James Clerk Maxwell Telescope…1 of 2 used to detect phosphine on Venus
With phosphine in mind, an international team of researchers used two ground-based telescopes — the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array in Chile — to search for any possible signatures of phosphine in Venus’ atmosphere. Sure enough, they found the gas at a concentration of five to 20 parts per billion in the atmosphere. That’s a lot when you compare it to how much is found on Earth, where the gas is concentrated in parts per trillion and parts per quadrillion. “That is all very much evidence pushing towards this exotic explanation of something replenishing it and something making it at large quantities,” says Clara Sousa-Silva…
If the phosphine detection is confirmed, then people will set to work figuring out where it’s coming from. It may turn out that life isn’t even the best explanation. The phosphine may have been found in clouds with moderate temperatures, but the area is still a ghastly place for life to survive, even for the hardiest of microorganisms. “There’s nothing definitive saying it is biology,” Rakesh Mogul, a biological chemist at California State Polytechnic University focusing on extreme microbial life, who is not involved in the study, tells The Verge. “There’s still a lot of unknowns. And it’s nice to put biology as the answer, but really, as scientists, we need to back it up and make sure we exhaustively study all the other possibilities.”
Nice to see scientists in charge of this information gathering and analysis. Imagine the hullabaloo if our politicians had authority over this research.
“Life in the Clouds of Venus?” Harold Morowitz & Carl Sagan (September 16, 1967) https://www.nature.com/articles/2151259a0
See also “Life on the Surface of Venus?” By Carl Sagan. (December 1, 1967) https://www.nature.com/articles/2161198a0
NASA Feb 24, 2021: “Parker Solar Probe Offers Stunning View of Venus” https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2021/parker-solar-probe-offers-a-stunning-view-of-venus
“WISPR is designed to take images of the solar corona and inner heliosphere in visible light, as well as images of the solar wind and its structures as they approach and fly by the spacecraft. At Venus, the camera detected a bright rim around the edge of the planet that may be nightglow — light emitted by oxygen atoms high in the atmosphere that recombine into molecules in the nightside. The prominent dark feature in the center of the image is Aphrodite Terra, the largest highland region on the Venusian surface. The feature appears dark because of its lower temperature, about 85 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius) cooler than its surroundings.
That aspect of the image took the team by surprise, said Angelos Vourlidas, the WISPR project scientist from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, who coordinated a WISPR imaging campaign with Japan’s Venus-orbiting Akatsuki mission. “WISPR is tailored and tested for visible light observations. We expected to see clouds, but the camera peered right through to the surface.”
Scientists Turn Radio Signal From Venus Into Audio You Can Listen to : Listen to the strange radio signals emanating from Venus. https://futurism.com/the-byte/radio-signals-venus-audio
NASA solar probe grazes a Venus mystery on its slingshot to the Sun https://www.slashgear.com/nasa-solar-probe-grazes-a-venus-mystery-on-its-slingshot-to-the-sun-03671388/