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Is there life on Venus? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, Jorge, Hey, do you hear that the internet went
0:10
Speaker 1: crazy over science news again? Did we discover another Higgs Boson?
0:16
Speaker 1: Still just the one? Did the l C create a
0:19
Speaker 1: black hole and destroy the world. No, We're still at
0:22
Speaker 1: zero world destroying black holes so that the news go
0:27
Speaker 1: crazy over or something that is not quite real a
0:30
Speaker 1: little bit. I think the scientists are doing a good job,
0:32
Speaker 1: but the coverage of it is a little bit out
0:35
Speaker 1: of control. Well, you know what they say, Daniel. Scientists
0:39
Speaker 1: are from Venus, cartoonists are from Mars, and all our
0:42
Speaker 1: listeners are on Earth. I am handmade cartoonists and the
1:01
Speaker 1: creator of PhD comment. I'm Daniel, I'm a particle physicist,
1:05
Speaker 1: and I've never been to Mars or Venus. Or are
1:08
Speaker 1: you omitting that information on purpose? I'm purposely not answering
1:13
Speaker 1: that question. You are from Venus. I knew a Daniel,
1:16
Speaker 1: But welcome to our show, Daniel and Jorge Explained the Universe,
1:20
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio in which we take
1:22
Speaker 1: you on a tour of everything crazy here on Earth,
1:25
Speaker 1: from the tiniest little particles to the largest Earth swallowing
1:29
Speaker 1: black holes, and all the way through the Solar System
1:32
Speaker 1: on a tour of all the craziness that is or
1:35
Speaker 1: might be out there, orbiting our star and finally zooming
1:39
Speaker 1: out to the entire universe to ask the biggest questions
1:42
Speaker 1: about the biggest thing in the universe. Yeah, and by
1:45
Speaker 1: the way, if a black hole does swallow up to Earth,
1:48
Speaker 1: you'll hear about it here first, or you can always
1:50
Speaker 1: check the special website that we promised to keep up
1:52
Speaker 1: to date called has the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the
1:55
Speaker 1: world yet? Dot com? As of this morning, the answer
1:59
Speaker 1: is no. The physics forecast says no chance. That's right,
2:02
Speaker 1: smoky skies, but no black holes. Yes. Welcome to our podcast,
2:06
Speaker 1: in which we talk about the signs out there that is,
2:09
Speaker 1: discovering all the amazing things about the universe and expanding
2:12
Speaker 1: our understanding of everything there is and how it all works.
2:15
Speaker 1: That's right, and pushing forward on the biggest questions of
2:18
Speaker 1: the universe, the deepest questions, but also the most basic questions,
2:22
Speaker 1: the ones we've been asking basically since we've been asking questions,
2:27
Speaker 1: what does it all mean? How does it all work?
2:29
Speaker 1: Why is it here at all? And maybe most importantly,
2:33
Speaker 1: are we the only ones in it? And it's a
2:36
Speaker 1: live event science is not something that happened in an
2:39
Speaker 1: old textbook a long time ago. Science is happening right now,
2:43
Speaker 1: and we are discovering things and trying to figure out
2:45
Speaker 1: what they all mean. And it's kind of chaotic. We
2:48
Speaker 1: see things, we don't know what they mean. Maybe they
2:50
Speaker 1: mean this, Maybe they mean that. We're here to break
2:52
Speaker 1: it down for you and tell you what actually happened,
2:55
Speaker 1: what we know, what we don't know, and what we're
2:57
Speaker 1: just totally wildly speculating. Yeah. So, if you've been paying
3:01
Speaker 1: attention to the news this week, there was a huge
3:03
Speaker 1: headline in the Science News. It was in the cover
3:05
Speaker 1: of CNN, I think in the at least the front page,
3:08
Speaker 1: and then also in the New York Times. It was
3:11
Speaker 1: a big news in the science community, and it's built
3:13
Speaker 1: over into the general news. That's right. It was everywhere.
3:17
Speaker 1: It's all over the place, this incredible discovery in the
3:20
Speaker 1: atmosphere of venus. And I started hearing about it a
3:23
Speaker 1: few days before he actually came out because it started
3:25
Speaker 1: leaking in the science gossips, Science gossips, physical gossips. This
3:30
Speaker 1: is such a big deal that the people involved couldn't
3:33
Speaker 1: help talk about it. I mean, the results were like embargoed.
3:36
Speaker 1: Nobody was supposed to say anything until the papers came out.
3:39
Speaker 1: But you know, scientists are people, and people talk, people
3:42
Speaker 1: have spouses. How's your day? Oh, I discovered life on Venus.
3:45
Speaker 1: How's your day? You know, things happen, people chat. Yeah,
3:49
Speaker 1: how's your day? I made a black hole. We're all
3:51
Speaker 1: going to die in a few seconds. Pack up the car, honey,
3:55
Speaker 1: we're getting ready. Back up the rocket ship. But yeahn't
3:58
Speaker 1: heard Daniel. You heard about it a few days ago,
4:00
Speaker 1: but you didn't tell me. This is the first time
4:02
Speaker 1: I hear about it. Oh, I sent you an email.
4:04
Speaker 1: Don't you read your email? To be honest now, But yeah,
4:10
Speaker 1: they were gonna be talking about a big headline that
4:12
Speaker 1: made the news a few days ago for those so
4:14
Speaker 1: you listening to this episode now, But it has to
4:17
Speaker 1: do with one of the biggest questions we've ever had
4:19
Speaker 1: about the universe. That's right. Folks were trying to practice
4:23
Speaker 1: for how to look at the atmosphere of planets around
4:27
Speaker 1: other stars to guess whether or not the gases in
4:30
Speaker 1: those planets could give hints as to whether there was
4:33
Speaker 1: life on the surface, and so to practice for that
4:36
Speaker 1: really really hard task, they tried to do something easier,
4:39
Speaker 1: which is look at planets in our Solar system, our
4:42
Speaker 1: neighbor planets, and practice on those. Much easier to look
4:46
Speaker 1: at planets to see are there gases there that could
4:48
Speaker 1: give hints of life. Yeah, and so they got a
4:50
Speaker 1: very big surprise. So to be on the podcast, we'll
4:54
Speaker 1: be talking about is their life on Venus? Now? Is
5:03
Speaker 1: it on Venus or in Venus or around Venus? I
5:06
Speaker 1: think it's actually above Venus because you know the surface
5:09
Speaker 1: of Venus is like totally inhospitable, you know, it's like
5:13
Speaker 1: hundreds of degrees and crazy pressure. So what they actually
5:17
Speaker 1: found might be consistent with life sort of floating in
5:20
Speaker 1: the upper atmosphere. So it's grammatically debatable life over Venus.
