Could the Clouds of Venus Harbor Life? Experts Say "Yes"

Scientists suspect that Venus's atmosphere might hide extraterrestrial lifeforms, and in the most extraordinary safari ever, they want to go there and capture them with a flying balloon.  Interplanetary travel, extraterrestrial life, and Venusian airships - anyone doing anything other than science is missing out.

Venus doesn't score very highly when we think of life-capable planets - with surface pressures twenty times those of Earth and temperatures which can melt tin and vaporise mercury, it's not a a good place for organics.  In fact, it's not a good place for Terminators.  But go up far enough and you find clouds with Earth-like temperatures, pressures, even chemistry (at least as far as original ingredients go).  The fact that Venus boiled off all its oceans and turned them into sulfuric acid doesn't cancel out the fact there's water and heat aplenty.

In fact, the sulphur might help.  High above the Venusian surface the atmosphere is bathed in ultraviolet radiation, aka "That stuff that burns big things and kills small ones", but Professor Ingersoll (of the Californian Institute of Technology) and colleagues believe that extraplanetary microbes could learn to use these chemicals as a sunscreen - if they haven't adapted to UV altogether.

We've already seen Earth-borne bacteria surviving high in the clouds or in acidic environments, and the fact we haven't seen both at the same time is only because Earth doesn't have places like that.  Some suggest that Venus's conversion from an early Earth-a-like to a fair approximation of hell might have been slow - slow enough to allow life to occur, then evolve to adapt to a narrowing habitable zone.

Venus' lower cloud deck at an altitude of 50 kilometers has water vapor, potential nutrients, and a temperature of 30 to 70 degrees centigrade and pressure similar to Earth's surface. The theory is that microbes that might have evolved in the ancient oceans of the second planet billions of years ago when the Sun was much cooler, adapted to a purely airborne state as the oceans boiled away. The atmosphere of Venus has a chemical disequilibrium similar, although not as pronounced as Earth's demands an explanation, and a clear possibility is that biology is at work.

There's even a NASA option to fly there, deploy a floating collector, and rocket the samples back to Earth for analysis.  Not only might there be other life in the universe - they might live right next door.

Posted by Luke McKinney with Casey Kazan.

Venusian Life-forms

Comments

[Sun holiday India]

Venus' lower cloud deck at an altitude of 50 kilometers has water vapor, and a temperature of 30 to 70 degrees

[ramkumar]

with a high surface temperature of 700 fh .....90 times more atmospheric temperature than what we experience on earth ....
sulphuric acid droplets on high clouds ..

Even the possibility of extromophiles or thermophiles seems to be a wish full thinking ..

[Assumptions are like... well you know...]

I think science and scientists will find as many surprises on other planets as they will also confirm theories about likely habitats. I'm betting on life existing here in our solar system.

[EvilCosmicMonkeyfrom Knoxville]

Anywhere that life can exist, it could probably develop & possibly even THRIVE. Venus seems like a planetary HELL, but some simple life with a fierce desire to continue existing, could exist in the clouds.

[B-Grand]

Great find, looks like the scientists are starting to change their perception a bit. Lately Stephen Hawking also said it's perfectly logical for life outside of earth.

You might wan't to change the link of the source, it says http://http:// which doesn't work.

[Zarkov]

>> The fact that Venus boiled off all its oceans and turned them into sulfuric acid >>>

LOL... but that is what is established... STUPID

LIFE made the water on Earth... there is no source of H2O in space no matter what the boffins say.

Yes, Venus is the next Earth, it is spiralling out from the Sun, just as all the planets are.. and in a blink of cosmic time it will be in "the sweet spot" from the Sun.... and long after life on Earth is long gone, Venus will rise and again fall. just as Earth did

and LIFE, the cosmic fungus, will just infect another suitable cosmic rock

and the wheel turns and LIFE goes onward

[Dazed]

I thought the planets were all eventually spiraling INTO the sun? Is the poster above a tard?

[dirk alan]

shocking blue.

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with a high surface temperature of 700 fh .....90 times more atmospheric temperature than what we experience on earth ....

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[zoe]

this has really helped me for my science project and i have learnt a few new things :)