Phosphine gas in the cloud decks of Venus
www.nature.com
The detection of ~20 ppb of phosphine in Venus clouds by observations in the millimetre-wavelength range from JCMT and ALMA is puzzling, because according to our knowledge of Venus, no phosphine should be there. As the most plausible formation paths do not work, the source could be unknown chemical processes—maybe even life?

so this is lit as shit. theyre saying there is a source of PH3 in the atmosphere of venus, an atmosphere which rarely has any sort of bond containing hydrogen. this implies it could be life.

however, they also mentioned it appearing near the equator. and that made me remember some articles about phosphine in comets and some others about how asteroids tend to hit our equator more. how much yall wanna reckon a giant comet hit that motherfucker many years back and had ph3 in it? they say that the phosphine would deplete in 10^3 years if it is not renewed, i didnt see any info on whether the concentration changed in their year of observation

here's their bit on anomalous events, which doesnt seem to mention asteroids or comets:

Energetic events are also not an effective route to making PH3. Lightning may occur on Venus, but at sub-Earth activity levels33. We find that PH3 production by Venusian lightning would fall short of few-ppb abundance by factors of 107 or more. Similarly, there would need to be >200 times as much volcanic activity on Venus as on Earth to inject enough PH3 into the atmosphere (up to ~108 times, depending on assumptions about mantle rock chemistry). Orbiter topographical studies have suggested there are not many large, active, volcanic hotspots on Venus34. Meteoritic delivery adds at most a few tonnes of phosphorus per year (for Earth-like accretion of meteorites). Exotic processes such as large-scale tribochemical (frictional) processes and solar wind protons also only generate PH3 in negligible quantities (W. Bains et al., manuscript in preparation, submitted to Astrobiology as ‘Phosphine on Venus cannot be explained by conventional processes'; also see Extended Data Fig. 10).

i do like that theyre going for the gold and asking for a new visit to venus and some new telescopes though.

  • SpookyVanguard64 [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    EDIT: actually now that I think of it you could do some kind of balloon that picks the samples into high altitude and then have some kind of spaceplane pick it up mid air

    You could theoretically pull this maneuver with a normal atmospheric entry vehicle by taking advantage of boost-gliding (aka skip reentry). Basically, objects entering the atmosphere of a planet will exhibit different behaviors based on their speed, shape and trajectory, as well as the atmospheric density and gravitational field of the planet. In the specific case of an object with a large flat surface (eg. a spacecraft with a heat shield) entering at a shallow angle and at high speeds, it will tend to gain enough lift from the atmosphere that it actually ricochets back out into space. This would be more fuel efficient than a plane since it could be done entirely using ballistics (except at the terminal phase of the maneuver where the spacecraft may need to expend fuel in order to keep itself in orbit due to speed lost due to air friction) , but it does also mean that the collection would have to occur at extreme altitudes and speeds which could make it very impractical or even dangerous.