It has long been thought that life on Earth's sister planet Venus was highly unlikely due to the extreme heat and the sulfuric atmosphere. Now photos nearly thirty years old have given one scientist a reason to believe that the scientific community should rethink that conclusion.
Venus is hot; extremely so. Temperatures on the planet can reach as high as 900 degrees Fahrenheit, which is hot enough to melt lead. Its atmosphere of carbon dioxide contains heated clouds of sulfuric acid. All evidence gathered by probes and satellite fly-bys have pointed to Venus being a lifeless, barren world. Or so it is generally believed. But Leonid Ksanfomaliti of the Space Research Institute of Russia's Academy of Sciences now believes otherwise.
Ksanfomaliti has formed a different conclusion after studying photographs sent back from the Venus-13 probe which landed on the planet in 1982. According to the Times of India, the Russian scientist analyzed the photos from the landing probe and found what he believes could be signs of life.
In an article published in the Solar System Research magazine, Ksanfomaliti is quoted saying that there are objects in the photographs that resemble a "disk", a "black flap," and a "scorpion."
"What if we forget about the current theories about the non-existence of life on Venus," the magazine further quotes the scientist, "let's boldly suggest that the objects' morphological features would allow us to say that they are living."
In short, Ksanfomaliti is saying that the objects are living beings -- extraterrestrial life.
But how can that be? The last time a probe or spacecraft neared Venus, the Magellan spacecraft sent back data from Venus orbit, radar and global mapping the planet for the four years. According to the mission overview on the NASA website, before Magellan was lowered into the Venusian atmosphere to test a new maneuvering technique and contact was lost (October 1994), the spacecraft had completed its primary mission and had mapped over 99 percent of Venus' surface.
Like all the American and Russian missions before it, Magellan had found the planet uninhabited by anything detectable as a living entity.
Still, Ksanfomaliti's findings should not be dismissed out of hand. Life forms that metabolize sulfurous molecules were posited by MIT planetary science doctoral student Renya Hu and his colleagues, Sara Seager and William Bains, at the American Astronomical Society in Boston in May. The team based their findings on microorganisms on Earth found near volcanoes that metabolize sulfurous molecules, part of a category of life forms called extremophiles (for the extreme conditions within which they live).
It is uncertain if there is a flaw in the Russian scientist's research -- a trick of light, a problem with the photographic equipment of the Venus-13 landing probe that would alter images, a glitch in the data transmission that could account for same -- or if it is simple wishful thinking on his part. But he correctly asserts, given all the accumulated and established evidence concerning Venus, that it is bold suggestion.
(photo credit: Ricardo Nunes, NASA, Wikimedia Commons)
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