Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - Did Scientists Discover Life on Venus? MIT Professor Sara Seager and The Verge’s Loren Grush (#075)

Episode Date: September 17, 2020

  A conversation with MIT Professor Sara Seager and The Verge Journalist Loren Grush, with Prof. Brian Keating. Loren Grush writes: “Deep within the acidic clouds of Venus, astronomers have detected a tantalizing gas never found on the planet before — a gas that, remarkably, could be a sign of life on the hellish world. The gas’s presence isn’t enough to say for sure that Venus hosts life forms, but the fact that it exists in the planet’s clouds indicates that something is going on there that we don’t fully understand.” Read the press release: https://news.mit.edu/2020/life-venus-phosphine-0914 Watch the press release from MIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCXF8FUux74 Read Loren’s coverage of the announcement: https://www.theverge.com/21428796/venus-gas-life-sign-discovery-phosphine-biosignature Project Website: https://venuscloudlife.com “The gas in question is a nasty one called phosphine, a toxic and explosive molecule with a lingering odor of garlic and dead fish. Astronomers discovered the putrid gas lurking within a layer of clouds on Venus, where temperatures are pretty close to those on our planet. They didn’t find much — just small traces in the swirling mix of sulfuric acid clouds that surround the planet. “It’s equivalent to a few tablespoons in an Olympic sized swimming pool,” David Clements, an astrophysicist at the Imperial College of London and part of the team that made the discovery, tells The Verge. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguish for magic. Welcome, everybody, to a very special edition of the Into the Impossible podcast. In this time of pandemic podcasting, I am likely to say I'm your fearful host. I'm no longer fearless, but I'm feeling a little bit more hopeful, I suppose, because of today's excitement, the today's announcement led in part by one of our guests today, who will introduce you to in just a second. And I have two guests today for my first ever dual guest live stream on the Into the Impossible podcast. It could be either the first experiment or the last experiment, who knows. But I'm joined by MIT professor, Dr. Sarah Seeger, who is joining us from Cambridge, Massachusetts,

where she has been having a very busy day. So first of all, I want to say thank you to Sarah. I'll put you up there. There you are. Hi, Sarah. Hi, Sarah. Hi. Thank you for having me. Thanks for joining us. Yeah, I mean, I really kind of reached out through nefarious methods contacting people that I know, know you. I won't say who, but I was able to get in touch with you, and I'm so glad that we were able to contact each other. And similarly, Lauren Grush, who's joining us from New York City, where she has been writing for The Verge for quite some time. I've been a fan of her work for many years, and she's covered many, many wonderful and fascinating announcements throughout science. and beyond. And she was introduced to me by a previous guest on the show, which is Sarah

Skulls, who wrote a book called They Are Already Here about the actual evidence or lack thereof perhaps of extraterrestrial life forms on Earth. So Lauren, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. Happy to be here. So we've got so many people in the chat room now. It's really fun and we'll be taking questions there. But I will use my host prerogative to ask the very first questions. And first, I always like to know the human side of things before we get into the nitty-gritty nerd out details that we will certainly devolve into. And that's Sarah, what does this discovery mean to you and, you know, as a scientist to make such a huge, potential, huge discovery that still has to be confirmed, as you often admit and suggest.

How does it feel, though? I mean, tell us, in reality, what does these sense, can you convey it to our audience? How does it feel to make a discovery like this? Well, it feels amazing, of course, but it also comes with the sense of responsibility not to overhype the results. And we just finished dinner, and one of my teens, I've got two teenage boys, was telling me he was reading all the news and it's all hyped him. Because it's something, you know, that he understands and can follow. Yeah, certainly there's an element that that could take place. The question is, you know, scientists often are not depicted as having normal human emotions, and I'm sure Lauren, not being a scientist, but communicating with a lot of scientists.

The old joke, I always use this joke. You know, how do you know a scientist is outgoing when he looks at your shoes when he talks to you? But in this case, I think it connects so deeply to the curiosity that almost everybody has that I think it's had a lot of resonance. Lauren, what's been in the reaction as a human, as a journalist, to make to report on a story like this? What does it feel like? Well, when I first got the release and saw what was coming our way, I knew that it was going to be a big deal. Even though I know the caveats that come with an announcement like this, like our first, as a reporter, our first reaction is, okay, yes, but.

