Decided to make a dedicated thread about this instead of just posting in my prediction thread haha.
Hints of life on Venus | The Royal Astronomical Society (https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/news/hints-life-venus)
TLDR: Phosphine gas detected in the atmosphere of Venus in relatively massive quantities. The only known source of that much phosphine is anaerobic microbial life.
In the unlikeliest of places. This would change everything
Oh dang this is crazy and it really is legit. Can't wait to find out the cause of the gas.
In the unlikeliest of places. This would change everything
There are three possibilities if it's real.
Life could have came from Earth 4 billion years ago. We had huge impacts and tons of extremophiles that could have potentially survived the journey. If that happened, then this is still an incredible discover but wouldn't change much.
Also possible the opposite happened. Maybe life started on Venus and an impact brought life to Earth. That would be crazy knowing that we were "born" on Venus.
Third possibility is that life on Venus is independent. That'd change more than everything. Greatly increases the odds of there being intelligent life out there that is far more advanced than us.
Oh dang this is crazy and it really is legit. Can't wait to find out the cause of the gas.
What a strange sentence. ;D
Will this slow down Moon and Mars stuff?
It seems like a race is on to reach Venus. If Russia and China make enough noise it could make congress care.
SpaceX could launch probes "now." Rocketlab is 2023. Landers would still be a few more years unless they were really cheap.
Venus is the closest planet and we can get there nice and fast. ~20 months between launch windows and ~1 month of travel. Nothing like outer solar missions.