Timothy Birdnow

Ammonia,Phosphene, and other such compounds have been found in trace amounts on Venus. This is an excitting development as it could mean there is some sort of microbial life floating in the upper atmosphere of the molten planet.

There ARE abiotic ways to generate these, but they are all hydrogen-based chemicals, which is a huge surprise as Venus appears to be completely without any hydrogen or water.

A geo-chemist I knew explained it to me once, how a "reducing atmosphere" worked. Sadly I don't remember what he told me about it but he assured me it is possible for this sort of thing to happen. I assume hydrogen can be obtained via the solar wind. And if oxygen is mixed with ammonia you get water and nitrogen monoxide.

Venus is a most unlikely place for life. The planet is just about as big as the Earth and gravity is comparable,but unlike the Earth it's atmosphere is incredibly dense - a hundred times as dense as the Earth (making it every bit as dense as AOC and possible worse than Bernie Sanders) and it's surface is tremendously volcanic - the most volcanic place in the solar system. Temperatures are 900* F. at ground level. There is no water, and the clouds are full of acid which rains down on th planet. But it is within the liquid water band in terms of distance from the sun and is believed to have had oceans early on, oceans which evaporated away as the sun warmed and the planet's rotation got wonky (Venus' day is longer than her year and is retrograde, with the sun, if you could see it, rising in the West and setting in the East). Venus has no magnetic field, so it is seared by solar radiation in it's upper levels. Still, the air up around 20 miles high is a comfortable 14 lbs per square inch (1 bar) and temperatures are a lovely 50* or so. If it weren't for the fact it's almost all carbon dioxide - a poisonous gas in such concentrations - and you had acid in the clouds it would be a comfortable place to live. (Between fifty and seventy km up the clouds are almost entirely sulfuric acid). Sulfuric acid is generally a compound of sulfur and water and a base can disassociate the molecules, so apparently airborn life could find the water it would need in this way, much as the Earth's early atmosphere did. Don't quote me; chemistry isn't my bag.

Ammonia, which has been found in the Venusian atmosphere, is a molecule composed of Nitrogen and Hydrogen (NH3) and represents three of the four known essentials for life (the fourth being carbon, which the Venusian atmosphere is lousy with.) So if there is ammonia in the upper atmosphere there could well be some living organisms there. Maybe.

BTW the productin of ammonia is exothermic, meaning it gives off heat. One wonders if this chemical process isn't at least partly responsible for the intense heat of the Venusian atmosphere. Now it's all blamed on the Greenhosue Effect, but is it?

At any rate there is a plan to send a probe to study this better. It would be intersting to find life on Venus, a most unlikely spot for living organisms. But at one time Venus had a lot of water and a surface temperature just under 200* F. and life could have started there and hung in. Certainly we see life forms on Earth, primarily in volcanic vents, that lives in high sodium concentrations and high temperatures. It's possible.

I wouldn't bet money on it though.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 06:23 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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