And we try and go find the people that will tell us, okay, what are the caveats? But I knew that this is going to be a very big deal. We were very prepared for this Monday. and so far it's brought a lot of, you know, delight and joy. And I think people are just a lot of people who don't follow science or don't follow space really hadn't thought about the possibility that Venus of all places, this kind of hellscape of a planet could potentially be a place that microbes would thrive. So I think seeing that joy from people who hadn't really considered this has been really fun.

But of course, it is our duty as journalists to be the, Yes, but people, and I think a lot of journalists have conveyed it very well with this discovery today. And Sarah, can you walk us through the nuts and bolts of the discovery in that what does it actually say? It's not the discovery of actual life, as we understand it. But can you explain a little bit about what was found and what makes this so special and unique? Sure. Well, what was found is the presence of phosphine gas at very small concentrations, 20 parts per billion. in the Venus atmosphere. And specifically in the atmosphere at the layers

where the atmosphere is not too hot, not too cold, but just right for life. Now, phosphine is a gas. It's one phosphorus atom and three hydrogen atoms. And it really shouldn't be present in Venus's atmosphere. We find it in Jupiter and Saturn, but there, there's so much hydrogen. And there's also deep in their atmospheres

the temperatures and pressures needed to make phosphine. So with none of those things, it really shouldn't be in the Venus atmosphere. atmosphere. And yeah, our team exhaustively worked through every possible chemical scenario and didn't find any that would explain the presence of phosphine. And so a question in the chat room will cover a lot of as many as we can, but the Quentin experiment is asking a question. Is it correct that the phosphine gas was found at an atmospheric layer already predicted for many years to have life.

Yes, well, predicted is maybe not quite the right word. People have speculated that there's life in the Venus atmosphere because they know that the temperatures in that region are suitable for life. Out of anywhere on the surface and atmosphere, it's only that one region. And looking elsewhere in the solar system, there are, perhaps there is fairly strong evidence for this phosphine molecule to be present on other planets, but what makes it so different for Venus compared to Saturn and Jupiter? Well, Venus doesn't have hydrogen. It has almost no hydrogen. And Venus doesn't, even though we

think of it as so hot, it's not quite hot enough or high enough pressure to produce fasting. And thinking about how this was taken immediately, I was immediately brought back, and Lauren, you brought this in your piece, to the discovery in the mid-90s of, of byproducts of life found in Martian, potentially Martian-esque meteorite fragments in the Allen Land Hills of Antarctica where I've been, but I've never found any meteorites there, life-bearing or not. What was your initial reaction when you heard this? Are there any reminiscent things that are reminiscent of that discovery? Which was announced that the, actually, there's a cute connection to Carl Sagan in that

this was in the movie Contact, which is the only book that he wrote a fiction with Andruy and his wife, who have had on the show as well. And they talked about this, you know, they cut in these, you know, They've discovered this alien life that Jody Foster's character obtains. But it's really the press conference on the front lawn of the White House from the Martian Life Form, alleged Martian Life Form. What did that kind of resonate with you? Or how did you react to that kind of playful discovery?

So me and my reporter friends, we all have a joke. It's actually from Miriam Kramer who is at Axios now. But it's always our mantra is it's never aliens. And we try to kind of abide by that whenever we get, discoveries because there's always new discoveries like this that are coming out that said, well, it could be another Earth or it could be this or it could be that. So it does, it reminds us a lot of those. And it wasn't just the Martian meteorite that a lot of people were bringing up today. There, for instance, there was also a discovery of methane on Mars that kind of peaked a lot

of people's interest for a while. That still has been kind of befuddling scientists about where exactly that's coming from. So, you know, whenever we see like a new biostignature like this, it's always like, okay, you know, it's never aliens. But with this one, it was like, okay, well, definitely a strong, stronger evidence than we've ever seen on Venus. So we all took it very seriously. But yes, there's so many times we've been burned before with discoveries that we want to make sure that we're very measured in how we describe it. And that's why it's very important to us to talk to outside sources when we do get this discovery. But I also have to admit, I saw Sarah's name on the list of authors,

and Sarah's always been such a good source, outside source for me for other studies. So I knew to take this very seriously when I saw it, and I'm glad that I did. At first, I didn't think it was real. I woke up to this blinding light, and I was transported to another place. Pluto TV! Then I heard a voice. Come with me if you want to live. There were thousands of movies and shows, and they were all free.