5:27
Speaker 1: But it was a huge headline. It was in all
5:29
Speaker 1: the major papers, I think, and I was a little
5:32
Speaker 1: confused because the headlines varied a lot, Like some of
5:35
Speaker 1: them were like we found it, we found life in
5:37
Speaker 1: other planets, and other headlines were like, we think maybe
5:40
Speaker 1: possibly there are some signs. So I feel like, you know,
5:43
Speaker 1: the Science committee was being you know, maybe careful this time. Yeah. Well,
5:48
Speaker 1: the scientists, if you read their papers, they're very careful
5:51
Speaker 1: to talk about what they actually know and what they
5:53
Speaker 1: don't know and what they're not claiming, Like it's unusual
5:56
Speaker 1: in a paper to specify what you're not claiming, you know,
6:00
Speaker 1: like we're not saying this is the discovery of X
6:02
Speaker 1: y Z. But in these papers, because they knew it
6:04
Speaker 1: could be over interpreted, they were very clear to say
6:07
Speaker 1: they are not claiming discovery of life on Venus, but
6:10
Speaker 1: they were claiming things that suggested there might be. But
6:13
Speaker 1: you're right, in the coverage of it, there are a
6:15
Speaker 1: lot of science communication journalists that jumped to life probably
6:19
Speaker 1: found on Venus, which is a very different statement, and
6:23
Speaker 1: so I thought would be helpful to break down exactly
6:25
Speaker 1: what they found at what it means, and what we
6:28
Speaker 1: should do next. Yeah, some of are like they are
6:30
Speaker 1: green and have China heads. That's right. Well, you know,
6:35
Speaker 1: there's no social life here on Earth, things in the pandemic,
6:37
Speaker 1: so maybe there's life on Venus. It's just about the
6:40
Speaker 1: universe that might be. Maybe that's why my zoom connections
6:43
Speaker 1: are so bad. My collaborators are actually on Venus. Boy,
6:46
Speaker 1: imagine that the lag and the delay having that conversation.
6:50
Speaker 1: Can you hear me? Is my mic on and then
6:51
Speaker 1: you have to wait like three days. Yeah, but I
6:53
Speaker 1: can hear you. You know, given how hard it is
6:55
Speaker 1: to have a zoom conversation with humans using equivalent technology
6:59
Speaker 1: here Earth, I can't imagine what it would actually be
7:02
Speaker 1: like to meet aliens and talk to them. You know,
7:05
Speaker 1: the first ten minutes would definitely be like, I can't
7:07
Speaker 1: hear you. Is this thing on? Like? What kind of
7:09
Speaker 1: program are you using? Upgrade your version of Skype? Yeah,
7:11
Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to zoom prying what books are on
7:14
Speaker 1: their bookshelves? What kind of aren't they put up on
7:16
Speaker 1: their wall? To serve humanity? Cut the connection quick, But
7:24
Speaker 1: we were curious how many people had heard of this
7:26
Speaker 1: and what they thought about it, And I didn't have
7:29
Speaker 1: time to reach out to my community of folks who
7:32
Speaker 1: answer our questions online. So I did a quick Twitter
7:35
Speaker 1: poll to see what our listeners were thinking of this news. Yeah,
7:39
Speaker 1: it's hot news and it just happened. So we went
7:43
Speaker 1: to get people's quick reactions. And so the pole on
7:46
Speaker 1: Twitter says, life in Venus news is option a yawn,
7:52
Speaker 1: weird chemistry, be totally bananas and see oh my god,
7:57
Speaker 1: oh my god, aliens Before we reveal the results. I
8:02
Speaker 1: did get some flak for calling it yawn weird chemistry,
8:06
Speaker 1: Like people are like, why isn't it? Oh my god,
8:08
Speaker 1: weird cheanis chemis? Was it the chemistry lobby? I think
8:13
Speaker 1: so our chemistry fans, No, weird chemistry is yawned inducing.
8:18
Speaker 1: What are you talking about? But you know, compared to
8:20
Speaker 1: the opportunity that we have found life, then weird chemistry
8:23
Speaker 1: is definitely yawn. Well, so you've sent this hole out
8:28
Speaker 1: and we got back to results pretty quick. Yeah, so
8:30
Speaker 1: just about half the folks who responded thought it was
8:33
Speaker 1: probably just some weird chemistry, about a third of them
8:36
Speaker 1: thought it was totally bananas, and just under a quarter
8:40
Speaker 1: thought it's aliens. Now, Daniel, it does this mean of
8:44
Speaker 1: them think that it is bananas on venus or that
8:47
Speaker 1: the idea is bananas. It would be bananas to find
8:50
Speaker 1: bananas on venus, like that would be pretty cool, right.
8:54
Speaker 1: Did they find potassium it's kind of potassium gas. If
8:57
Speaker 1: they ended up discovering that this weird chemical was outgassed
9:01
Speaker 1: by a big deposition of alien bananas, wow we would
9:04
Speaker 1: be vindicated. Did we see a bunch of aliens slip
9:06
Speaker 1: on banana peals on the surface of Venus, or maybe
9:10
Speaker 1: that explains what the aliens are doing. They're stopping by
9:12
Speaker 1: Venus on their way to stealing all the earthly bananas.
9:15
Speaker 1: All right, Well, anyways, scientists have found something that they
9:18
Speaker 1: think might be signs of life on Venus. So we'll
9:23
Speaker 1: get into that today. And how excited should we be
9:25
Speaker 1: about this question? And so Daniel step us through here?
9:28
Speaker 1: What did they actually fine? Like, did you read the
9:30
Speaker 1: paper I did? There are two papers that came out,
9:33
Speaker 1: one in Nature and one in Astrobiology what at the
9:37
Speaker 1: same time, at the same time. In these papers, they've
9:39
Speaker 1: been working on it for a couple of years, sort
9:40
Speaker 1: of in secret and in parallels of these teams put
9:44
Speaker 1: these papers out together and it was an embargo until Monday,
9:48
Speaker 1: and the papers detail what they actually found and what
9:51
Speaker 1: they have is evidence for the existence of a weird
9:53
Speaker 1: gas in the atmosphere of Venus, a gas called phosphene,
9:58
Speaker 1: and that's the chemical formula is pH three, meaning like
10:02
Speaker 1: a phosphorus with three hydrogen atoms. Yeah, and it looks
10:05
Speaker 1: sort of like a little pyramid. The phosphorus is in
10:07
Speaker 1: the middle and it's got three little hydrogen sort of
10:10
Speaker 1: underneath it, and so it's a pretty simple little chemical,
10:13
Speaker 1: though it's surprisingly difficult to make normal conditions. Really it
10:17
Speaker 1: doesn't just happen, or it does happen, but maybe not
10:20
Speaker 1: as much. It turns out, it's not something we really
10:22
Speaker 1: understand very well, but we think that it's most often
10:26
Speaker 1: produced by life, at least here on Earth. It's the
10:29
Speaker 1: kind of thing that you find in the presence of
10:32
Speaker 1: life and you don't find otherwise though, you know, we
10:35
Speaker 1: only have sample of one planet to really examine in detail,
10:40
Speaker 1: and it's difficult to make otherwise. And so that's why
10:43
Speaker 1: they think it's probably a good marker of life. Like
10:47
Speaker 1: they can't think of a way that this would have
10:49
Speaker 1: been made on Venus other than life. Interesting, and how
10:52
Speaker 1: did we actually see this if it's on or around Venus. Yes,
10:56
Speaker 1: so we don't have a lander on Venus or a
10:58
Speaker 1: rover or anything to drive around on Venus. Venus is
11:01
Speaker 1: very inincipitable. We've only sent probes to Venus a few
11:04
Speaker 1: times and they've only last you know, like minutes or
11:07
Speaker 1: hours because of the crazy conditions. They get like crushed.
