Telemetry interference incorrectly interpreted as evidence for lightning and present‐day volcanism at Venus

Abstract

Spike‐like responses to interruptions in the data recorded by the Orbiter Electric Field Detector (OEFD) on the Pioneer Venus Orbiter (PVO) have been incorrectly identified as broadband whistler noise and then interpreted as evidence of lightning and volcanism by Singh and Russell [1986; 1987]. We show that these spikes are non‐physical artifacts of the processing of interruptions in telemetry data and are readily distinguished from other non‐artificial noise appearing in the measurements. We independently analyze the spikes and the non‐artificial noise to show that key portions of the results of Singh and Russell are compromised by the inclusion of the artificial data. This conclusion is certified by the fact that (a) the distribution of the spikes‐only data matches the distribution of noise presented by Singh and Russell, while (b) the number and distribution of all non‐spike noise is quite incompatible with their results. This finding is consistent with our prior research, and leads us to reiterate that the PVO electric field data set used by Singh and Russell provides no basis for inferring the presence of either lightning or present‐day volcanism at Venus.