Alien news

[Gurke and Hare]

Astronomers have detected phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus, which implies biological activity there.

Abstract of paper, but you have to pay to read the whole thing: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-1174-4

News article: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/sep/14/scientists-find-gas-linked-to-life-in-atmosphere-of-venus

[bgmnts]

When do we start drilling?

[Uncle TechTip]

Cardiff uni led https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/news/view/2445204-hints-of-life-on-venus

[wooders1978]

Women are from there, so it makes sense

[JaDanketies]

there's hope for life on Earth after climate change after all!

[NoSleep]

Greaves first spotted the phosphine signal late one day in December 2018 as she was about to leave work. "There wasn't anyone to talk to and I remember thinking the best way to celebrate was to make a curry, so I drove off to Sainsbury's," she said.

Embedded advert?

[popcorn]

Sorry it was the curry I ate last night!!!!!!!!

BIG LOLS !!!

[dissolute ocelot]

Greaves first spotted the phosphine signal late one day in December 2018 as she was about to leave work. "There wasn't anyone to talk to and I remember thinking the best way to celebrate was to make a curry, so I drove off to Sainsbury's," she said.

Whenever I detect the odor of rotten fish, it always makes me think of Sainsbury's.

[Tony Tony Tony]

It seems "Phosphine is a colorless, flammable, and explosive gas at ambient temperature that has the odor of garlic or decaying fish" which makes Venus sound akin to that London.

[touchingcloth]

Venereal disease.

[Alberon]

Life on Venus?

Dave Bowie considers rewrite.

Charles Cockell, an astrobiologist at the University of Edinburgh, said that, rather than hinting at life on Venus, the work raises questions about phosphine as a "biomarker".

"A biological explanation should always be the explanation of last resort and there are good reasons to think the Venusian clouds are dead. The concentrations of sulphuric acid in those clouds are more extreme than any known habitat on Earth," he said.

Life could have got going there billions of years ago when the climate was much more hospitable. There is a chance, albeit a very small one, that one small vestige of that life still survives.

[touchingcloth]

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-54133538

there are no factories on Venus; and there are certainly no penguins.

[Quote]

Microbes, eh? Need to take these filthy space bastards out right now, they could destabilise the entire fucking Milky Way.

Get in there quick, hit 'em with some shock and awe, take their natural resources, privatise their state industries and install our own rightwing puppet regime.

[BlodwynPig]

They've got a better track and trace on Venus to be fair

[JaDanketies]

maybe if there isn't life on Venus or Mars we should send some of those tardigrades there to see how they get on. They might end up intelligent one day!

[thecuriousorange]

A tenner says they find a Statue of Liberty among the toxic swamps of this planet, revealing it to be Earth in the future, which will totally change the conversation around climate change.

[Cuntbeaks]

I hope they stay there, the microbial chancers. No one wants them coming to are country on inflatable spaceships. I bet they can't speak are languages, so what is point?

[Zetetic]

Abstract of paper, but you have to pay to read the whole thing

FWIW, entirely readable to me and I can't think why I would be special right now.

[The Mollusk]

It's like Steven Hawkings said: "If aliens exist? where are all the aliens?"

Case closed.

[Shit Good Nose]

Read the title as Allen news.  Thought it was going to be a thread about Allens.

Maybe that's how they spell Alan on Venus.

[Kelvin]

Imagine if billions of dollars, trillions even, were spent on the technology to travel to Venus in haste, to drill deep into its belly and unearth life, however simple. Three years to cross the gulf between us, but eventually the craft lands, and within days it has found not mere microbes or long dead bacterium, but a thriving civilisation of underground tunnels and coiled cities powered by clean gas and governed by a living, sentient and peaceful species of wizened bird-like people. A benevolent, trusting race who use their unknown science to relaunch the probe into the blackness of space, back to us, with reams of data given willingly, new fuel, and an iridescent "harp" that makes a sound like laughter.

The return journey is fast, much faster, aided by the new fuel. And when our greatest minds finally look back at what their little probe learned, they weep to see the faces of our benefactors, and clap their hands with childish glee at the merest glimpse of their knowledge. So happy with this knowledge that could unite our world, that they fail to notice the blinking light in the returned capsule which indicates a prosaic report taken after leaving Venus. Unknown to them, a meteor hit the crust mere hours after our probe's launch, and all life, our new friends across the blackness, even the microbes and bacterium, have been vaporised, from core to surface, so quickly that not one of them could scream.

Earth unites its waning resources, and trillions upon trillions of dollars, pounds, yen, euros, to launch hundreds of ships to embrace our saviors, now less than dust, inside a hollow, irradiated shell, ruined by a meteor that houses the last - and newest - lifeform on Venus; a ravenous, continent-spanning space tarantula.               

[Operty1]

If phosphine is so damn essential to life, how come this is the first I've heard about it. It's not like it's at the top of the Aldi list. Alien news is always so rubbish, bits of ice on mars, microbes perhaps on a asteroid.

Space is a load of old boring wank, let's just draw a line under it and if there is anything decent up there let it come to us.

[Blue Jam]

Women are from there, so it makes sense

Perhaps they wouldn't have so many microbes flying about up there if they'd all just left the toilet seat up.

[sirhenry]

Imagine if billions of dollars, trillions even, were spent on the technology to travel to Venus in haste, to drill deep into its belly and unearth life, however simple. Three years to cross the gulf between us, but eventually the craft lands, and within days it has found not mere microbes or long dead bacterium, but a thriving civilisation of underground tunnels and coiled cities powered by clean gas and governed by a living, sentient and peaceful species of wizened bird-like people.       

So there are penguins on Venus after all.

Good to see that they've moved on from the moon.

[Blue Jam]

So there are penguins on Venus after all.

Space penguins exist. They're in Subnautica, I've seen 'em.

Venereal disease.

Wimmin's troubles.

Life on Mars died out because of jock itch and phimosis.

[touchingcloth]

Space penguins exist. They're in Subnautica, I've seen 'em.

Wimmin's troubles.

Life on Mars died out because of jock itch and phimosis.

Apparently Venereal is the correct adjective to describe things (and people) from Venus, but at some point people (and things) started using Venusian because of the association with crabs.

Maybe wimmin get The Lady Clap they should refer to it as Martian. "Me and dirty Gary have been fucking for a while now, so it was only going to be a matter of time before I got the Martians up me".

[JaDanketies]

a ravenous, continent-spanning space tarantula.             

I'd buy a ticket for that in the cinema

[Blue Jam]

Apparently Venereal is the correct adjective to describe things (and people) from Venus, but at some point people (and things) started using Venusian because of the association with crabs.

Seriously, please tell me more.

Also please don't make me make a joke about Scientologists and clams.

[touchingcloth]

Seriously, please tell me more.

As in astronomers started about things like "the Venusian atmosphere", because people's minds went to the gutter when they said "the Venereal atmosphere is highly acidic".

[Thomas]

Two of the few photos we have of the forbidding Venereal surface,[nb]we've all got one[/nb] snapped shortly before the probe was destroyed by atmospheric conditions aliens with hammers:



I'm always awed by photos taken on heavenly bodies. It's a pointless thing to say - as nature has no conscious plan for us, and our evolutionary development has allowed us to devise astronomical technology - but there's an eerie sense that we were never meant to see these places. But I suppose any old orangutan is only a few thousand years of neurological evolution away from inventing spaceships and peeking at Mars. The humble fish might imagine that it's never supposed to see the forest. Just give it time, mate.