Venus Earth’s evil twin its clouds made
of battery acid at 900 degrees its
surface hot enough to melt lead
venus is pretty much like the the
biblical vision of hell today this may
be the most hostile real estate in the
solar system yet billions of years ago
Venus looked a lot like Earth but too
near the Sun Venus was doomed earth
blossomed Venus burned yet even here
life may thrive
On June 9th 2006 Venus Express discovers
an eerie phenomenon
the spacecraft detects an intermittent
disturbance that sounds like a whistle
this is the actual recording to anyone
else baffling but to the mission-team a
revelation the signature of lightning
lightning is important because it’s
something that produces exotic species
for example nitrogen and oxygen combine
to produce nitrogen oxides which are
important for life and important for
producing chemicals that can’t be
produced any other way in a planetary
environment but what kind of life could
survive such conditions biologist Lynn
Rothschild studies organisms that live
in extreme environments she has
discovered microbes called extremophiles
thriving in some of the harshest
conditions on earth like Yellowstone
National Park extremophiles like these
can survive in battery acid and
temperatures above boiling point
[Music]
these organisms have evolved to survive
not only the heat and the acid but
levels of other chemicals that would
kill most life if life can survive in
Yellowstone why not on Venus scientists
believe the surface itself is too savage
temperatures reach 900 degrees and the
pressure is bone-crushing but not in the
clouds 30 miles up temperatures reach
only 176 degrees much closer to the kind
of heat microbes endure on earth
here in the cooler acidic clouds they
could survive but how can life exist
without water there is water vapor up in
the clouds and Venus and we have some
indication that organisms on the earth
for example lichens can use water vapour
as their source of water so that’s
pretty encouraging for life in the
clouds at least in terms of having water
available the clouds on Venus are
continuous and long-lived so you could
imagine creatures that live in the
clouds and reproduce in the clouds and
even seed other cloud particles and
they’re not going to last forever
because they’re going to fall out but as
long as they last long enough to
reproduce themselves then you could have
a self-sustaining colony of life in the
cloud we may have to wait years but
someday another mission to Venus may
find the holy grail of space life beyond
our world
of battery acid at 900 degrees its
surface hot enough to melt lead
venus is pretty much like the the
biblical vision of hell today this may
be the most hostile real estate in the
solar system yet billions of years ago
Venus looked a lot like Earth but too
near the Sun Venus was doomed earth
blossomed Venus burned yet even here
life may thrive
On June 9th 2006 Venus Express discovers
an eerie phenomenon
the spacecraft detects an intermittent
disturbance that sounds like a whistle
this is the actual recording to anyone
else baffling but to the mission-team a
revelation the signature of lightning
lightning is important because it’s
something that produces exotic species
for example nitrogen and oxygen combine
to produce nitrogen oxides which are
important for life and important for
producing chemicals that can’t be
produced any other way in a planetary
environment but what kind of life could
survive such conditions biologist Lynn
Rothschild studies organisms that live
in extreme environments she has
discovered microbes called extremophiles
thriving in some of the harshest
conditions on earth like Yellowstone
National Park extremophiles like these
can survive in battery acid and
temperatures above boiling point
[Music]
these organisms have evolved to survive
not only the heat and the acid but
levels of other chemicals that would
kill most life if life can survive in
Yellowstone why not on Venus scientists
believe the surface itself is too savage
temperatures reach 900 degrees and the
pressure is bone-crushing but not in the
clouds 30 miles up temperatures reach
only 176 degrees much closer to the kind
of heat microbes endure on earth
here in the cooler acidic clouds they
could survive but how can life exist
without water there is water vapor up in
the clouds and Venus and we have some
indication that organisms on the earth
for example lichens can use water vapour
as their source of water so that’s
pretty encouraging for life in the
clouds at least in terms of having water
available the clouds on Venus are
continuous and long-lived so you could
imagine creatures that live in the
clouds and reproduce in the clouds and
even seed other cloud particles and
they’re not going to last forever
because they’re going to fall out but as
long as they last long enough to
reproduce themselves then you could have
a self-sustaining colony of life in the
cloud we may have to wait years but
someday another mission to Venus may
find the holy grail of space life beyond
our world
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