Phosphine gas detected in Venusian atmosphere (Now with Poll!)

[AV1611VET]

I voted: Yes, I have a massive belief in it.

 

[SelfSim]

And now comes the modelling (from Universe Today. Warning: UT is a notorious woo journal, IMO):
How Much Life Would Be Required to Create the Phosphine Signal on Venus?:

Based on models like those of Dr. Sara Seager and her team above, a new study by Mansavi Lingam and Abraham Loeb was released on September 16th that applied the models to the recent discovery of phosphine on Venus. The results?

“We find that the typical biomass densities predicted by our simple model are several orders of magnitude lower than the average biomass density of Earth’s aerial biosphere.”
– Lingam and Loeb 2020

In other words, far less life would have to live in the clouds of Venus to create the level of phosphine we’ve detected than the amount of life living in the clouds of our own planet – a plausible amount of life. That is really exciting because it means that we can still count life as a possible source of the phosphine gas. A small amount of possible life giving off a signal we can see from Earth letting us know it’s there. Were the amount of required biomass really high, we might then have to look for other abiotic processes we’re not aware of as it is less likely that high concentrations of life exists on Venus.

So let's completely forget about everything other than Venusian life!

Then, putting aside the woo journo's above words, the paper itself, falls for its own beliefs too:

A number of prospective biomarkers have been identified and extensively analyzed in the context of life detection missions (Summons et al. 2008; Chan et al. 2019; Neveu et al. 2020). Notable examples in this category include, inter alia, enantiomeric excess in amino acids and sugars, polymers composed of nucleotides or amino acids or with repeating charges in the scaffolding, and distinct depletion of carbon and nitrogen isotopes.

Never mind that most known biomolecules were completely ruled out by Seager/Greaves etal in their hypothetical Venusian life paper!

Then to cap it off, these dudes seem concerned about those same ruled out biomolecules (I should say: 'biogenic' there, though .. whatever that means in the Venus context?), being incinerated upon impact with an incoming sampling probe:

One other key physicochemical constraint becomes crucial at high speeds. The bond dissociation energies of many chemical bonds and organic molecules in particular are of order 100 kcal/mol (Blanksby & Ellison 2003; Luo 2007), which translates to ∼ 4 eV/bond. This value corresponds to the kinetic energy associated with a nucleon moving at ∼ 28 km s−1. At higher speeds, scooping material with a hard surface could break molecules upon impact and heat the impacting material to thousands of degrees Kelvin, thus “burning” any traces of biogenic material.

Whilst all that might be an interesting hypothetical modelling exercise they, of course, then conclude that these magic biomarkers 'may' cause a properly designed mass spectrometer to detect them (I call this a backwards plausibility argument):

It is plausible, therefore, that small spacecraft which are functional for a few hours may possess the capacity to detect biomarkers in the Venusian cloud decks.

They finalise this modelling paper with accidentally exposing their belief in the existence of Venusian microbes (caveated only by the criticality of the density attribute):

What it does indicate, however, is that life detection missions might yield meaningful results even if the density of microbes in the Venusian atmosphere is orders of magnitude smaller than Earth’s aerial biosphere.

 

[SelfSim]

I don't follow - obviously you can test the equipment, but you can't get the results of a mission without doing the mission.

You also can't get any results in the case where phosphine producing life is absent .. which is completely antithetical to the assumption behind strategy (ii). The validity of this assumption is unknown.

Getting results from an experiment that show the absence of what is being tested for is informative.

In the case of {believed in} exo-life, its anecdotal, when we all know what will come next: 'Oh, we just didn't look in the right place ..' and so the entrenched belief goes on .. and on .. and on.
Vanishingly miniscule net informational return.

It gives you information that tells you about the chemistry and composition of the tested samples, and can help you decide what (if anything) to do next.

.. 'but nonetheless, never give up on the belief in that what we're hunting for exists!'

If this isn't a classic sign of an entrenched belief, I don't know what is .. (I'm being rhetorical here).