11:11
Speaker 1: So most of our information from Venus comes from looking
11:14
Speaker 1: at it from Earth, which means that we're looking at
11:17
Speaker 1: light from Venus using telescopes here on Earth, and maybe
11:20
Speaker 1: let's paint the picture because you just mentioned something interesting,
11:23
Speaker 1: which is that we've sent probes to Venus into Venus,
11:27
Speaker 1: but they don't last very long because Venus it's not
11:30
Speaker 1: somewhere you want to go on vacation. No, it's definitely not.
11:33
Speaker 1: It's ridiculously hot. It's like eight hundred degrees on the
11:37
Speaker 1: surface and the pressure is really really high. It's like
11:43
Speaker 1: pounds per square inch, it's like forty five bars. Is
11:46
Speaker 1: that just from the like the temperature because it's so hot. Yeah,
11:48
Speaker 1: there's just a lot more gas there that's been outgassed
11:51
Speaker 1: by the volcanoes. So the surface of Venus is basically
11:54
Speaker 1: like all volcanoes all the time. And the way a
11:58
Speaker 1: planet gets atmospheres basically buy volcanoes, you know, farting that
12:02
Speaker 1: out onto the surface and then then gravity holding it in.
12:05
Speaker 1: And I don't know what sounds more unpleasant, volcanos or
12:09
Speaker 1: constant farts. Well, you know, the atmosphere is basically the
12:12
Speaker 1: planet's farting and then gravity holds it to you. You
12:16
Speaker 1: were lucky that we're not so large that our farts
12:19
Speaker 1: are bound to us gravitationally, they disperse in the atmosphere.
12:22
Speaker 1: But if your planet, you're not so lucky, and which
12:24
Speaker 1: your volcanoes burp out sticks around. So it's a lot
12:27
Speaker 1: of volcanoes on Venus pumping out gas, and that's why
12:30
Speaker 1: you have this really high pressure. And how do we
12:33
Speaker 1: see these molecules of gas? And so what we can
12:36
Speaker 1: do is we can tell what's in the atmosphere of
12:39
Speaker 1: Venus just by looking at the light that comes here
12:42
Speaker 1: from it. And that's because every kind of gas interacts
12:46
Speaker 1: with light differently. So looking at the light that we
12:48
Speaker 1: see coming from Venus, we can tell what kind of
12:51
Speaker 1: gas there is because every different kind of gas absorbs
12:54
Speaker 1: different frequencies of light and emits different frequencies of light.
12:57
Speaker 1: They're like fingerprints. Yeah, and it's due to quantum effects, right,
13:01
Speaker 1: Like it has to do with the electrons and they're leveled. Yeah,
13:04
Speaker 1: that's right. You can think of an atom as having
13:05
Speaker 1: electrons in sort of a ladder, and in order for
13:08
Speaker 1: the electron to jump up a ladder, they have to
13:10
Speaker 1: receive a photon that has just the right energy, just
13:14
Speaker 1: enough energy to move them from one state to the next.
13:16
Speaker 1: If the photon is too much energy, the electron just
13:19
Speaker 1: cannot absorb that. And that's a purely quantum mechanical effect.
13:22
Speaker 1: As you said, in classical physics, there would be no
13:25
Speaker 1: limit to where the electron could be. It could be
13:27
Speaker 1: in any orbit like the Earth around the Sun. But
13:30
Speaker 1: electrons are not really in orbits. There in quantized states
13:33
Speaker 1: around the nucleus. So they're limited to absorbing photons of
13:36
Speaker 1: certain frequencies. And this is different from atom to atom.
13:40
Speaker 1: So you can tell how much hydrogen is there in
13:43
Speaker 1: gas by shining light through it and then seeing which
13:47
Speaker 1: frequencies are absorbed. And hydrogen has a certain frequency of
13:51
Speaker 1: light it likes to absorb. The clue there is not
13:54
Speaker 1: seeing the light right. You shine white light through a gas,
13:57
Speaker 1: and where it's absorbed with the hen see the light
14:00
Speaker 1: dips is where the gas is interacting with that light.
14:04
Speaker 1: And so that's how you tell what's in the gas.
14:07
Speaker 1: It's kind of like each gas has a color, but
14:09
Speaker 1: it's almost like the anticolor, like it absorbs the specific color. Yes,
14:13
Speaker 1: it absorbs those frequencies and lets everything else through. And
14:17
Speaker 1: it's a really powerful technique because each one has its
14:19
Speaker 1: own fingerprint, and so even if your gas is a
14:22
Speaker 1: big mixture hydrogen in this and that and the other thing.
14:25
Speaker 1: You can tell the relative components by looking at all
14:28
Speaker 1: these intensities because they don't typically overlap, right, There unique
14:31
Speaker 1: different shapes and you can measure how much is absorbed
14:34
Speaker 1: at different frequencies. So it's a really powerful technique. It's
14:37
Speaker 1: really cool, and it lets us tell what's in the
14:40
Speaker 1: atmosphere of other planets if we can look at light
14:44
Speaker 1: that's come through that atmosphere. Yeah, it's it's like a fingerprint,
14:48
Speaker 1: like you said, like stars have fingerprints. From this effect,
14:51
Speaker 1: you can tell what gases are inside of a star
14:53
Speaker 1: just from what frequencies get absorbed before the light comes out.
14:57
Speaker 1: That's right. And stars are a little bit more complicated
14:59
Speaker 1: becau as there's active fusion going on and so photons
15:02
Speaker 1: also being emitted from that fusion. But absolutely we can
15:06
Speaker 1: tell the chemical composition of stars by looking at their spectrum.
15:10
Speaker 1: And this is why it's so exciting. We can use
15:12
Speaker 1: the same technique on exoplanets, like if there's a planet
15:16
Speaker 1: going around a star really really far away in another
15:18
Speaker 1: solar system, as that planet goes in front of the sun,
15:22
Speaker 1: the light from the star passes through the atmosphere before
15:25
Speaker 1: it comes to us. If we can see a difference
15:28
Speaker 1: between the light that passes through the atmosphere and just
15:30
Speaker 1: the light that's directly from the star, we can tell
15:33
Speaker 1: what's in that atmosphere, like is there water in that atmosphere?