The truth is our sin. It's just so beautiful. On Pluto TV, free streaming of Terminator 2, Fringe Arrow, the 100 NX files may cause excitement, loss of sleep and sudden belief in extraterrestrials. No credit cards or alien encounters necessary. Pluto TV, stream now, pay never. So one question that came up a lot in recent discussion in this afternoon was, when are we going to send a probe there? and actually, actually, I think that's how you pronounce this name, actually, actually is asking, when are we sending a probe to Venus?

So, Sarah, you've commanded many space, or space mission of incredible importance in the test mission. Can you talk about actually how big a deal is this to actually go to another planet or just launch something in general? And then what would be the steps? What would be the earliest that someone could possibly hope to get direct evidence for this molecule's existence? Well, we've read in the news from a few weeks or month ago that Peter Beck of Rocket Labs wants to go to Venus and always has apparently since he was a child.

Go, I mean, sent his rocket there. And he has a contract to go to the moon, actually. So he's able to beef up his rocket and make it more capable. So probably if Peter Beck really gets his way, that's our first chance. He wants to launch in 2023, which I think is June 2023. So that may seem like a long time to some of the people on the next. chat, but trust me, that is like yesterday in the space world. What would be some of the implications of sending something there? Would that potentially have detrimental consequences? Would it influence?

Could it affect the nascent, you know, embryonic life forms or whatever might be there? We do have this thing called planetary protection. At least NASA has, you know, levels of cleanliness that a spacecraft has to be. So presumably we'd find a way not to contaminate it. All of that said, none of our life here on Earth could survive in the Venus atmosphere. It's way too dry, billions of times more acidic than the most acidic environment on Earth. So I don't want to contaminate Venus's atmosphere, but if somehow we accidentally did, I wouldn't worry too much. That's usually like, you know, the opening line in a science fiction movie, you know, nothing could possibly go wrong. But I think, Lauren, you know, you point out, life finds away the famous, you know, quote from the great scientist, Jeff Gold.

Goldblum or Goldberg and Jurassic Park classic movie Life finds a way life adapts I can't overact as much as him but I love him But you mentioned you know If you had if I had woken up Well let's say last Monday not Friday

Because we're going to talk about some of the Perils and pitfalls of making an announcement like this But if I had woken up last Monday And you forced me to make a bet I'm not a betting man But if you forced me to make a bet Of where we'd find life next it would be Mars And you know

So what is kind of of the the impetus in the lay person's mind about you know what the probabilities were to make such a discovery like this and why is mars you know always been the focus of life external to the earth well i think in the course of my reporting one thing's been very clear to me that the idea of what makes a habitable planet is ever evolving and i think the main reason that Mars has been such a big focus is because, you know, it's, of the, of the places in the solar system, it's very similar to Earth and it's rocky. And also, there's the enticing possibility of water, liquid water being on its surface in the past, and also potentially being within the ground soil now

or even in the slope line, though I think that is kind of being debated. So it's always been kind of follow the water. But now, but as I've been reporting, you know, I've been the there's been a much bigger focus on Enceladus or in Europa with their subsurface oceans. And now with Venus, I mean, this isn't new. There's been researchers talking about this since 1967. But, you know, the idea that microbes could live in this environment isn't exactly a new idea. So I think what's really been fascinating for me as a journalist is seeing just how we're expanding our mind when it comes to where to search for life.