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

You also can't get any results in the case where phosphine producing life is absent .. which is completely antithetical to the assumption behind strategy (ii). The validity of this assumption is unknown.

In the case where phosphine producing life is absent, the results would be that phosphine producing life was not detected.

.. 'but nonetheless, never give up on the belief in that what we're hunting for exists!'

Straw man. I think that's a crude stereotype. Curiosity about the possibility life on Mars or Venus doesn't imply belief in the existence of life on Mars or Venus. We already know life exists on Earth, people are curious to know whether it exists elsewhere.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

BBC have an interesting The Sky at Night episode on this story where they got to talk to the team before they publicly announced the phosphine result. Looks like, if nothing else, they've found some novel exotic chemistry.

Due to the BBC's viewing restrictions, outside the UK you'll probably need a VPN with a UK node to see it.

 

[SelfSim]

In the case where phosphine producing life is absent, the results would be that phosphine producing life was not detected.

No .. the only past example of a remotely deployed (and carried out) life sensing laboratory experiment, was the Viking lander mission of the 70s and it returned ambiguous results. Diagnosing extant exo-life sourced from a non Earth environment has not been demonstrated and is by no means a slam-dunk to achieve even when earth-life is the specimen subject!

Straw man. I think that's a crude stereotype. Curiosity about the possibility life on Mars or Venus doesn't imply belief in the existence of life on Mars or Venus. We already know life exists on Earth, people are curious to know whether it exists elsewhere.

I'll accept that as being your opinion (only).

My experience forces me to test an hypothesis that there might be a rampant belief behind the hunt for exo-life. The entire field of Astrobiology (which employs many scientists and produces prodigious output) is predicated on that belief. Key Astrobiologists even give presentations which invoke an almost religiously held philosophy about Astrobiology .. Chris McKay of NASA Ames being just one of them. Look at that list I gave in post#49 of just 11 past examples of the sloppy science such philosophical stances produces.

If it were just curiosity motivating it all, then my Strategy(i) of plain ol' exploration ie: going places to see what's there (out of pure curiosity) would be the choice. But the evidence of directed search instrumentation capability demonstrates that it simply isn't about that.

Where's the evidence behind your opinion?

 

[SelfSim]

BBC have an interesting The Sky at Night episode on this story where they got to talk to the team before they publicly announced the phosphine result. Looks like, if nothing else, they've found some novel exotic chemistry.

Due to the BBC's viewing restrictions, outside the UK you'll probably need a VPN with a UK node to see it.

Look .. I'm of the view that Sara Seager is a really smart and very good scientist. She's always balanced the very fine line between total sci-fi beliefs and good well-researched, rational, objective science. Lot of respect for her work on what we can make from the possibility of detecting what she's distinguished as 'biosignatures'. This phosphine detection announcement is an opportunity to test out years of study into this topic. And its providing an important backdrop for when JWST starts churning out far distant organic molecule detection results. But watch out for the sci-fi woo-ser set, who will be riding her coat-tails. They're everywhere.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Where's the evidence behind your opinion?

Personal experience talking to scientifically literate people and seeing interviews & documentaries with people working in the field.

In my experience, most think that life elsewhere in the universe is almost certain, and that if it was found to have arisen independently within the solar system it would imply life was widespread. They're curious to know.

 

[Shemjaza]

I voted: Yes, I have a massive belief in it.

Angels?

 

[Tinker Grey]

Thunderf00t has just released a video about life on Venus:

Summary: There are no building blocks for life on Venus. Hydrogen is virtually non-existent.

Also for those with sensitive ears, the content provider uses the word BS a couple times.

 

[Speedwell]

Thunderf00t has just released a video about life on Venus:

Summary: There are no building blocks for life on Venus. Hydrogen is virtually non-existent.

Also for those with sensitive ears, the content provider uses the word BS a couple times.

But for science the question is still almost as interesting: how did the phosphine gas get there? There's bound to be something to learn by finding out.

 

[Tinker Grey]

But for science the question is still almost as interesting: how did the phosphine gas get there? There's bound to be something to learn by finding out.