15:37
Speaker 1: Is their oxygen? And those are fascinating clues about what
15:40
Speaker 1: might be living on that planet, right, because it's not
15:43
Speaker 1: just gas, it's like other things to write, liquids and rocks,
15:47
Speaker 1: that's right. And we gave a sort of simplified description
15:50
Speaker 1: of the absorption lines as being just because electrons move
15:53
Speaker 1: up and down the ladder. It's a little bit more
15:55
Speaker 1: complex than that because they're also like rotational and vibrational states.
16:00
Speaker 1: So these complex atoms can absorb photons have lost of
16:02
Speaker 1: different frequencies, not just to move the electrons up and down,
16:05
Speaker 1: but they can absorb it to go up an energy
16:07
Speaker 1: level in vibration or rotation or all sorts of stuff.
16:10
Speaker 1: But each one has a unique spectrum that's pretty well studied, right,
16:14
Speaker 1: And so we've used this technique to now detect a
16:18
Speaker 1: very special kind of molecule on Venus, this pH three phosphene,
16:23
Speaker 1: and we think it might be due to some life there.
16:26
Speaker 1: So let's get into what that means and how excited
16:29
Speaker 1: should be. But first let's take a quick break a right, Daniel,
16:44
Speaker 1: So Venus has been farting and we've seen the evidence.
16:50
Speaker 1: We smelt it through light. That's right. Well, we know
16:55
Speaker 1: it has an atmosphere, and the atmosphere is probably all
16:58
Speaker 1: because of volcanic verbs, and that atmosphere has one really
17:02
Speaker 1: fascinating element of it, this element phosphine. And phosphine is
17:06
Speaker 1: fascinating because as far as we understand it, it's really
17:10
Speaker 1: hard to make just chemically, like to create the conditions
17:14
Speaker 1: to make phosphine is very difficult, very rare. It's made,
17:18
Speaker 1: for example, in the core of gas giants under really
17:22
Speaker 1: really high pressure and temperature. But on rocky planets, we
17:26
Speaker 1: don't know of a way to make phosphine really other
17:29
Speaker 1: than being assisted by biological life. So yeah, maybe step
17:33
Speaker 1: me through, because I'm kind of confused, like, why couldn't
17:36
Speaker 1: this molecular just form spontaneously like under because you just
17:40
Speaker 1: said Venus is under high pressure and temperature. Couldn't these
17:43
Speaker 1: molecules and atoms just kind of click together by accident?
17:46
Speaker 1: They could write and it's certainly possible, but we're talking
17:50
Speaker 1: about like the rates of things. You know, chemistry is
17:52
Speaker 1: a mess, right, if you ever took organic chemistry, you
17:54
Speaker 1: know it's complicated, Like how these lego pieces like to
17:58
Speaker 1: click together. Have to be in the right can figuration.
18:00
Speaker 1: You have to have the right energy, you have to
18:02
Speaker 1: have the right situation, and they tend to like to
18:05
Speaker 1: do other things first. They tend to like to do
18:07
Speaker 1: the least energetically expensive thing first. So if you have
18:11
Speaker 1: a big mix of all the components you need phosphorus
18:14
Speaker 1: and hydrogen together with other stuff, it tends to form
18:18
Speaker 1: other things and sort of lock these components into other molecules.
18:22
Speaker 1: So you don't tend to make pH three because it's
18:25
Speaker 1: energetically just very unfavorable. It takes a lot of energy
18:28
Speaker 1: to make it. It It can happen like if you have
18:30
Speaker 1: a random a lot of false phosphorus and hydrogen together
18:34
Speaker 1: and you mix it, pH three is not what they
18:36
Speaker 1: would make. That's right. And in one of these papers
18:39
Speaker 1: to have this amazing diagram when they show like, well,
18:42
Speaker 1: if you have phosphorus and hydrogen together with other stuff,
18:45
Speaker 1: here's what typically happens, and here all the steps you
18:47
Speaker 1: would have to go through to make pH three and
18:50
Speaker 1: a lot of those steps are very difficult or very
18:53
Speaker 1: very rare, so in their model, and this is the
18:56
Speaker 1: key bit in their model, they cannot explore lane this
19:00
Speaker 1: much phosphine, like maybe a little bit, maybe a tiny
19:03
Speaker 1: little smidge, But what they see on Venus is much
19:06
Speaker 1: much more than they can possibly explain given their understanding
19:11
Speaker 1: of the chemistry. And I guess relative to all of
19:13
Speaker 1: the other things they see, because that maybe is it
19:16
Speaker 1: that they don't see the other things that phosphors and
19:19
Speaker 1: hydrogen would like to make instead. I know they see
19:22
Speaker 1: those as well, but they just see much much more
19:24
Speaker 1: phosphine than they expect. And you know, it's still it's
19:27
Speaker 1: not a lot. We're talking like twenty parts per billion.
19:31
Speaker 1: That means you take a random molecule of the Venusian
19:33
Speaker 1: atmosphere and you get, you know, like twenty phosphenes. That
19:37
Speaker 1: doesn't sound like a lot. No, it's not a lot,
19:39
Speaker 1: and it's sort of amazing that they can even still
19:41
Speaker 1: see it, right, But it's a lot more than you
19:44
Speaker 1: would expect if you just sort of let chemistry run
19:47
Speaker 1: its course. Given our understanding of what's on Venus and
19:50
Speaker 1: the chemical processing. So even twenty parts per billion is
19:54
Speaker 1: a lot, is like unusual, it's very unusual. They don't
19:58
Speaker 1: expect to see essentially any of it because it's so
20:00
Speaker 1: difficult for chemistry to make it, Like you just leave
20:03
Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff on the surface of Venus. Even
20:05
Speaker 1: under those conditions, you do not expect to get, you know,
20:09
Speaker 1: more than a few parts per trillion. So this is
20:12
Speaker 1: much much more, and it's even much much more than
20:14
Speaker 1: we have on Earth. Like on Earth, we have phosphine
20:17
Speaker 1: in the atmosphere we think produced by life, but it's
20:20
Speaker 1: that like a thousand times less than we're seeing it
20:23
Speaker 1: on Venus. So there's either a thousand times more life
20:27
Speaker 1: on Venus. It's kind of like you're saying, well, we
20:30
Speaker 1: also have a different atmosphere, and so phosphine may not
20:33
Speaker 1: survive as long in our atmosphere. Fosphine is flammable, and
20:37
Speaker 1: so it tends to light up and be destroyed very
20:39
Speaker 1: quickly if there's any exposed flame. You know, some people
20:42
Speaker 1: think that phosphine is the source of the will of
20:45
Speaker 1: the wisp. You know, it tends to be produced in
20:47
Speaker 1: like swamps and boggy environments, so it may be responsible
20:51
Speaker 1: for like very quick brief bursts of observable flame in
20:55
Speaker 1: bogs that like you know, lead people to go investigate
20:59
Speaker 1: and follow them into the wood. What are you talking about?
21:01
Speaker 1: The fire swamp from Princess Bryan, that's exactly to phosphine.
