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Comment by taf2 | Hacker News Reader

Could be life we sent there from earth via probes in the 70s?

Doubtful.

On Venus, we have detected "unknown absorbers" that absorb portion of UV and visible light, these absorbers are seen in the form of clouds for 100 or so years. It's possible this detection is connected with those unknown absorbers and if so, it predates any human spacecraft.

Not only that, but it is doubtful that any kind of life would survive spaceflight and entry into an environment so vastly different than earth. If there is life on Venus, it is probably more extreme than extremophiles on Earth. Venera probes were not coated in phosphine producing extremophile bacteria.

The environment in the Venusian atmosphere isn't actually particularly extreme high up. At 50km up you could walk around outside your vessel in shorts and a breathing mask. I'ts just CO2 instead of N2/O2 and has about 1/10th the amount of water vapor as on Earth. And a little acid but well within industrial safety limits.

To be clear, you don't want to breath the acid for more than 10 minutes but we're stipulating a breathing mask here.

From the press releases today, the clouds of Venus are upwards of 80% sulfuric acid, and on earth the highest concentration of acid we've observed things living in is 5%.

All of the expert testimony I heard described Venus as far to acidic for any life on Earth [0]

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1u-jlf_Olo

Looking more into it, the problem seems to be that while the absolute amount of acid isn't that high the ratio of H2SO4 to H2O is super high and there just isn't very much of either in the Venus clouds. The absolute amount matters a lot if you're just stepping outside for a bit but ratio is the only important thing for theoretical floating bacteria since they have to get their working fluid somehow.

Wasn’t the earths atmosphere mostly co2 in its early years?

Speaking of Venera (the USSR missions to explore Venus), I wonder if researchers will go back to analyze data from those probes in light of these new findings. Fun fact: the Venera mission launched a weather balloon on Venus! -- the only time that has ever been done on another planet.

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