Are We Accidentially Terraforming Venus?

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There has been around 45 missions to the planet Venus. Mostly by the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Many resulted in failures but there have been a few successful missions. Venus is a hellish place with surface temperatures more than 850 degrees Fahrenheit. But I seem to recall a few years back that they have detected temperatures beginning to fall on the planet.

There was an article today that I found interesting:

Scientists have discovered a rare molecule in the clouds of Venus, which suggests colonies of living microbes could be thriving in the oxygen-free environment high in the planet's atmosphere.

While the surface of Venus is far too hot to sustain life, with a mean temperature of around 867 F, astronomers have speculated that life could survive high in the planet's atmosphere where conditions are much more moderate.

Now an international team of astronomers led by Professor Jane Greaves of Cardiff University have announced the discovery of phosphine gas in these high clouds, a molecule which is produced on Earth by microbes that live in similar oxygen-free environments.

The phosphine molecules, which consist of hydrogen and phosphorus atoms, were first detected from the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) near the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

"This was an experiment made out of pure curiosity, really - taking advantage of the JCMT's powerful technology," said Professor Greaves, who led the study published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Source: Venus shows signs of potential alien life in its clouds, scientists find

So I was just pondering if this so called Alien Life on Venus might have come from Earth from our space probes/landings.

that is fascinating, i remember reading that high in the clouds the temperatures are in the 70-80F range, and pressures very much lighter which would make human exploration of the high atmosphere more possible.

Interesting. The Venus atmosphere is super thick. More like water than like terrestrial air. If life could form in the sea it might also have evolved in the high Venusian atmosphere.

There is one problem with the theory that Venus was seeded by the recent space programs of Earth. Any bacteria that was stuck to Russian, or American, rockets, that landed on Venus would have been common oxygen breathing bacteria of today. NASA wouldnt have bacteria from remote and far between oxygen free places where anaerobic bacteria still thrive (like in geysers).

Here is an interesting article: Is there life floating in the clouds of Venus?

It's an extraordinary possibility - the idea that living organisms are floating in the clouds of Planet Venus.

But this is what astronomers are now considering after detecting a gas in the atmosphere they can't explain.

That gas is phosphine - a molecule made up of one phosphorus atom and three hydrogen atoms.

On Earth, phosphine is associated with life, with microbes living in the guts of animals like penguins, or in oxygen-poor environments such as swamps.

For sure, you can make it industrially, but there are no factories on Venus; and there are certainly no penguins.

So why is this gas there, 50km up from the planet's surface? Prof Jane Greaves, from Cardiff University, UK and colleagues are asking just this question.

They've published a paper in the journal Nature Astronomy detailing their observations of phosphine at Venus, as well as the investigations they've made to try to show this molecule could have a natural, non-biological origin.

But for the moment, they're stumped - as they tell the BBC's Sky At Night programme, which has talked at length to the team. You can see the show on BBC Four tonight (Monday) at 22:30 BST.

Given everything we know about Venus and the conditions that exist there, no-one has yet been able to describe an abiotic pathway to phosphine, not in the quantities that have been detected. This means a life source deserves consideration.

"Through my whole career I have been interested in the search for life elsewhere in the Universe, so I'm just blown away that this is even possible," Prof Greaves said. "But, yes, we are genuinely encouraging other people to tell us what we might have missed. Our paper and data are open access; this is how science works."



The phosphine was detected in mid-latitudes on the planet.
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What exactly has the team detected?

Prof Greaves' team first identified phosphine at Venus using the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii, and then confirmed its presence using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile.

Phosphine has a distinctive "absorption line" that these radio telescopes discern at a wavelength of about 1mm. The gas is observed at mid-latitudes on the planet at roughly 50-60km in altitude. The concentration is small - making up only 10-20 parts in every billion atmospheric molecules - but in this context, that's a lot.
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Why is this so interesting?

Venus is not at the top of the list when thinking of life elsewhere in our Solar System. Compared to Earth, it's a hellhole. With 96% of the atmosphere made up of carbon dioxide, it has experienced a runaway greenhouse effect. Surface temperatures are like those in a pizza oven - over 400C.

Space probes that have landed on the planet have survived just minutes before breaking down. And yet, go 50km up and it's actually "shirtsleeves conditions". So, if there really is life on Venus, this is exactly where we might expect to find it.


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Why should we be sceptical?

The clouds. They're thick and they're mainly composed (75-95%) of sulphuric acid, which is catastrophic for the cellular structures that make up living organisms on Earth.

Dr William Bains, who's affiliated to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US, is a biochemist on the team. He's studied various combinations of different compounds expected to be on Venus; he's examined whether volcanoes, lightning and even meteorites could play a role in making PH3 - and all of the chemical reactions he's investigated, he says, are 10,000 times too weak to produce the amount of phosphine that's been observed.

To survive the sulphuric acid, Dr Bains believes, airborne Venusian microbes would either have to use some unknown, radically different biochemistry, or evolve a kind of armour.

"In principle, a more water-loving life could hide itself away inside a protective shell of some sorts inside the sulphuric acid droplets," he told Sky At Night. "We're talking bacteria surrounding themselves by something tougher than Teflon and completely sealing themselves in. But then how do they eat? How do they exchange gases? It's a real paradox."
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What's been the reaction?