21:06
Speaker 1: It turns out it's all about fosphen. Are the rats
21:11
Speaker 1: of unusual size also due to phosphene? I don't know,
21:14
Speaker 1: but you know, fosphine is actually fascinating. Anyway, I went
21:18
Speaker 1: and I asked my wife, who's a microbiologist and a
21:21
Speaker 1: biochemist about this to understand, like why is it so
21:24
Speaker 1: hard to make fosphen and why is it something that
21:27
Speaker 1: life can do but like chemistry can't. Yeah, like does
21:31
Speaker 1: the heart of planets and finds it hard to make. Yeah,
21:33
Speaker 1: and yet we can make it, and yet we can
21:35
Speaker 1: make it. And it turns out she doesn't know. Biology
21:38
Speaker 1: doesn't know. We don't actually know how fosphin is made
21:42
Speaker 1: by life forms. Yeah, they see it in association with
21:47
Speaker 1: like bacteria, and we know it's produced like in our
21:49
Speaker 1: intestines when there's all sorts of microbial activity and swamps
21:54
Speaker 1: and all sorts of stuff, But we don't actually understand
21:56
Speaker 1: the mechanism. It's not like we know this protein takes
22:00
Speaker 1: the phosphorus and does this. Nobody's even understood that here
22:04
Speaker 1: on Earth. How can we not know? Don't we know
22:06
Speaker 1: everything there is to know about like cell metabolism and stuff.
22:09
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, we definitely don't. And there's lots and
22:12
Speaker 1: lots of bacteria that we just don't understand. Like remember,
22:15
Speaker 1: there's like millions and millions, maybe billions, of different kinds
22:18
Speaker 1: of bacteria even just in our gut that we haven't
22:21
Speaker 1: even mapped before. My wife likes to call it biological
22:24
Speaker 1: dark matter for obvious reasons. And dark energy what's the
22:31
Speaker 1: equivalent then, a dark energy? But the rough idea is
22:34
Speaker 1: that you know, life has proteins, and proteins are these
22:37
Speaker 1: little machines that can sort of assist chemical reactions. Like
22:42
Speaker 1: if there's some transition you need to go through to
22:45
Speaker 1: make phosphine from its basic elements, and that transition is
22:48
Speaker 1: unstable or therefore unlikely or very chemically expensive, then a
22:53
Speaker 1: protein can sort of help it happen. It can like
22:56
Speaker 1: catalyze and take you from one step to the other
22:58
Speaker 1: if that's really important for something that the life is doing. Right,
23:03
Speaker 1: So the proteins are like these little chemical helpers, Like
23:05
Speaker 1: their proteins like little little machines are kind of literally
23:09
Speaker 1: putting these atoms together. Yeah, they're essentially little biological robots.
23:13
Speaker 1: Proteins are really pretty super awesome. But that's just speculation,
23:17
Speaker 1: Like we don't actually understand that. So that's another important
23:21
Speaker 1: qualifier to keep in your mind. Like we're projecting that
23:24
Speaker 1: fosph being may be made in Venus by microbial life,
23:28
Speaker 1: but that's not something we actually understand here on Earth.
23:31
Speaker 1: So that's also a bit of a leap. And and
23:33
Speaker 1: are we sure that we're making it and not just
23:35
Speaker 1: kind of like breathing it in and somehow processing it
23:37
Speaker 1: and then you know, farting it out. We're pretty sure
23:40
Speaker 1: because fosphing doesn't last that long. It breaks down in
23:43
Speaker 1: sunlight and other things. Other radicals can get rid of it. Really. Yeah,
23:47
Speaker 1: on the time scale, you know, like thousands of seconds
23:50
Speaker 1: or depending on the conditions, maybe up to you know,
23:54
Speaker 1: tens or hundreds of years. So if fosphin had been
23:58
Speaker 1: produced sort of geologically along time ago, it would have
24:01
Speaker 1: all broken down and gone away. So we're pretty sure
24:03
Speaker 1: it's being replenished by some lifelike process here on Earth,
24:07
Speaker 1: and that's what makes it also exciting to see it
24:09
Speaker 1: on Venus because on Venus their estimates are that it
24:12
Speaker 1: shouldn't last for more than a thousand years. So that
24:16
Speaker 1: means that something has been producing phosphine on Venus in
24:19
Speaker 1: the last thousand years. Interesting. It means it's fresh, like
24:22
Speaker 1: if you see posphine's it hasn't been there for eons.
24:26
Speaker 1: It's like it was it was recent somebody something or
24:29
Speaker 1: somebody made that recently. That's why somebody deals it recently.
24:34
Speaker 1: It's like if you see fresh milk, it's like you
24:37
Speaker 1: have to think it's it's recent, Like it's you see
24:39
Speaker 1: fresh milk that doesn't taste bad, then you know it
24:42
Speaker 1: it wasn't made like by dinosaurs or a long time ago.
24:45
Speaker 1: And that's exciting, right. That tells you that there's something
24:49
Speaker 1: out there that we only understood to be made by
24:52
Speaker 1: life and is fairly recent and we don't think that
24:56
Speaker 1: there's any way to make it un organically, So it's
24:59
Speaker 1: it citing possibility. It's like it's a good hint if
25:03
Speaker 1: you could like dial up your request for like what
25:05
Speaker 1: would I hope to see in the atmosphere of Venus.
25:08
Speaker 1: This would be pretty far up there. In fact, there
25:10
Speaker 1: were papers written in the last ten years suggesting this, like, Wow,
25:14
Speaker 1: this would be an awesome bio marker. If we could
25:17
Speaker 1: see this on Venus, that would be very strong evidence
25:20
Speaker 1: for life well before this discovery. That just makes me suspicious, Daniel, sure, like,
25:26
Speaker 1: if we see this, we'll see aliens and then and
25:30
Speaker 1: then they saw it. It could be actually good science
25:33
Speaker 1: or it could be a conspiracy. Now, so then the
25:36
Speaker 1: hypothesis is that maybe there are bacteria on Venus, then
25:41
Speaker 1: that is making this phosphene gas? Is that the kind
25:43
Speaker 1: of running explanation for this gas that we're seeing. It's
25:46
Speaker 1: a bit of a piecemeal explanation. Nobody has a completely
25:49
Speaker 1: coherent hypothesis that actually works. But the sketch, the outline
25:55
Speaker 1: of it is microbial life, right, not like civilizations and
26:00
Speaker 1: aliens trying to connect with us on Zoom. Microbial life
26:03
Speaker 1: because again, that's the only thing that produces phosphen here
26:06
Speaker 1: on Earth, is microbial life. And also not on the surface,
26:10
Speaker 1: because the surface is totally inhespitable, and where they find
26:14
Speaker 1: the phosphene is in the atmosphere. It's like fifty kilometers
26:18
Speaker 1: up what so it's not just aliens, it's flying aliens.
26:21
Speaker 1: It's floating aliens. Because it's about fifty kilometers up is
26:25
Speaker 1: where the pressure starts to get reasonable. It's like similar
26:29
Speaker 1: to the pressure and temperature of the atmosphere of Earth.