the solar system and I think a lot of astronomers and Sarah you can correct me on this if I'm wrong are thinking it's it's not a matter of if but when it just we don't we just don't know at what it will look like if it will be another earth-like planet or if it could potentially be you know a subsurface ocean or even a world like Venus yeah Sarah what can you say about that in terms of you know the probabilities just taking some prior because and prior to things and thinking about life versus life, by the way, it's not technological life. You know, Jill Tarter is a friend of mine and a real mentor to many of us astronomers is frequently saying, you know, there's a huge difference between life and technological life that we could

communicate with. And we've searched, you know, the Galaxy through the SETI project that she leads and our friends lead. But what is the difference there? And why is it so challenging or, you know, I thought to be so hard on a rocky planet like Venus? Wait, can you just ask that again? Why is it that the kind of first guess for life would be in the, you know, on a rocky planet like Mars or Earth, but not in a type of atmospheric form that this potentially could be represented of? Well, I think it's exactly what Lauren said, that it's followed the water. And Venus doesn't have any sign of water whatsoever.

It has the tiniest amount of water mixed in with the sulfur gas of droplets. But we don't hear you, Brian. Yeah, you muted our new virtual world. Well, waiting for him to come back on. Well, I just wanted to add something. I thought that crossed my mind while you were off from it was, you know, our own Earth, we have life in the clouds. And bacteria is upswept from our Earth's surface, and it gets up to the cloud layer where it freely floats or it's inside liquid water droplets. But it doesn't stay for long, maybe a week or so, before it's rained back down.

Yeah, so the question I had before I got self-muted, I hope you can hear. hear me now, but is whether or not this throws the kind of notion of the habitable zone, that seems to be the buzzword a lot of times for looking for X-Shall planets, Sarah. So does this upend our notion of what it really means to be habitable? Well, we know about our Earth's aerial biosphere, but yes, it certainly seems to expand our notion of what is habitable. And so thinking back on this, let's look at maybe a little bit of a broader picture. Actually, before we get to that, Lauren, when you're writing a piece of that, like this for a lay audience, you have to communicate the uncertainties that the scientists

are communicating. And actually, Clara Sousa Silva, I hope I'm saying that right, Sarah's colleague at MIT, as a scientist there, she was saying basically, I hope, bring it on, I mean, in a true way, bring it on because we want to be kind of, we want to look for the most pernicious effects that could otherwise cause the signals that we claim to be seeing. And so maybe first, Lauren, how do you treat the, you know, I mean, if I have a explain systematic error analysis to, you know, my 10-year-old. It's very hard to do. How do you explain it to a general audience? So the first thing that I do when I'm talking to researchers, and I'll have to say up front, Clara was a dream to interview because she absolutely knew how

to explain her work in a very great way to somebody that doesn't necessarily speak science. And also, it's very clear that she has a passion for phosphine, because she likes to say, She dedicated her 20s to phosphine, which I thought was very charming. But whenever I'm talking to a scientist, and I know that it's easy, especially for me having covered space and engineers for a very long time, it's easy to kind of get into that jargon of what you're talking about or also some very scientific terms. But sometimes I'll just have to step back and say,

okay, explain to me as if I'm a child or if I'm in grade school, or just very basic, or if you were just explaining it to somebody, the street because oftentimes that you get some of the best descriptions that I can then use to describe to a lay audience and this time it was very easy to be to be able to explain it detection's also pretty straightforward it's a gas they were explaining where we find it on earth and also why it's so abnormal to find it in a place like Venus but then at the same time I had to turn to other scientists who weren't part of the detection and talk to them about their you know misgivings, if any, about it. But what was really refreshing about this team, too, was that when I

spoke to them, Clara told me, she was like, we want people to come tell us if we're wrong. And that's exactly what a scientist should be doing, right? When it comes to these kinds of discoveries, the goal is never to scream aliens at the top. It's always to say, okay, tell me all the, let's exhaust all of the other options that we can try and come up with, which is what they did in this paper. And so it was really great to kind of hear from the scientists, the lead scientists on this paper themselves. We want to open this up to the community so that they can tell us, give us their other solutions because we couldn't come up with it. So I think that's really refreshing. And what made covering this so fun for me. And Sarah, if you had to put some of the commenters

are saying things like, you know, if you had to guess the most likely alternative hypothesis to life being the culprit here, what would you put your money on? I know it's a hard thing to suggest, right? Some equally crazy unknown chemistry somewhere in Venus, surface, atmosphere. What thing I've wondered about is, are there any concomitant tech signatures, biosignatures that come with the production of phosphine? You know, we know that living organisms produce methane, some more than others, but they produce methane, but they also produce carbon dioxide, and there are other forms of perhaps tracers of life. What would there be in terms of other concomitant signatures of the life that could make such a molecule as phosphine? Well, that we don't know yet.

