Life on Venus? Astronomers See a Signal in Its Clouds

On Wednesday, September 30, 2020 at 8:06:59 PM UTC-4, Alain Fournier wrote:
On Sep/30/2020 at 19:54, JF Mezei wrote :
On 2020-09-29 16:35, jacob navia wrote:

Obviously at that temperatures and crushing pressures it would highly
surprising to see anything but rocks.

As any scuba diver knows, the human body can live at great depths where
pressures are many times that of sea level. Where there is a danger is
changing depths and the mixture of gases you need to breathe. (below
certain depth, too much O2 will kill you).

So the hot women of Venus can live at great pressures and stay there.
But they would have a hard time moving to and perhaps surviving in what
we consider normal pressure.

In terms of heat, we do call the venusian women hot for a reason :-)

Did some checking:

Pressure at surface 93 bars. At that pressure water boils at 305.6°C,
but surface temperature is listed as 467°. But if there is a region of
Venus that has tempoeratures never exceed 305°, then theoretically a
water based life form could exist.
The very thick greenhouse gas atmosphere means that surface temperature
will be spread quite evenly throughout the planet. That same phenomenon
explains why global warming here on Earth is increasing temperatures in
polar regions much faster than in equatorial regions, the temperatures
are equalizing a little bit. So you will not find a region of Venus with
temperatures of 305 °C.


Alain Fournier
Hi Alain, while not disagreeing with your statement about surface temperature, there are regions in the Venusian atmosphere where temperature varies, particularly with height. At a height of 20 km, the temperature would be around 305 with a pressure of about 22.5 bar. However, I will point out that water at those temperatures and pressures certainly does not behave like the water we all know and love. At such conditions water becomes a very highly oxidizing substance. With all due respect to the Horta of Star Trek, any life form using water at such conditions will be quite different from what we now know.

Dean