26:32
Speaker 1: And so life could exist in little water droplets floating
26:37
Speaker 1: in the Venusian atmosphere. What like rain life, cloud life, Yeah, exactly,
26:44
Speaker 1: a life in the cloud decks. You know. It's like
26:46
Speaker 1: forty five to sixty kilometers above the surface is where
26:50
Speaker 1: they call the temperate zone, and the pressure there is
26:53
Speaker 1: about in the same as Earth pressure, and the temperature
26:55
Speaker 1: is you know, in a reasonable range. You know, it's
26:58
Speaker 1: pretty hot still, but we think microbes could survive there. Wow.
27:02
Speaker 1: And so that that's the sketch of the idea, is
27:04
Speaker 1: that maybe there are a whole bunch and you have
27:07
Speaker 1: to have a lot, right, there might be a whole
27:09
Speaker 1: bunch of bacteria living in the clouds of Venus. You'd
27:12
Speaker 1: have to have a whole bunch. And the other cool
27:14
Speaker 1: piece of information is that the fospan doesn't seem to
27:17
Speaker 1: be present at the polls. It's mostly like around the
27:19
Speaker 1: equator and more in the temperate zones. And so that's interesting. Interesting, Yeah,
27:25
Speaker 1: what does that mean they're all vacationing at the same time.
27:30
Speaker 1: It's summer around Venus. Man, we don't know. But it's
27:33
Speaker 1: also kind of hard to imagine anything living in those clouds.
27:37
Speaker 1: I mean, Carl Sagan famously speculated about life in the
27:40
Speaker 1: clouds of Venus. What is a pretty difficult environment to
27:43
Speaker 1: survive in. It's very dry, actually, and it's very acidic.
27:46
Speaker 1: I mean, these clouds are talking about are not clouds
27:49
Speaker 1: of water vapor there clouds of sulfuric acid. And so
27:52
Speaker 1: it's a difficult environment. But we have bacteria here, right,
27:56
Speaker 1: They can live in in acid and in extreme conditions. Yeah,
27:59
Speaker 1: bacteria basically can live anywhere. My wife likes to say
28:02
Speaker 1: that bacteria can eat anything and live anywhere and have
28:06
Speaker 1: these great stories. And when they try to sterilize stuff
28:08
Speaker 1: at JPL before sending it into space by spraying some
28:11
Speaker 1: sort of bleach solution onto it, and they discovered that
28:14
Speaker 1: essentially what that was doing was selecting for some bacteria
28:17
Speaker 1: that like to eat the bleach solution. And so it's
28:21
Speaker 1: basically impossible to kill bacteria once you once you created,
28:25
Speaker 1: and so there certainly could be something that's capable of
28:28
Speaker 1: surviving those conditions. We just haven't imagined you, all right,
28:32
Speaker 1: So it's living in the rain droplets of sulphuric acid
28:36
Speaker 1: in the clouds of Venus. That's the sketch of the idea. Right,
28:39
Speaker 1: We're a long way from confirming that, but that's like
28:42
Speaker 1: the thing that we can't rule out that we'd love
28:45
Speaker 1: to conclude. But it's a pretty big leap, right. The
28:48
Speaker 1: other explanation is, oh, there's some weird chemistry happening that
28:52
Speaker 1: we never imagined before in the internals of the volcanoes
28:56
Speaker 1: on Venus. That could also explain it. All right, Well,
28:59
Speaker 1: then put on our other head and ask how excited
29:02
Speaker 1: she would be about this discovery and what it can mean.
29:06
Speaker 1: But first let's take another quick break. All right, Daniel
29:22
Speaker 1: Day may have found life on Venus. We're not sure.
29:24
Speaker 1: They found a gas phosphene. That is usually the signature
29:29
Speaker 1: of life here on Earth, micropial life. And so the
29:32
Speaker 1: question is are there microbes in the clouds of Venus?
29:37
Speaker 1: Is it infected? Is Venus infected? Is it infected? Well,
29:42
Speaker 1: you know one idea I had when I first heard
29:45
Speaker 1: about this is didn't we send landers to Venus? How
29:49
Speaker 1: do we know those landers were sterile, right. I just
29:53
Speaker 1: told you that it's basically impossible to sterilize anything. So
29:57
Speaker 1: dot dot dot, are you saying that maybe we sent
30:00
Speaker 1: satellites to Venus probes and somehow those infected Venus and
30:05
Speaker 1: that's where all that bacteria comes from. I mean, if
30:07
Speaker 1: bacteria is very hard to kill, then perhaps it survived
30:10
Speaker 1: the sterilization. Almost certainly some of them survived the sterilization,
30:14
Speaker 1: and perhaps some of them could survive also the trip
30:17
Speaker 1: planet to planet, right, And then if they found an
30:21
Speaker 1: element of the Venusian atmosphere as they're falling in towards
30:24
Speaker 1: the planet, they could have landed there and spread quickly
30:28
Speaker 1: with no competition. You could very rapidly have trillions of
30:32
Speaker 1: microbes in the atmosphere of Venus. Oh man, I wonder
30:36
Speaker 1: if you ask that, and that's how they cleaned what
30:38
Speaker 1: would they say, Maybe they said maybe they would say,
30:40
Speaker 1: but we cleaned it with sulphuric acid. We don't know
30:42
Speaker 1: how this could possibly happen. Yeah. I think it's a
30:47
Speaker 1: sort of modern understanding of microbes that they can basically
30:51
Speaker 1: live anywhere, that they are everywhere, and they can live
30:54
Speaker 1: almost anywhere. It's essentially impossible to kill all of them. Wow,
30:58
Speaker 1: so we spread life to Venus potentially potentially Yeah, I
31:02
Speaker 1: mean we don't know that. That's just speculation, but we
31:04
Speaker 1: can't rule it out either, because these microbes are very
31:07
Speaker 1: hard to kill. Now, you know, for that to happen,
31:09
Speaker 1: need to have enough of them survived the sterilization process
31:13
Speaker 1: so that some fraction of them could survive the month
31:17
Speaker 1: long journey to Venus and re entry. But it's certainly possible.
31:20
Speaker 1: Has enough time passed for you know, like a few
31:23
Speaker 1: microbes that we sent by acon in to have multiplied
31:26
Speaker 1: so much by now it's been decades. And remember, the
31:29
Speaker 1: life cycle of microbes is short, so they adapt and
31:32
Speaker 1: spread very rapidly, especially if you just dump them into
31:36
Speaker 1: nutrients with no competition and no predators. Venus should have
31:41
Speaker 1: been wearing a mask. See folks, we your masks or
31:47
Speaker 1: our landers should have been wearing a mask. But I
31:49
Speaker 1: wouldn't say that's likely. I'm just saying it's it's a possibility.
