The discovery of possible Alien life on Venus points to Panspermia not Abiogenesis

a reply to: Phage

Thanks Phage.

I also agree with LSU but this recent find is at least encouraging for some follow-up attention to Venus

a reply to: Peeple
You've got the wrong idea of Panspermia. It's not about life evolving on Earth per se, it's about the building blocks of life evolving some where else and spreading across the Universe, hence the pan bit.
Hence the Star Trek reference to us being carbon lifeforms as carbon is the most abundant "chemical" in the Universe. So we ARE part of the stars. Thereby giving credibility to Panspermia.

originally posted by: TXRabbit
a reply to: Phage

Thanks Phage.

I also agree with LSU but this recent find is at least encouraging for some follow-up attention to Venus

Indeed. I'm all about following up and getting some physical evidence to study.

a reply to: crayzeed

In regards to your post... Let's say humans do end up colonizing Mars as discussed by Mars One. Do you think that over the course of the next couple of centuries, those human bodies will be able to adjust to the environment?

a reply to: neoholographic

You're saying, that life on earth dictates the pathways that can lead to life throughout the universe.

THIS IS ASININE!

Indeed.

Abiogenesis experiments consistently produce amino acids, unfortuneately the chirality balance doesn't add up.

Start with amino acids, which are indeed found in high concentrations in meteorites. But therein is the catch, it is predominately sinister, or left-handed. Where living organisms are concerned it's left, and homochiral everywhere observed.

The question is, why do the amino acids found in space favor left-handed chirality? It doesn't rule out abiogenesis, but it doesn't fit as well as it does with panspremia.

futurism.com...

A possible solution:

One possible solution deals with the interaction of light with amino acids in space. This is where circular polarization comes in. Electrical polarization is a fancy way of describing an electromagnetic field that doesn’t change in strength but, rather, changes direction in a rotational fashion. Depending on the direction of the circular rotation, the light itself could potentially unravel molecules of one handedness giving a preference to the lucky left-handed survivors.

Bottom-line is panspremia is still very viable, if not more viable than earth-centric ideas, because it has the additional mechanism to "create" this imbalance.

Not to say there isn't right-handed chirality present:

www.smithsonianmag.com...

On Earth, the amino acids characteristic of life are all “left-handed” in shape, and cannot be exchanged for their right-handed doppelgänger. Meanwhile, all sugars characteristic of life on Earth are “right-handed.” The opposite hands for both amino acids and sugars exist in the universe, but they just aren’t utilized by any known biological life form. (Some bacteria can actually convert right-handed amino acids into the left-handed version, but they can’t use the right-handed ones as is.) In other words, both sugars and amino acids on Earth are homochiral: one-handed.

I don't know what it says for the creationist, but it seems intelligent life in the universe may be inherently sinister.

I think (putting creationism aside) abiogenesis would have to precede panspermia somewhere in the universe.

I mean for life to be seeded, it has to come from somewhere else in the universe, where it came into existence through abiogenesis.

So the one proceeding simply precedes the other one.
They're not in conflict at all.

Unless it "abiogenated" here and then "panspermed" on all the other heavenly bodies.

originally posted by: DarkestConspiracyMoon

I would be more excited about this news a few years ago but because of this pattern and the fact that NASA can't be trusted has made me even more skeptical about space in general and what's really out there.

But NASA are the ones who are doing some of the cutting-edge research that helps support theories that life might exist on places like Venus -- places many others consider inhospitable.

Here's a NASA paper written almost 20 years ago by NASA astrobiologist Geoffrey Landis who discussed this very same possibility of life in the clouds of Venus that the OP's article mentions. It was the early work by NASA's astrobiologists, like this paper linked below, that led other to want to research the clouds of Venus looking for life:

Astrobiology: The Case for Venus (NASA paper)

From that paper:

There is some evidence that the trace-gas constituents of the Venus atmosphere are not in chemical equilibrium with each other. On Earth, the primary source of disequilibrium in the atmospheric chemistry is the activities of biological processing; could disequilibrium on Venus also be a sign of life? In 1997, David Grinspoon made the suggestion that microbes in the clouds and middle atmosphere could be the source of the disequilibrium...

...Hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide, two gases which react with each other and thus should not be found together, are also both present, indicating some process (possibly biological?) is producing them. Finally, although carbonyl sulfide is difficult to produce inorganically, it is present in the Venusian atmosphere. On Earth, this gas would be considered an unambiguous indicator of biological activity. While none of these chemical combinations are in themselves an unambiguous sign of life, it is interesting enough to warrant a more careful look at the atmospheric chemistry.

NASA has also been at the forefront for years in researching the idea that "life as we DON'T know it" -- that is, life that is totally UNlike Earth life -- might exist, even in our own solar system.

Here's an article written by another NASA astrobiologist, Chris McKay, that was written 10 years ago talking about imabalnces of gasses in the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan that might suggest the potential that living microbes on Titan might be eating the hydrogen and acetylene out of the air on Titan. As mentioned i the article linked below, this life would certainly be UNLIKE anything we've ever seen before, very UNLIKE earth life.

So no -- NASA for one is not so arrogant as to think that life can only look like it does on Earth, and they are actively learning about how very different forms of life might be out there -- life that is NOT like we know it.

What is Consuming Hydrogen and Acetylene on Titan?

This lack of acetylene is important because that chemical would likely be the best energy source for a methane-based life on Titan, said Chris McKay, an astrobiologist at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., who proposed a set of conditions necessary for this kind of methane-based life on Titan in 2005. One interpretation of the acetylene data is that the hydrocarbon is being consumed as food. But McKay said the flow of hydrogen is even more critical because all of their proposed mechanisms involved the consumption of hydrogen.

"We suggested hydrogen consumption because it's the obvious gas for life to consume on Titan, similar to the way we consume oxygen on Earth," McKay said. "If these signs do turn out to be a sign of life, it would be doubly exciting because it would represent a second form of life independent from water-based life on Earth."