Unfortunately, we don't know exactly which species on earth produces phosphine. All evidence points to E. coli. And E. coli can produce a wealth of different gases. So we can't really answer that question yet. So a question from Raj Lutra is asking you, Sarah, which would be best? to send a rover, a lander, or an atmospheric balloon to further follow up with this, assuming you could avoid alleviate concerns about contamination? We definitely would choose balloon.

The surface is so hot for life, the landers and rovers would last a very short time, maybe 20 minutes, an hour at most. And the atmosphere is where it's cool and the right temperature for life. So we definitely want a balloon that could last in the atmosphere for days to weeks, to even months. And then another question that I keep getting is, you know, if you were to follow up in terms of, you know, contamination, first of all, people are asking, can contamination, you know, currently contamination, I believe there was one spacecraft that landed the Venera spacecraft landed that the Soviet flew a long time ago, lasted about 15 minutes or so on the surface. But could there be other probes that we've sent there?

I know we've done some landings there, but could that be a possible contamination or is that completely rolled out? Like, in my opinion, it's completely ruled out. The atmosphere is so dry, it would suck out all water. The hydro-sulfuric acid, it's so destructive to any life as we know it. I don't encourage you to do this at home, but if you were to, for example, put an ant in concentrated sulfuric acid, it would literally have a seizure or die instantly and within, I don't know, 30 seconds or so turn into a puddle of kind of black liquid. Okay. Don't try that at home. I'm glad you said that. My nine and ten-year-old, my ten-year-old.

Right. Well, he'd probably have trouble getting his hands on some concentrated sulfuric acid. Not knowing him, actually. Hard to imagine any of our life. Don't challenge anyone. I know. That's right. That's right.

I usually don't have to put that, but I'll say Sarah is a doctor. Okay, she is a doctor. I listen to her orders, everybody out there, all teenagers out there. So what can you say about an organism? that could make this. I mean, it's said that it has to be made under intense pressure and even the temperature and pressures on Venus aren't enough. For those of us that are completely ignorant of biology, you know, how does an organism make such an interesting thing at very low pressures and very low temperatures comparatively? Well, life does use, life has enzymes, catalysts, if you will,

to make reactions happen that don't otherwise occur, you know, without life. So it's something we know that that life does typically. And I want to turn a little bit more back to the, you know, kind of personal and for the two of you, what you share, you know, one of you as a scientist, one of you is a journalist, but on this project, it was kind of like this, you know, state secret to keep it secret. And a lot of things, you know, many ships or, I don't know, there's something between tongue and lip, I don't know, there's something saying, I'm sure we could figure out. But how do you react to this? How do you decide, first of all, Sarah, how do you decide you've been part of so many huge discoveries there's you've got a fan club in my chat room as we

speak how do you keep these things embargoed how do you and why do you keep them in barred that's that's my first question well we mainly keep it an embargoed and Lauren may have a different opinion but we want to control the story we want to make sure that Lauren and the other journalists get a balanced viewpoint we're not claiming we found life and when people start taking the story and spilling it before we're ready, they actually can mess the story up for us. So embargoes are good in that way. And what role do journals play in embargoing? I've been a part of a couple of scenarios like this. But what role do the journals have? I mean, is there another reason that they want to keep it secret? Well, I think it's largely what Sarah was saying,

is that they want to make sure that it's released in kind of a controlled manner. For me personally, I just like to have the time to talk with people and really understand what is being said to me. And then make sure that it's not, because there have been times where I've received a release or a journal has given me a story. I think actually Sarah was really helpful in clarifying a story once that kind of overhyped a finding. And I was so grateful that I got to talk to Sarah because she was like, no, no, no. It's not exactly like that. and having that gut check is really valuable because as a journalist sometimes I can't, I don't really see that right away unless I talk to an outside source.