31:52
Speaker 1: You know, it's something we can't actually rule out. We'd
31:54
Speaker 1: actually have to go and study that life, and if
31:56
Speaker 1: we found it, then we could pretty definitively say whether
31:59
Speaker 1: it was Earth based. But I guess one question I
32:01
Speaker 1: have is how is this microbial life? If it's there,
32:03
Speaker 1: how is it surviving? Like doesn't they need to eat
32:05
Speaker 1: things and then consume some kind of nutrients. Yeah, but
32:09
Speaker 1: you know, microbes formed here on Earth and they consumed
32:12
Speaker 1: sunlight or just got energy from various chemical processes, and
32:16
Speaker 1: so there's definitely sources of energy for them on Venus.
32:20
Speaker 1: I mean there's heat, there's sunlight, there's everything you need.
32:23
Speaker 1: From a microbes point of view. Something's got to be
32:25
Speaker 1: the bottom of the food chain, right right. Oh, I see,
32:28
Speaker 1: it's kind of like algae almost like it's it's just there,
32:31
Speaker 1: somebody there. Yeah, it's just like the first microbes on Earth, right,
32:35
Speaker 1: they didn't need anything else to eat. Well, Um, I guess, Daniel,
32:40
Speaker 1: how excited should we be about this news discovery that
32:42
Speaker 1: should we be excited? Should we be skeptical? Should we
32:46
Speaker 1: just kind of wait and see? We should be very excited.
32:48
Speaker 1: I mean I participated in that poll and I'm the
32:50
Speaker 1: one who clicked on oh my god, Oh my god,
32:52
Speaker 1: aliens because I'm excited. I think there's a good chance
32:57
Speaker 1: that there's some weird chemistry that's produced seeing this, But
33:00
Speaker 1: I also think that there's a good chance that there's
33:03
Speaker 1: microbial life on Venus. I think billions of years have passed,
33:08
Speaker 1: the conditions are there, why shouldn't there be life. I'm
33:11
Speaker 1: the kind of person who believes that life is probably
33:14
Speaker 1: ubiquitous in the galaxy. It's just probably mostly boring microbial
33:19
Speaker 1: life that hasn't really done anything up. Note careful that
33:22
Speaker 1: we're going to get letters from all the microbiologists saying
33:25
Speaker 1: there's no boring, that's just things boring, biopic That's right.
33:29
Speaker 1: I'm showing my preference here. I would prefer to meet intelligence,
33:32
Speaker 1: civilized technological venusans than microbial venutions. But hey, that's just me. Yeah.
33:38
Speaker 1: But I think what you're saying is that it's exciting
33:40
Speaker 1: because if we find microbial life in Venus, which is
33:44
Speaker 1: like just another planet in our solar system, that's already
33:47
Speaker 1: two planets in one solar system with microbial life. So
33:50
Speaker 1: maybe like the whole universe is full of microbial life,
33:53
Speaker 1: which means the likelihood that it would progress to something
33:57
Speaker 1: more intelligent is very very high. Well, that's fascinating, right,
34:00
Speaker 1: I totally agree with you up to that last statement,
34:03
Speaker 1: and the history of this question are we alone is
34:06
Speaker 1: the history of discovering that all the elements are much
34:09
Speaker 1: more likely than we expected. Right, the number of stars
34:12
Speaker 1: in the universe turns out to be a much bigger
34:15
Speaker 1: number than we ever imagined. The number of stars with
34:17
Speaker 1: planets around them turns out to be a much bigger
34:20
Speaker 1: fraction than we even dreamed. The number of stars with
34:23
Speaker 1: planets that are rocky in the hospitable zone is even
34:26
Speaker 1: higher than we ever hoped to dare. It's like, of
34:29
Speaker 1: all those planets, and now, if we discovered that microbial
34:34
Speaker 1: life on such planets is not unusual, that takes us
34:37
Speaker 1: one step further to concluding that maybe there's intelligent life everywhere.
34:42
Speaker 1: But we can't just leap to say if microbial life
34:45
Speaker 1: is everywhere, then intelligent life probably is. Also because we
34:48
Speaker 1: don't know what the fraction of microbial communities that generate
34:52
Speaker 1: intelligent life is. Right. Each of those is an independent question,
34:56
Speaker 1: but it's exciting if we can knock one more down.
34:58
Speaker 1: If you could say, ah, crobial life, the basis for
35:01
Speaker 1: intelligent life is ubiquitous, and so you're right. If we
35:04
Speaker 1: discover it on Venus, then wow, that's a huge signal
35:08
Speaker 1: that it's probably everywhere in the universe, right, because if
35:11
Speaker 1: if it is on Venus and it formed on its
35:14
Speaker 1: own and we didn't accidentally infected Venus, that means like
35:19
Speaker 1: out of nothing, life originated there. Like life just spontaneously
35:24
Speaker 1: happened in a place like Venus. That's crazy. It's not
35:28
Speaker 1: hard to imagine, but it is crazy because Venus, we think,
35:31
Speaker 1: you know, like a billion years ago, looked a lot
35:33
Speaker 1: more like Earth before runaway climate change on Venus. We
35:37
Speaker 1: think Venus was cooler and didn't have as much sulfur
35:39
Speaker 1: in the atmosphere, and so there probably was an opportunity
35:42
Speaker 1: for a huge flowering of life on Venus. And it
35:45
Speaker 1: may be that what they're still is just the remnants
35:48
Speaker 1: the only thing that survived as Venus got sort of
35:50
Speaker 1: crazy and bonkers and floated up into the sky. But
35:53
Speaker 1: absolutely it would be wonderful to be fantastic to discover
35:57
Speaker 1: life on Venus, right, Yeah, I think the theories that
36:01
Speaker 1: Venus was once like Earth, nice and in fun to
36:04
Speaker 1: live in, but then they had crazy climate change. Basically, yeah,
36:08
Speaker 1: essentially got too hot and that released more stuff into
36:11
Speaker 1: the atmosphere which helped blanket it, and that made it hotter,
36:15
Speaker 1: which released more of that climate changing gas, which then
36:18
Speaker 1: essentially led to a runaway greenhouse effect, and now it's
36:21
Speaker 1: super hot and super dense and so not a place
36:25
Speaker 1: we'd like to live, although you could imagine building colonies
36:29
Speaker 1: that float in the Venusian atmosphere like that could be
36:32
Speaker 1: a thing. Oh man, are you saying that maybe there
36:36
Speaker 1: were aliens there intelligent and they took to the clouds. No,
36:40
Speaker 1: I'm saying if we wanted to establish a base on Venus,
36:44
Speaker 1: we could build a floating base in the clouds of
36:46
Speaker 1: Venus to study the Venusian alien. She just went to
36:49
Speaker 1: Cloud City from Star Wars. And you know, this isn't
36:54
Speaker 1: the first time we've had similar hints of microbial life
36:58
Speaker 1: in their planets in the Solar System. Really, we've detected
37:02
Speaker 1: signals and other planets. Yeah, remember a few years ago
37:04
Speaker 1: they saw this signature of methane on Mars. Methane is
37:08
Speaker 1: another one of these things that doesn't last very long,
37:10
Speaker 1: and it's typically made by organic processes, meaning you know,
37:14
Speaker 1: microbial processes producing methane. And they saw it in the
37:18
Speaker 1: atmosphere of Mars, and not just to do see it
37:21
Speaker 1: in the atmosphere of Mars, but they see like seasonal variations,
37:25
Speaker 1: as you would imagine if like things go to sleep
37:28
Speaker 1: in the winter and then wake up in the summer
37:30
Speaker 1: and start metabolizing and releasing methane and all sorts of stuff.
