Hypothetical signs of life on Venus: revising results of 1975 – 1982 TV experiments

Abstract

Extraterrestrial life may presumably be discovered not in worlds separated from Earth by tens of parsecs but on the surface of Earth’s nearest planet neighbor in the Solar System, Venus. This conclusion follows from the newly processed archive data of the TV experiment that was performed in 1975 and 1982 on Venus’s surface by the VENERA Soviet spacecraft missions. One of the main experiments, pioneering in situ TV scanning of the planet surface, has never been repeated by any other space mission. The unique archive data have been reprocessed using state-of-the-art technologies that enabled image details to be substantially improved. The new analysis of the VENERA television images has identified up to 18 hypothetical living objects that feature a complex regular structure and presumably are capable of very slow motion. The objects, whose dimensions are significant, may be indicative of the existence of life on a planet whose physical environment is crucially different from Earth’s. Water, which is terrestrial life’s basis, cannot exist in the liquid phase at temperatures of about 460°C characteristic of the spacecraft landing sites. Water content in the gaseous state is also negligible (about 2 × 10−5). Both water and oxygen are virtually absent in Venus’s atmosphere. Therefore, the question is: what matter may life on the planet be built on? We consider chemical compounds stable at high temperatures that may be a base for hypothetical Venusian life. We conclude that to explore Venus’s hypothetical life, a new dedicated mission, much more advanced than the VENERA missions, should be sent to the planet.