As a reminder, and as an aid in positioning the phosphine claim alongside other similar claims, (ie: the Pandora's box), and for the record:
Here’s a list of
notable contraversial pieces of so-called ‘claims of evidence’ for exo-life over relatively cent years of planetary exploration:
1. 1976, The Viking Mars landers detect chemical signatures indicative of life;
2. 1977, The unexplained extraterrestrial “Wow!” signal is detected by an Ohio State University radio telescope;
3. 1996, Martian “fossils” are discovered in meteorite ALH84001 from Antarctica;
4. 2001, More rigorous calculations connected to the 1960s “Drake equation” suggests that our galaxy may contain hundreds of thousands of life-bearing planets;
5. 2001, The red tinge of Jupiter’s moon Europa proposed to be due to frozen bits of bacteria, which also helps explain the mysterious infrared signal it gives off;
6. 2002, Russian scientists argue that a mysterious radiation-proof species of microbe may have evolved on Mars;
7. 2002, Chemical hints of life are found in old data from Venus probes and landers. Could microbes exist in Venusian clouds?
This one is of course, one of the Venusian life forerunners to Seager/Greaves’ announcement. Apparently
carbonyl sulphide(?) was also detected in 2002. This is also only known to be produced by microbes or catalysts on Earth, and not by any other known inorganic process .. (and so the Venus life idea already has this
‘plausibility boost').
8. 2003, Sulphur traces on Jupiter’s moon Europa may be the waste products of underground bacterial colonies;
9. 2004, Methane in the Martian atmosphere hints at microbial metabolism;
10. 2004, A mysterious radio signal is received by the SETI project on three occasions – from the same region of space;
11. Tabby’s Star ‘might be’ surrounded by a Dyson Swarm.
For me, this list is hard evidence that the so-called possibility of exo-life has hardened into a nothing more than a massive belief in that. Ie: (and if I'm not mistaken), there are other
'plausible' explanations for all of these, which are almost always completely forgotten in typical claims of so-called 'evidence for exo-life'(?)
) and invoke surface Abiogenesis, followed by an organism evolving over time and adapting to increasing concentrations of sulphuric acid, (and escaping water), and then becoming an airborne spore.