37:33
Speaker 1: So that was pretty exciting. So we think that maybe
37:36
Speaker 1: there is life on Mars. Well we don't know, but
37:38
Speaker 1: we know that there's liquid water on Mars. We know
37:40
Speaker 1: there's methane produced in the atmosphere, and so again those
37:44
Speaker 1: are both strong hints towards macrobial life. It's a far
37:48
Speaker 1: from being able to claim that there is life on Mars,
37:50
Speaker 1: but it's the kind of evidence that's consistent with life
37:53
Speaker 1: on Mars and difficult to explain otherwise. And that's the
37:56
Speaker 1: kind of thing we learned about Venus this week, that
37:58
Speaker 1: there's something similar are on Venus, some process making a gas,
38:03
Speaker 1: as far as we know, can only be made by life,
38:06
Speaker 1: and it is being made on Venus. Well, pretty exciting.
38:08
Speaker 1: It sounds, Daniel, like you're telling me that we should
38:10
Speaker 1: be excited about this news. It is worth the other
38:13
Speaker 1: front page of newspapers. It's definitely worth the other front page.
38:16
Speaker 1: And you know, even if it turns out to be weird.
38:19
Speaker 1: Chemistry Hey, we've learned something about chemistry, and that helps
38:22
Speaker 1: us understand whether this is a fascinating signal to look
38:26
Speaker 1: for an exoplanets or not. And you know, I'm less
38:29
Speaker 1: excited to learn about new chemical pathways to make phosphine
38:33
Speaker 1: that I am to discover life on Venus. But you
38:36
Speaker 1: know it is still exciting, right, And what's interesting is
38:39
Speaker 1: that we could go there and check it out. Like
38:41
Speaker 1: it's not like an extra planet that's millions of light
38:44
Speaker 1: years away, I mean Venus. We could potentially go there
38:47
Speaker 1: and scoop some of that gas up and see if
38:50
Speaker 1: there are bacteria there. Absolutely. The next step is to
38:53
Speaker 1: do a much more detailed study of the different kinds
38:56
Speaker 1: of gases in the atmosphere. You know, we've seen one,
39:00
Speaker 1: you but to understand whether there's life there, we need
39:03
Speaker 1: to scoop up that gas and see, like, well, what
39:04
Speaker 1: is this being made from? What else is happening? Because
39:08
Speaker 1: if there is life in the atmosphere is Venus, it's
39:10
Speaker 1: not just making Phosphenes's kind of making other stuff. And
39:14
Speaker 1: so these things are called metabolites, the product of metabolism,
39:18
Speaker 1: and we can do metaboli mix to understand like what
39:20
Speaker 1: are they doing, What are they breathing, what are they eating,
39:23
Speaker 1: what are they producing? And that will give us a
39:25
Speaker 1: clue as to what might be there and so more details,
39:28
Speaker 1: study the atmosphere and then yeah, go descend into Venus
39:32
Speaker 1: and scoop some of this stuff out or actually study.
39:35
Speaker 1: Just make sure we wear a mask, right, that's right.
39:38
Speaker 1: And so there's a bunch of folks gearing up to
39:40
Speaker 1: do studies of Venus. People are talking about sending another
39:43
Speaker 1: probe to Venus, and even small companies. There's a small
39:46
Speaker 1: company I was reading about yesterday called Rocket Labs and
39:49
Speaker 1: they're building sort of a low budget probe that there
39:51
Speaker 1: were any way planning to send to Venus because they
39:54
Speaker 1: felt like Mars has too much attention what about Venus?
39:58
Speaker 1: And so they're planning to launch a think it's next year,
40:00
Speaker 1: a spacecraft called the Photon on a rocket they called
40:04
Speaker 1: the Electron and send it to Venus. And so we
40:07
Speaker 1: could get some more answers pretty soon. Wow. So if
40:10
Speaker 1: we haven't infected Venus, we we probably will soon. I
40:14
Speaker 1: think it's what you're saying, that's right, and you know,
40:18
Speaker 1: that's a fascinating idea. I think what I said before
40:21
Speaker 1: it was not actually correct, because if we go to
40:24
Speaker 1: Venus and we discover these micro groups, we can't actually
40:27
Speaker 1: tell if they came from Earth or not. Like say
40:30
Speaker 1: that they are DNA based microups that look a lot
40:33
Speaker 1: like Earth microbes. That either tells you, well, we infected
40:37
Speaker 1: them from Earth, or this is the way to make
40:40
Speaker 1: microbial life. If it's really independent and it arises totally
40:43
Speaker 1: separately and ends up looking very very much like Earth.
40:47
Speaker 1: That tells you that life can really only happen one way.
40:50
Speaker 1: So that would be a huge discovery, or it would
40:52
Speaker 1: mean that we'd infected. It would mean that in Star
40:55
Speaker 1: Trek when all the Aliens looked the same with four
40:58
Speaker 1: limbs and five fingers, it's because of a reason, that's right.
41:01
Speaker 1: There's actually science behind it, and that's why it's so
41:04
Speaker 1: important to not infect these planets, Like you don't get
41:08
Speaker 1: two chances. If you infect Venus, then we can no
41:10
Speaker 1: longer ask that question of whether life can arise independently
41:14
Speaker 1: and look similar to life on Earth. So I really
41:18
Speaker 1: hope that we haven't infected Venus. That's my worry, my anxiety,
41:22
Speaker 1: But I'm hopeful that it's not the case. Well, I
41:24
Speaker 1: guess the answer is let's wait and see. Maybe we'll
41:27
Speaker 1: find life right here in our neighborhood. We need more observations,
41:30
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we hope you enjoy that, and we
41:32
Speaker 1: hope that cleared up that headline that was in the
41:34
Speaker 1: news all of this week and maybe got you a
41:37
Speaker 1: little bit excited about discoveries and other planets and the
41:40
Speaker 1: potential for us not being the only things alive in
41:46
Speaker 1: our universe. That's right, and we're happy to share with
41:48
Speaker 1: you our enthusiasm or excitement about this potential big news,
41:52
Speaker 1: but also to remind you that it's a long cry
41:55
Speaker 1: from actually discovering life on venus. I mean, we know
41:59
Speaker 1: the probability of seeing phosphen given life is high. We
42:02
Speaker 1: don't know what the probability of life given phosphing is
42:07
Speaker 1: and so we're excited, we're hopeful, but we're also still cautious. Yeah,
42:11
Speaker 1: thanks for joining us, See you next time. Thanks for listening,
42:22
Speaker 1: and remember that Daniel and Jorge explained. The Universe is
42:25
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcast for
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Speaker 1: my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio Apple Apple Podcasts,
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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Ye