Cautious and intrigued. The team emphatically is not claiming to have found life on Venus, only that the idea needs to be further explored as scientists also hunt down any overlooked geological or abiotic chemical pathways to phosphine.

Oxford University's Dr Colin Wilson worked on the European Space Agency's Venus Express probe (2006-2014), and is a leading figure in the development of a new mission concept called EnVision. He said Prof Greaves' observations would spur a new wave of research at the planet.

"It's really exciting and will lead to new discoveries - even if the original phosphine detection were to turn out to be a spectroscopic misinterpretation, which I don't think it will. I think that life in Venus' clouds today is so unlikely that we'll find other chemical pathways of creating phosphine in the atmosphere - but we'll discover lots of interesting things about Venus in this search," he told BBC News.

Prof Lewis Dartnell from the University of Westminster is similarly cautious. He's an astrobiologist - someone who studies the possibilities of life beyond Earth. He thinks Mars or the moons of Jupiter and Saturn are a better bet to find life.

"If life can survive in the upper cloud-decks of Venus - that's very illuminating, because it means maybe life is very common in our galaxy as a whole. Maybe life doesn't need very Earth-like planets and could survive on other, hellishly-hot, Venus-like planets across the Milky Way."
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How can the question be resolved?

By sending a probe to investigate specifically the atmosphere of Venus.

The U.S. Space Agency (NASA) asked scientists recently to sketch the design for a potential flagship mission in the 2030s. Flagships are the most capable - and most expensive - ventures undertaken by NASA. This particular concept proposed an aerobot, or instrumented balloon, to travel through the clouds of Venus.

"The Russians did this with their Vega balloon (in 1985)," said team-member Prof Sara Seager from MIT. "It was coated with Teflon to protect it from sulphuric acid and floated around for a couple of days, making measurements.

"We could definitely go make some in-situ measurements. We could concentrate the droplets and measure their properties. We could even bring a microscope along and try to look for life itself."

I don't know if it's such a problem - you inspire me to quite a wikisurf about hydrothermal vents that can reach the temperature of Venus surface and host rich ecosystems...

When it comes to surviving sulphuric acid in Venus clouds:

When I think back, I seem to recall an article about how the temperature in Venus has dropped dramatically in recent years which implies that accidental terraforming might be underway. I wish I could find the original article. It seems that at the time I was researching the albedo of Venus.

So in researching for this effect, I stumbled onto the following article:
Mysterious cloud ‘absorbers’ seen to drive Venusian albedo, climate



“The difference between Earth and Venus is that on Earth most of the energy from the sun is absorbed at ground level while on Venus most of the heat is deposited in the clouds,” explains Sanjay Limaye, a University of Wisconsin–Madison planetary scientist and a co-author of the new study.

What is curious about Venus’ clouds – other than that they are unlike anything on Earth – is that in those clouds are mysterious dark patches, dubbed “unknown absorbers” by scientists as the tiny particles that make up the patches soak up most of the ultraviolet and some of the visible light from the sun and thus affect the planet’s albedo and energy budget.

The patches were first observed by ground-based telescopes more than a century ago. They ebb and flow over time, changing their distributions and contrasts.

“The particles that make up the dark splotches, have been suggested to be ferric chloride, allotropes of sulfur, disulfur dioxide and so on, but none of these, so far, are able to satisfactorily explain their formation and absorption properties,” explains Yeon Joo Lee, the senior author of the new report.

On the other hand, Limaye notes observations that the particles are about the same size and have the same light-absorbing properties as microorganisms found in Earth’s atmosphere, and scientists, beginning with the noted biophysicist Harold Morowitz and astronomer Carl Sagan, have long speculated about the possibility that the shadowy patches in the clouds of Venus are, in fact, microscopic life.

Whatever their composition, Venus’ “unknown absorbers,” according to the new measurements of the planet’s albedo, a feat led by Lee of the Technical University of Berlin, are having an effect on the planet’s weather. Lee and her colleagues, including Limaye, studied changes in Venus’ albedo using more than a decade of ultraviolet observations of the planet from instruments aboard the planetary probes Venus Express, Akatsuki and Messenger as well as the Hubble Space Telescope.

Between 2006 and 2017, Venus’ albedo, the measure of ultraviolet light reflected back to space, halved before beginning to rebound. Those changes to the planet’s albedo sparked big variations in the amount of solar energy absorbed by the clouds and, consequently, the circulation of Venus’ atmosphere. In particular, the albedo changes help explain variations in the vigorous activity of the planet’s upper atmosphere, which exhibits what scientists call “super-rotation,” a phenomenon driven by winds exceeding 200 miles per hour.

Takeshi Horinouchi of Japan’s Hokkaido University, also a co-author of the new Astronomical Journal report and an expert on Venusian weather, says the new results of the changes in the planet’s albedo provide a link between solar heating and the powerful gusts that underpin the dynamics of the planet’s upper atmosphere.

