If life occurs on Venus, it must have originated in the clouds - true or false?

[vertigonight]

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[atinymonkey]

Er, true. No, wait. False. Maybe true. Or actually it might be false. Or true.

 

 

The problem is, there is no answer.

 

Or is there?

 

No.

[Phi for All]

Must have originated in the clouds? False. It's probable Venus was not always the way it is now. We know life forms can adapt to changing environments. If there is currently life in the clouds of Venus, it did not have to originate there.

[ecoli]

Why do you think that? Life as we know it could have. But maybe there could be different forms of life (ie. not carbon based) that form in other places.

 

Please explain how you came to this conclusion.

[Ophiolite]

If life exists in the clouds of Venus there are three possible places that life could have originated:

• The surface of Venus
  
• The atmosphere of Venus
  
• Elsewhere in space
  

The surface of Venus today is not only wholly inhospitable to life as we know it, but inhospitable to any form of life we might reasonably imagine. However, the early Venus was not only much cooler than present, but the planet would have had significant, possibly abundant, quantities of water. Life apparently arose on Earth under similar conditions, therefore it may have arisen on Venus. As the early sun increased its temperature and the greenhouse effect kicked in some life forms could have adapted to the more benign conditions in the upper atmosphere.

There is a substantial body of suggestive circumstantial evidence pointing towards the origin of life elsewhere and its accidental migration to the Earth – pan spermia. If that is how life reached the Earth it could well have reached Venus.

Since we have two possible mechanisms for populating the atmosphere of Venus the supposition of this thread is seen to be false.