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Comment by pks016 | Hacker News Reader

Suppose we find primitive life forms after sending probe. What's the next step gonna be? Should we manipulate things or let the life form as it is?

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Probably a slow process of sending more probes and getting more samples to test, and eventually shipping them back to Earth. We don't really have any interest in manipulating whatever ecosystem Venus potentially has, but we could certainly use microbes that survive in such an environment.

I strongly doubt there is life on Venus, however.

I was thinking in the line of artificial natural selection in the long run. So that life could thrive better! or let nature do it's work.

What's your plan for artificial natural selection?

Assuming the conditions are similar to primitive earth: We could simulate the fastest way to take the life fast forward. (For e.g. putting antibiotics like things, recombination etc.)

We don't have the ability to manipulate that kind of ecosystem.

Surely we have the ability, we just don’t operate on the timescale required nor would want to invest the amount of resources required. We make significant manipulations of our own ecosystem accidentally all the time.

We do if there exist microorganisms on Earth that can survive and multiply in the atmosphere of Venus. (The upper layers aren't nearly as harsh an environment as at ground-level, though I don't know if it's survivable by anything Earth-native.)

How? If there's no water, how could there be an ecosystem of microorganisms thriving in the atmosphere?

It has water (according to wikipedia), just not very much in comparison to the Earth.

In theory, some hypothetical life form could convert sulfuric acid to water, but I have no idea if such a thing is possible or currently exists on Earth.

> Water vapor 20 ppm

(from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus)

> The concentration of water vapor (a greenhouse gas) varies significantly from around 10 ppm by volume in the coldest portions of the atmosphere to as much as 5% by volume in hot, humid air masses, and concentrations of other atmospheric gases are typically quoted in terms of dry air (without water vapor).

(from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth)

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