So for me personally, it's just to get the nuance right and to make sure I get the facts right, and that's really important to me. I know that a lot of journalists have a lot of different opinions on the embargo process, and also there's a lot of, it's an ever-evolving thing because people can post their studies online in advance now without before they're peer reviewed and then you can also report on them that way we obviously prefer to report when they're peer reviewed because that means it's had more eyes on it that apart from just the study authors but yeah for me personally i prefer embargoes because it just gives me the time to actually do the reporting and when i'm scrambling to write a

story or catch up, I feel like that does a disservice to readers because it's easier for me to make mistakes and not actually get the best story that they could possibly want. And I hope that that's what I was able to give them today because I had this a week in advance and it gave me a lot of time to talk to a lot of people. And sometimes you don't always get that luxury. Sometimes you only have a few days in advance and those are really scary. But for this one, it was a nice long time. Unfortunately, the news kind of leaked, but we can get into that later view. Oh, why don't we get into it now? Yeah.

So how did the leak happen? Is there a deep throat? What was it like? Well, I mean, we actually were talking, a few reporter friends of mine were talking about this ahead of time because it was such a big discovery that we were thinking, okay, it's possible that it might leak ahead of time. And when that happens, you know, the journal can choose to lift the embargo. and that can be really scary if you haven't finished your story because then you have to scramble to get it up.

And I think I've made it clear. I don't like scrambling. But this leaked over the weekend. A publication accidentally pubbed their story early. They took it down, but the damage was done by then. It was all over Reddit. And so everybody was talking about it on Sunday and leading up to the announcement on Monday. So we were wondering, okay, is the journal going to, you know, release or take the embargoes?

up early, they ultimately didn't. And that can be a little frustrating for us just because it looks like we're late when the stories are done. They're ready to go. But we respected the process, and that's kind of what you do. When you do these embargoes, you agree to, you know, keep it if that, and that's how it's supposed to work. It just, these things happen, and it can be frustrating, but, you know, the majority of us

stuck to the embargo. and I'm not trying to pass any judgments for the publication that did leak it. I always have nightmares of accidentally pressing publish on a story before, you know, before the embargo, like whenever there's a daylight savings or something, we always are gut-checking ourselves and we're like, okay, make sure you have your embargo times right because the clock's changed, you know. I definitely empathize with that. But yeah, it was an interesting lead up to the announcement because it was pretty much

out there by the time we hit published on the story. I think people just want attention for themselves. I could name names here, but I'm not going to. Some people just wanted attention. And unfortunately, even some professional colleagues, I don't know if they had been reviewers or how they had a copy of the paper, but they started sending it to each other and kind of making light of that on Twitter. Yeah, I actually heard about it last week from one of my kids.

And I was just like, I hadn't heard. and I actually wasn't as in the know as my kid was. I was like, ah, that's impossible. You know, we spent, I set the lander there and melted, but, you know, it is true that there have been many cases. Actually, the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation by Penzias and Wilson was leaked about a month before the actual, you know, kind of press release went forward. And it's stimulated the press release from Bell Labs because of a New York Times reporter that was friendly with Bob Dickie and other people at Princeton. and potentially a reviewer who is involved. So it's certainly a common thing that takes place.

Sarah, you were saying before we actually went live that it seemed as if it was just kind of magical or perhaps, and that's not the right word, but there was something amazing about the time dilation, the distortion of time that took place because you guys have been talking about this for three years, two or three years, presumably on a daily basis,

and it's occupied all your daily thoughts. But then the media, and the public got it, and in 12 hours, they're just going crazy. What has that experience been like for you as a scientist? Well, it's been pretty amazing. In fact, I've been kind of eavesdropping on this email list I'm on, where people are violently disparaging the discovery. And you can kind of see some of them kind of coming around

because there's another person who will say, actually, that is possible, or actually you're wrong about this statement. Whereas we had years, many years, because when I first got involved with phosphine, connected to our team lead, Professor Jane Greaves's team, I was incredibly skeptical. Honestly, I just thought it was nothing. I thought it was going to go away so many times. But we had so many years to work through it, try something, try something again.