“What really struck me about this paper is that it shows that Venus’ climate has decadal-long climate variations, just like the Earth,” says Venus expert Mark Bullock of the Southwest Research Institute and who was not involved in the new study. “Even more amazing, the strength of the climate oscillation on Venus is much greater than Earth’s long-term variations.”

“That is a striking result,” Limaye adds. “It suggests that something is changing. We can see the change in brightness. If the albedo is changing, something is driving those changes. The question is, what is the cause?”

It's quite exciting.

I think we still should be careful with calling it "terraforming".
It is possible Venus "catched" life from Earth. It is possible humans unintentionally helped it.
But we have no idea weather evolution of conditions on Venus caused by the microbes will lead towards more Earth-like Venus or less Earth-like Venus.

Even if Venus is not in the process of "terraforming" it's interesting that there could be life there after all. Just not on the surface of the planet, but floating on high up atop the atmosphere, where we didnt think to look before.

In the pre World War Two days Venus was neck and neck with Mars as a prime contender for life in both science and in Scifi. Edgar Rice Burroughs penned a series of adventure novels set on Venus (which was thought to be just a slightly more tropical version of Earth back then) in the Nineteen Thirties. Then some kill joy astronomer theorized that Venus would have to be a victim of it's own "runaway greenhouse effect" that would make it hotter even than Mercury- and devoid of life. And subsequent observations of the planet proved him right.

But now Venus may make a return as a contender for having life. Edgar Rice Burroughs! Where are you now that we need you again?!

The Russians are now Claiming Ownership of the Planet

Just days after scientists said they discovered the presence of phosphine in the clouds of Venus, the head of Russia's space agency declared "Earth's evil twin" a "Russian planet."

Dmitry Rogozin, the director general of Russian space agency Roscosmos, said the second planet from the sun is a "Russian planet" as the former Soviet Union landed a probe on Venus decades ago.

“Our country [the Soviet Union] was the first and only one to successfully land on Venus,” Rogozin said in an interview with The Times. “The spacecraft gathered information about the planet — it is like hell over there.”

“We believe that Venus is a Russian planet," he added.

The Soviet-era Venera program was designed to learn more about the planet Venus, which some researchers believe was habitable in its distant past. The Venera program, which lasted between 1961 and 1984, saw a number of achievements, including a soft landing on the planet on Dec. 15, 1970 (Venera 7), the first of its kind.

The comments from Rogozin come just days after NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said the planet is "one stop in our search for life."

“Today, we are on the cusp of amazing discoveries that could tell us more about the possibility of life off the Earth,” Bridenstine said in a statement issued last week.

Last week, new research from an international team of astronomers revealed the discovery of a rare molecule, phosphine, in the clouds of Venus. The scientists noted that, on Earth, the gas is only made industrially or by microbes that thrive in oxygen-free environments.

In late 2019, NASA said it was working on a stingray-like spacecraft to explore the planet, which has more volcanoes than any other celestial body in the Solar System.

Source: Venus is a 'Russian planet,' Kremlin top scientist claims

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I guess if you apply that logic, the U.S. owns the moon. Seems like we planted an American flag there. The whole thing seems ridiculous. A prelude to space wars.

In my opinion, Venus is interesting. Normally we think of planets receiving their warmth from their adjacent stars. In Venus this my not be the primary driver. The excessive heat may be coming from it volcanic activity and the volcanic activity may have come from a geologically recent impact event. The atmosphere may act as an insulator locking the heat internally. An asteroid/comet impact releases a tremendous amount of energy in the form of heat and in large impacts this can be stored internally in the planet.

All the planets in the Solar System orbit the Sun in an anticlockwise direction as viewed from above Earth's north pole. Most planets also rotate on their axes in an anti-clockwise direction, but Venus rotates clockwise in retrograde rotation once every 243 Earth days—the slowest rotation of any planet. The planet's spin is an anomaly that could be explained by an impact event. It is spinning backwards.

In 2001, a team of scientists from the French research institute Astronomie et Systemes Dynamiques have proposed a new explanation, published in an issue of Nature. Current theory holds that Venus initially spun in the same direction as most other planets and, in a way, still does: it simply flipped its axis 180 degrees at some point. In other words, it spins in the same direction it always has, just upside down, so that looking at it from other planets makes the spin seem backward.

If you think of planets as a game of pool. Put a little bit of spin on the Cue Ball as it strikes the Royal Blue "2" ball and watch the results.

One clarification: Rogozin is not a scientist, he's a politician, the leader of Russian nationalist party Rodina. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Rogozin

i would love to have visited the planet one billion years after its formation.

I was gonna find an article about that to post on this thread...about that Russian official shooting his mouth off about Venus being the property of Russia.

The old USSR did make slightly more headway in exploring the planet than did the US. But both superpowers were largely defeated by the hostile planet. Our probes would crap out, but theirs would reach the surface, transmit for two minutes, and THEN crap out. But that hardly makes the whole planet their real estate.

That would be like the UN giving the whole continent of Antarctica to Norway because Amundsen beat Scott to the South Pole in 1914. No single nation really owns all, or even parts, of Antarctica. Some nations have "sector claims" to slices of the pie of Antarctica, but even these arent universally recognized.