life on venus?

Syke

i read that there may be life on venus after all. some scientist dudes think that maybe bacteria may be living in the clouds over venus. they may have evolved if the greenhouse effect happened over ages and stuff. did anyone else hear about this?

Ivan

I havent heard anything. Sounds really cool though. Any chance of a link?

Typedef

I think it's quite likely that there is life on other bodies in the solar system, be that life related to earth life somehow or a completely singular evolutionay oddity.

I'm not convinced the life will be xenomorphic, aka, multicellular, but, it is mostly likely there.

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992843

albertw

There is a theory for life in the clouds, and this is something that upcoming `Venus Express[1]` mission from the ESA will be looking for, not explicitly, but if there are clouds of bacteria they wil show up in the experiments to monitor the environment of the planet.

However I was at a talk this weekend by Professor F.W. Taylor from Oxford about the European planetary Program and he briefly mentioned this. Basically there is a layer in the clouds which would have a similar temperature and pressure to that of earth, although the composition is highly concentrated sulphuric acid, and extremophile bacteria can live in some strange places, this is all the theory is based on. It seems to be generally thought unlikley that such life could exist. The phonmena that the new scientist paper mentions, can also be explained by other theories, but none involve life so dont make the headlines.

By the way the ashen light, the phenomena the looks like the earth shine that we see on the moon was once thought to be caused by alien light pollution, this has is now thought by Dr. Taylor to be caused by the surface of the planet glowing hot and causing the atmosphere to radiate at several parts of the spectrum.

The debate is good PR though for the upcoming venus trasit, details of the Irish events are on www.venustransit.ie !

Cheers,
~Al

[1] same craft as mars express but with different experiments, more fuel and no beagle, and obviously going to venus. Never heard of `venus express`? A point about the ESA not having the best PR was also raised at the conference! Details at http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/area/index.cfm?fareaid=64
(the pdf there lays out the project)

MeteoritesEire

I've dragged up this 10 year old thread as it seems to be the only relevant one to the Venus Express update I've just seen on reddit.

http://blogs.esa.int/rocketscience/2014/06/13/venus-express-aerobraking-quick-update/

VENUS EXPRESS AEROBRAKING: QUICK UPDATE

A short update from the VEX flight team at ESOC today on progress of the aerobraking campaign. The quick news: it's going very well!

The 25th aerobraking orbit (Number 2975 in the mission overall) was completed earlier today; on 11 June, during orbit 2973, the spacecraft dipped down to almost 140 km above the Venusian surface – an unprecedented low altitude.

Between 3 and 11 June, atmospheric drag slowed Venus Express by a steadily increasing amount, beginning with about -16 mm/second per orbit, increasing in magnitude to about -82 mm/second per orbit. Nonetheless, the atmosphere is providing somewhat less drag on the spacecraft than expected.

On board Venus express, everything is functioning as expected and within limits: power, propulsion, communications, temperatures of spacecraft components, & etc.

"Our spacecraft is functioning well and the team are learning new things every day as the aerobraking campaign progresses," says Acting Spacecraft Operations Manager Adam Williams.

During the campaign, both the magnetometer and the ASPERA payloads are operating, and we'll have a blog update for your soon providing details on science during aerobraking.