And yeah, they have one day to do this. They've had, or as of yesterday without even any real information hours. So in some ways, maybe I'm not surprised people are taking it so badly. And you also were saying, you know, the Jane Greaves had gotten really a lot of, you know, had a lot of courage to go out so far on a limb. I think somebody changed her Twitter handle to Dr. Phosphane or something like that. Somebody did.

Maybe it was Claire or her. I'm not sure. But Professor Greaves, she's a radio astronomer. She studies things actually outside of our solar system. And for some reason, she decided to turn the instruments on Venus and to search, she wanted to purposely search for signs of life on Venus. And she diligently researched. in scientific publications.

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Shop the full collection on Amazon or visit curad.com to learn more. Led by, in this case, Dr. William Baines and Dr. Ignatowski. We have a whole series of obscure papers. Well, Jane found some of these same obscure papers. And she took this information and proposed to a radio telescope, the JCP, James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, to make this kind of crazy attempt. What was the role of Alma? Is that the radio element of it? Yes.

Well, first Jane used. the J CMT and she found a signal of phosphine, surprise as anyone, but it wasn't really terribly strong, but it was enough to propose for time on Alma, a more powerful telescope. And that's about the time when my team connected with her. And this is a question for Lauren from Randolph Klein. He says only the phosphine J equals 1 to 0 transition was detected. And are there other transition detected? these are quantum mechanical transitions.

I think actually this is for Sarah. Yeah. Are there other transitions of phosphine that could be detectable in the visible or in the alma bands? So in the alma bands, sadly, that's the only one. Now, normally, when you make a detection, you want to see more than one line. It's like not even getting a complete fingerprint. So we regret that we can only detect that one line in the alma bands. Now, phosphine absorbs in other places.

absorbs in the infrared, the near-infrared and even the mid-in-infrared, and even the mid-infrared. And we do. We have some data from the IRTF, the infrared NASA, it's the infrared telescope facility in Hawaii. We have some team members have been proposing to use other telescopes, including the airborne Sophia Observatory to try to search. But phosphine is very weak infrared spectral bands, so it's going to be tough. So I want to talk, naturally these things bring up implications. beyond the scientific and maybe even to, you know, ultimate issues type questions. So I want to ask each one of you, start maybe with Lauren.

What do you feel are some of the longer-lasting implications, both of the findings announced today, but also of the long-term prospects for looking for life outside of or signs of life outside of the Earth? I think for me it goes back to what I was saying earlier. It just opens up our understanding of what makes the habitable world. And I think that's really key because there have been a lot of times. that, especially with exoplanets and the more exoplanets that we discover, the habitable zone is always kind of hyped up as this place where, you know, life can thrive on other planets. And we're learning that that's very nuanced, right? Especially when you're an exoplanet,

you know, around a small dwarf star, you know, or you're very close to the star. And the The habitable zone there is a very different place than the habitable zone where Earth is right now. So, yeah, for me, I think this discovery just says that scientists are getting really creative in terms of where we can look for life in other planets. And then also the implications are, okay, so what are we going to do about it? And I know that a lot of people within the science community have been a little sad that Venus has gone largely unignored compared to Mars. and compared to the other planets in the solar system. So I think this will, like I said in the story, raise Venus's clout in terms of places to go,

and it might be a little more helpful. I mean, you saw NASA administrator Jim Bridenstein tweet today about the discovery. I think that will, you know, pay dividends because NASA is paying attention and the community is paying attention. And so I think that could go a long way and perhaps, you know, green lighting places, you know, more missions to go to Venus, which I think would be really cool to see. Yeah, I'm too.

And Sarah, what do you make of the, you know, broader impact, so to speak, the implications of this and why it's so intoxicating to the layperson and even to the scientists? People love science fiction, movies, TV, books. And so just the thought of finding an alien life form so close to home is just amazing. I'm with Lauren, though. This will raise Venus's profile. I always think of Venus.