No disagreement here. But it seems the conclusion of life is much too breathless and premature.

 

[sjastro]

Confirmation bias is part of human behaviour which appears to play a significant role in suggesting phosphine on Venus has biological origins.

 

[SelfSim]

An interesting update published last week on Venusian phosphine is here.
Conclusion opens up the conversation about new atmospheric chemistries.

To conclude, this re-evaluation of Venus’ mass spectra shows the detection of atomic phosphorous as a fragmentation product from a neutral gas. Moreover, the spectra show a tantalizing possibility for the presence of PH3, along with its associated fragments, and singly deuterated parent ion. While intensities of the peaks are low, they are perhaps consistent with the ~20 ppb abundances reported by Greaves et al. Together, the tentative assignments suggest that the reported abundances of H2S (from mass spectra) across Venus’ atmosphere may actually be PH3; and that atomic sulfur is derived from SO2. These total interpretations also lend support to the presence of chemicals potentially out of equilibrium in Venus’ clouds (e.g., PH3, O2, CH4, C3H4, NO, H2, and H2O2).

New atmospheric chemistries:

We believe this to be an indication of chemistries not yet discovered, and/or chemistries potentially favorable for life. Looking ahead, and to better understand the potential for disequilibria in the clouds, we require a sustained approach for the exploration of Venus.

 

[AV1611VET]

Angels?

Yup.

 

[SelfSim]

Angels?

Yup.

The thing which gets me is that, in a strictly formal sense, the basis of your 'massive belief' there, is no different from the basis of the votes for 'Possibly..', 'Not Very Likely..', and 'Extremely unlikely..' .
Sheesh .. the question even demands it (ie: 'Do you believe ..?').

The votes against those options are still all beliefs as far as I'm concerned .. and that applies whether people choose to distinguish them that way, or not.

Even an untested, but testable hypothesis, is still a belief .. It has to be, otherwise it would not have been expressed in a testable way, and steps taken to test it, in the first place.
Its better, (meaning: less confusing and more consistent), to just to acknowledge that, and not pollute what distinguishes science, as compared to belief!

 

[AV1611VET]

The thing which gets me is that, in a strictly formal sense, the basis of your 'massive belief' there, is no different from the basis of the votes for 'Possibly..', 'Not Very Likely..', and 'Extremely unlikely..' .
Sheesh .. the question even demands it (ie: 'Do you believe ..?').

The votes against those options are still all beliefs as far as I'm concerned .. and that applies whether people choose to distinguish them that way, or not.

Even an untested, but testable hypothesis, is still a belief .. It has to be, otherwise it would not have been expressed in a testable way, and steps taken to test it, in the first place.
Its better, (meaning: less confusing and more consistent), to just to acknowledge that, and not pollute what distinguishes science, as compared to belief!

How should I have voted?

 

[SelfSim]

How should I have voted?

Voting in this instance doesn't make any difference, whatsoever!
So it doesn't matter how you vote.

The honest (factual) response to any contemplative query into whether life currently exists on either Mars or Venus is: 'We don't know' .. and that's the launching point for actually finding out .. ie: as opposed to glorifying and promoting completely useless beliefs about it!

 

[AV1611VET]

Voting in this instance doesn't make any difference, whatsoever!
So it doesn't matter how you vote.

Well, I have a massive disagreement with you on that.

The honest (factual) response to any contemplative query into whether life currently exists on either Mars or Venus is: 'We don't know' .. and that's the launching point for actually finding out .. ie: as opposed to glorifying and promoting completely useless beliefs about it!

You want me to believe Mars and Venus are off-limits to angels until science says otherwise ... is that correct?

 

[SelfSim]

Well, I have a massive disagreement with you on that.

Please explain your 'massive disagreement'.

You want me to believe Mars and Venus are off-limits to angels until science says otherwise ... is that correct?

No .. I don't care what you choose to believe because it demonstrably makes no difference whatsoever, once science is on the track of actually finding out about life, (or otherwise), on Mars/Venus.