystery would beto know if there is intelligent life in any other part of the universe, which I understand is orders of magnitude more unlikely to confirm, but one can dream...
With regards to the other one (AI), I did not claim anything else than a subjective assesment. I did not expect to see an AI capable of mantaining a conversation aloud, for example. May be I'm easy to impress.
But a subsequent project, JCMT–Venus, designed to study the molecular composition of Venus’s atmosphere using the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii, offered a possible explanation for these disparate findings. Researchers tracked the phosphine signature over time and found it could only be detected at night, as it was destroyed by sunlight. They also discovered that the amount of gas in Venus’s atmosphere varied over time.
“There are no known chemical processes for the production of either ammonia or phosphine, so the only way to know for sure what is responsible for them is to go there.”
This is untrue on multiple levels. There certainly are known chemical processes for producing both, ammonia is fairly common (e.g. huge clouds of it on the gas giants). Plus it still seems likely that what they detected was SO₂[1] which is also quite common and expected; if the problem with your discovery is in the interpretation of the measurement, confirming the measurement doesn't change that.
In any case, I'd lay long odds that "going there" doesn't resolve the issue any more than debating it here has.
[1] https://www.washington.edu/news/2021/01/27/phosphine-venus-s...
A bonus with either of those is your mobile provider won't see every website you visit.
Life on another planet of any sort is an exciting scientific development regardless of how it happened. However, even if definitely proof of life is found in the Solar System, one should resist leaping to the conclusion that it is a separate "branch" of life because it's reasonable to think that it could still be from the same abiogenesis event.
I use "the same source" carefully, because it could be independent events of galaxy-level "panspermia" spreading. It can also be the case that Earth provided the source of panspermia... or, if you want to get a lot more exotic, that life started on Mars and spread to Earth through hitchhiking. We'd need to get it into a lab to see if it is truly from a separate abiogenesis event.
Fortunately, it wouldn't necessarily take long. Earth life seems to have many, many, many highly-conserved characteristics to it that show that it is all comes from a single source here, but that there is no reason to believe those are the only valid choices that life could have made. The odds of another abiogenesis event being able to pass itself off as the some one we came from is negligible. It is most likely that the life would be so immediately and completely different in many ways that it would be completely clear.
At least up to some distance where carbon vaporizes by whatever heat source exists.
In other words, what’s the mathematical principle for Goldilocks zones
The Goldilocks zone itself is a bit of an outdated concept now. Largely because we now know that liquid water exists way beyond the orbit of Mars, in oceans of Europa and Enceladus at very least. Something similar is the case with Venus. Surface is too hot for liquid water, but high atmosphere is pretty much fine.
Come to think of it, I think Asimov already wrote that same story in "Green Patches".
Everyone uses "Jovian" for Jupiter, and yet nobody uses "Venerean" for Venus...
[The planets take adjectives in -an because, I assume, people didn't want to reuse "Martial", "Jovial", and "Venereal". In science fiction you also see "Terran" replacing "Terrestrial".
Interestingly, while martial and venereal are named after the gods, jovial and mercurial are named after the planets.]
I suppose something along those lines could happen: Venusian microbes are sufficiently alien that Earth-based life can't really interact with them, while the Venusian can interact with Earth-based life, or something like that. They can eat you but you can't eat them.
In lots of sci-fi like Star Trek all aliens have DNA and you can create Vulcan-Human hybrids and whatnot, and while e.g. Star Trek does offer an explanation for this[1] in reality alien life would be foundationally different. It will have some sort of DNA-like encoding structure, which isn't DNA.
I agree it's somewhat unlikely, but it's also completely uncharted all-bets-are-off territory. It's not so much about competing, but more about how it will interact (or not).
webdevver•6h ago
the aim should be to get a dudebro to quadbike on the surface. redbull & gopro will be the sponsors, plus polymarket for people to bet on the outcome of the mission.
actually i dont understand why this hasn't already happened! what is more extreme sports, that doing it on other planets?
its hard to get people to care about the sciencey stuff.
I've even got the tagline "Yeah, we found life on mars." and its a picture of the dude looking like a pirate in a spacesuit. people would (could?) love that i think.
voidUpdate•6h ago
pavel_lishin•6h ago
the_gipsy•6h ago
voidUpdate•5h ago
IAmBroom•1h ago
Pressure and temperature are not independent.
"Hotter than the environment" is shorthand for "contains more energy than the output region does".
kleiba•5h ago
webdevver•6h ago
theoreticalmal•5h ago
voidUpdate•5h ago
hermitcrab•5h ago
Indeed. The very low pressure on Mars (0.006 Bar) would be much easier to deal with than the absolutely crushing pressure on Venus (92 Bar) - not to mention the 470C surface temperature.
Hanggliding or ballooning in the cloud tops of Venus would be more practical than going to the surface.
Sanzig•5h ago
So yeah, pretty much science fiction for now!
hermitcrab•5h ago
It would be more like +450K/C difference (470C, not 470K).
Also it is one thing to get a person to 70 Bar in experimental conditions. It is another to actually stay at that pressure for prolonged periods and do anything useful.
Sanzig•4h ago
> Also it is one thing to get a person to 70 Bar in experimental conditions. It is another to actually stay at that pressure for prolonged periods and do anything useful.
Fully agreed - you'd have to test this long term in a hyperbaric habitat on Earth. You may end up needing some sort of medical or pharmaceutical intervention to make it possible. Very risky.
Even firmer in the realm of science fiction. It'd be a good hard sci-fi novel though.
voidUpdate•4h ago
hermitcrab•4h ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newtsuit
I believe they maintain ~1 Bar inside. Not sure if something like that could be built to protect a fragile human from the temperature differential, though. Better to send a robot?
voidUpdate•4h ago
hermitcrab•3h ago
hermitcrab•4h ago
Must have been done already. Surely?
'Hail Mary' by Andy Weir has some interesting stuff about the (spoiler!) alien 'rocky' who is adapted to a high pressure/temperature environment.
I can't imagine anything would justify the cost and hellish conditions of living on Venus's surface. Except, perhaps, as an example what not to do to our own planet.
voidUpdate•4h ago
hermitcrab•4h ago
Within the time and marketing constraints of a Hollywood film, I thought they did a good job on 'The Martian'. Let's hope Hollywood doesn't ruin 'Hail Mary'.
johnisgood•5h ago
voidUpdate•4h ago
I'm not an expert on refrigeration at all, but if you're interested, it might be worth checking out the youtube channel Hyperspace Pirate, who does a lot of diy refrigeration systems, and I believe has managed to make liquid nitrogen in his garage using a home made refrigeration system. He also goes very in-depth into the technical details
johnisgood•4h ago
hermitcrab•5h ago
Depends where they are in their orbits.
Zigurd•6h ago
TeMPOraL•3h ago
I still think this wasn't that bad of an idea. Maybe if we followed through with it, Poland would've had a proper space program now.
slightwinder•4h ago
But the mindset is probably not wrong. Maybe Jeff Bezos can rent his dick-rocket to Red Bull, so people can spacediving the atmosphere. The necessary security-tech they have to build, will probably very beneficial for actual astronauts later.
upghost•4h ago
Given the current hype it probably doesn't even matter if the claim is true as long as it keeps the capital flowing.
slightwinder•3h ago
TeMPOraL•3h ago
i_love_retros•4h ago