You know what sometimes called Earth's Disse? planet because it's about the same size, about the same mass. I always like to think of Venus as the neglected sibling. I know a lot of kids, Ryan, so I'm not sure if it's true in your family, but sometimes there's just that one kid that's just always ignored. So this is going to bring Venus back up, back to where it should be. And I also want to add to, you know, it's been such a tough year for a lot of people. And this is such a nice thing to think about, you know, contemplating our place in the universe, that is always going to be something. that makes us feel small but precious.

And I think it's just a nice bright spot. And, you know, I hate to say it. Our story didn't do as well as, you know, other kind of tragic news that's out there right now, but it did make an impact. And I think that's important for people to kind of take a step back from all the other things that are happening and just kind of contemplate their place in the universe.

And I think that's really beautiful. Yeah, I think the journalist motto is going to, change from it bleeds it leads to it breathes it leads maybe this can make a big difference last couple of questions because i know you guys have been busy all day along i want to respect your time this is from neurostream and uh they are sharing a comment that says after sharing your findings publicly today sarah are new opportunities presenting themselves for further study in-depth follow-up and what's next for you sarah well nothing new as of today has presented itself. I think the world is just digesting the news. I think as Lauren pointed out,

the head of NASA speaking about Venus is pretty important. What's next for me? Well, I'm continuing to work on exoplanets on the search for life. That's still most dear to my heart. But I'm also pursuing Venus and trying to figure out how we can send a small focus mission there. Ah, wow. So a young beginning grad student, they could potentially play a role in a future mission to Venus. And like you said, yes, it's the child. There's a motto I think that maybe my mother told me, you know, you're only as happy as your least happy child. Well, now hopefully we'll make Venus a little bit happier as a child of the solar system and get at the attention that she deserves. So the last, I just want to point out a couple of things that resources where people can find stuff.

I put links in the description box for this video about the press release from MIT and some links to the Cloud Life. Venuscloudlife.com, which is a website that has been set up for more information. This is by Sarah's group and her collaborators. You can find more of Lauren's work on the verge and elsewhere. And we really enjoy your writing and hope you'll keep it up. You have a very, very unique ability to take very complex subjects and make them understandable. Are there any other things you'd like to talk about before we sign off for today? Sarah, is there anything else you'd like to mention?

Just for people to remember the balanced view, we're not claiming we found life. We are claiming we found a gas that doesn't belong, and we have a lot of work ahead of us to see where that takes us. Very good. And Lauren, any final words from you or kind of things we might have missed skipped over? Just kind of adding to that, and I tried to say that in the story as well, I think that's equally as exciting. It's something strange is happening. You know, it may not be life, but it's still something cool that we don't understand. And so no matter what, this is going to, you know, bring about really cool findings.

And I'm so excited to follow it as a journalist and see what news and follow-ups come my way. Well, that's really, really fascinating. We're seeing final comments. People wondering how they can donate to Venus because they feel so bad. I'm not kidding. I don't know if there's – I think my Venmo, I can put out my Venmo. Maybe Sarah can put out hers. I want to thank both of you guys so much for doing so much to educate the public, but also educate the scientists, because this has been a really fascinating, well-attended live stream, and I do want to wish you both, the best of luck, and I hope we can be in touch. Sarah, I'd love to have you on to discuss your wonderful new book. It's really so meaningful. You're such an inspiration and a mentor to people and friend and so forth around the world, but you're an inspiration, and I'd love to have you on the Impossible Podcast. And Lauren, likewise, you're always welcome back and keep up the wonderful work.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishing from magic. If you enjoyed this episode of Into the Impossible, please subscribe, comment, share, rate, and review. For a chance to win a free copy of our most recent guest's newest book, send a screenshot of your review to info at imagine.ucsd.edu. We appreciate hearing from you and are always open to your suggestions for future episodes. For more information, go to imagination.ucsd.edu. Find us on Twitter at ImagineUCSD.

Watch us on YouTube, listen on iTunes. Into the Impossible is a production of the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination in the Division of Physical Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. Eric Viri, director, Brian Keating, co-director, Patrick Coleman, associate director, produced by Stuart Volko.