Space is the place
Out of context: Reply #203
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- Nairn1
re: Venutian life
I've read speculation about its origins, should it actually exist.
There are two camps - either it developed locally, or could have come from Earth, the result of some asteroid impact that sent life-laden material to Venus. Not unlikely, we've found Martian and Lunar meteorites on Earth.
The latter seems unlikely, not because Terran stuff couldn't get to Venus (actually, it would be easier than getting to Mars) - rather, even if it survived the entry and made impact, it would be entirely unsuited to that environment and would be sterilised instantly. Even as it went through the atmosphere, it seems likely to me that the process of burning up as it passes through would mean that nothing useful could settle and linger for enough time to establish itself.
So, I prefer the former option - it developed on Venus.
If so, finding another form of life that presumably isn't based on DNA but has similar or comparable reproductive capacity would be of extremely high scientific interest. Not just for the awesome majesty of it, but also if we can either work on it locally, or have some sent back to Earth (or, preferably, something on the Moon or in Orbit - I've seen enough movies to know that bringing Alien DNA onto planet Earth is a good idea for absolutely no one) we can have another data-set for bio-tech development.
If we can then edit that [life] to make use of the Venutian atmosphere for our own benefit, we can set about the beginnings of terra-forming, or at the very least making use of the huge amounts of atmopshere Venus has. There's an abundance of super-useful elements at altitudes Humans could conceivably live at, even if inside some sort of dirigible.
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A couple of hundred (thousand, etc) years of earnest atmosphere modification and perhaps we can make the surface a little more bearable.
Then it's just the very minor matter of spinning Venus up so that instead of it being one day for every 243 on Earth, it's something a little more useful...
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Also, I used to worry about the idea of finding life on Mars - not for any pulp Sci-Fi reasons, more that if there are two instances of different life evolved in one system, then that statistically implies that there is a huge abundance of life potentially in our galaxy. The further implication that given we've not seen any evidence of such, something 'BAD' happens to most if not all civilisations that prevents them evolving much beyond what we have.
Finding life on Venus is different to me. If it's something that could only have evolved at some specific atmospheric strata, its pathways to evolving beyond our level are limited.
Venus is a high energy environment - not much unlike our deep sea hydrothermal vents in many ways.
- I think I saw Grafician mention the Great Filter the other day, so I guess thanks for making me consider that in terms of life in Venus' atmosphere!Nairn
- Valiant ThorMaaku
- Nairn I personally think is easier to "terraform" Mars than Venus - easier to go from cold (Mars) to temperate (Earth) than very hot (Venus) to temperate again.grafician
- Oh, venus is a cunt - we'd need to spin the entire planet up to make it anything like 'Earth-like'. Still, it's, I think, a more interesting target.Nairn