Life - Even Microbial - Exists In The Clouds Of Venus? Highly Unlikely

 
Upper atmosphere of Venus from ESA "Venus Express" spacecraft

A few days earlier, leaving much controversy in its wake, a paper appeared in  Nature Astronomy   on the  discovery of phosphine gas  in Venus' atmosphere, suggesting the possibility of life - well, at least in its clouds. (The surface, hot enough to melt lead, would not be any realistic place you'd expect life).    As explained below by one of the Nature paper's lead authors (Sara Seager),  in a CNN op-ed: 'Our crazy finding suggesting life on Venus' (opinion) - CNN

https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/14/opinions/crazy-finding-life-on-venus-seager/index.html

"The finding is so astonishing because phosphine should not be present in Venus' atmosphere. Phosphine needs lots of hydrogen and the right temperatures and pressures to form -- conditions found on Jupiter and Saturn but not at all on Venus. My team at MIT exhaustively searched all known chemistry and did not find any way for phosphine gas to be easily produced on Venus. Planetary processes including volcanoes, lightning, meteorites entering Venus' atmosphere are also "no gos" in that some might produce the tiniest amount of phosphine but not nearly enough to match the observations."

But she does concede this need not imply existence of alien life, i.e.

"Does this mean Venus has alien life in its atmosphere producing phosphine gas? Not necessarily.  Venus is a very hostile place for any kind of life as we know it. The surface is scorchingly hot -- far too hot for complex molecules needed to make up life. High above the surface, the atmosphere becomes colder and colder. On Venus there is a sweet spot at 48 to 60 km (30 to 37 miles) above Venus' surface, in the clouds, where the temperature is not too hot, not too cold, but just right for life."

Does this mean Venusian microbial life can exist in that "sweet spot?  Well, yes it is "possible".  See my previous post:

• The Scientific Meaning Of Impossibility Statements

Wherein I note:

"in science, the applicable terms that usually replace "impossibility" are what we call "laws of permission" and "laws of denial". The first detail all the actions that are allowed based on the laws of physics; the latter detail all the actions disallowed.

The laws of denial are predicated on such foundational physical laws as: the laws of conservation of mass-energy, momentum and electric charge. "

In the case of Venus, the laws of denial begin to enter when one purports to  posit any kind of life on a planet with temperatures  hot enough to melt lead as well as concentrations of sulfuric acid that rival anything on Earth - even in labs.  A first emergence of at least improbability - if not impossibility- arrived when Seager writes in her CNN op-ed piece:

"The acid environment is billions of times more acidic than the most acidic environments on Earth. Earth-life components including DNA, proteins, and amino acids would be instantly destroyed in sulfuric acid. Any life in the Venusian clouds would have to be made up of building blocks different than Earth life, or be protected inside a shell made up of sulfuric acid-resistant material such as wax, graphite, sulfur, or something else."

The immediate problem for me is that her hypothesis, as creative as it is, violates the Ockham's Razor principle.  Also known as the principle of parsimony, i.e.  the simplest of competing hypotheses is the most likely to be correct. In this case having to hypothesize a special "sulfuric acid  resistant covering" for an organism to withstand an acidic environment "billions of times more acidic than the most acidic environments on Earth."

 Even one of the study's co-authors - David Clements- an Imperial College of London astrophysicist (quoted in a Sept. 15th  AP article appearing in The Denver Post) admitted the conclusion is nowhere near final:

"It's not a smoking gun.  It's not even a gunshot residue appearing on the hands of your prime suspect. But there is kind of a whiff of cordite in the air."

Well, maybe, maybe not.  But what exactly would a simpler hypothesis be, say that wouldn't require microbial life that would need a shell of sulfuric acid resistant material?  The answer is volcanoes, such as found by the European Agency's "Venus Express" spacecraft 4 years ago.  Not any old explosive volcanoes (like Mt. Saint Helens), but rather more like "slow, oozing effusions"  that'd be capable of continuously and slowly pumping out not only CO2, SO2 but phosphine as well.  In this case, the effusive nature spread over vast 'hot spots" could spout immense quantities of these gases that would otherwise need hundreds of separate explosive volcanoes.  

 Of course, the volcano hypothesis is disputed by both authors.  Seager insists that "not a single process we looked at could explain phosphine levels as high as in our findings".  But let's bear in mind these "findings" are really data tied to a particular model which may not be representative or accurate at all, especially if the volcanoes we're talking about are the continuous "oozing" kind discovered by the ESA craft. 

 As Cornell University astronomer  Lisa Kaltenegger observes, "we don't know enough about Venus to say that life is the only explanation for the phosphine."  Planetary geochemist Justin Filiberto -  at the Lunar and Planetary Insittute in Houston- mostly concurs, noting in the same AP piece: "the levels of phosphine found might be explained away by volcanoes."   Adding that recent studies were not taken into account which disclosed "Venus may have far more active volcanoes then originally thought."

Clements, however, disagrees, saying that this would make sense "only if Venus is 200 times more volcanically active as Earth."   But if the volcanoes were of the effusive variety found by the ESA  such a humongous ratcheting up would not be needed.

In the end, it seems to me the matter cannot be solved by arguing over models from tens of millions of miles away. We need to send more spacecraft to Venus to unlock the phosphine and other secrets.   Fortuitously, NASA is considering two possible Venus missions in the near future. One of them (DAVINCI+) would traverse the Venusian atmosphere as early as 2026.

So like it or not, we may have to wait at least 5-6 more years to finally solve the phosphine riddle - if it is solvable at all. 

Looking At A "Systems Approach" Argument For Why There Is No Afterlife

Christina Anne Knight, in her recent (July, p. 32)  Mensa Bulletin piece 'Why There Is No Afterlife - A Systems Perspective' - pulls no punches.  In this post I examine her idea more closely, and why it might have some ballast.  Basically,  Ms. Knight's approach is based on materialist (Darwinian) evolution, which is an argument I have also used in the past.

For example, as I wrote in my post ('Meeting Our Extended Hominid Family'   ) of February 23, 2010:

"As we all know, and can be grown-up enough to say, neither the descendants of apes, or apes themselves possess "souls". There is only a brain, but it is ample to generate consciousness as I already showed in my 'Materialist Model of Consciousness'. Thus, when a human (or ape) dies, that's it. He is gone and there is nothing left - nothing to "punish" and nothing to go on. This hard fact may be why so many evangelicals refuse to accept evolution: they don't want to accept: a) they have no souls, and b) when they're dead, that's it, finito."

The post was accompanied by the following graphic:


So the most primitive hominid ancestor (Ardipithecus Kadabba) depicted at the lower left, from 6 million years ago - possessed no soul - nor did the evolutionary continuum following onward, i.e. to Homo Habilis and Homo Sapiens (upper right). Hence, when either died there would be nothing to go on, to survive in any afterlife.  Nor would there be some unexpected, magical "break out" point in between,  at which a soul suddenly manifests. 

This is analogous to Ms. Knight's argument, i.e.:

"It is a safe assumption that most people do not believe trilobites or velociraptors are at present hanging out with 72 virgin members of their species in some species -specific version of paradise.....Therefore, if we accept that none of our extinct, nonhuman forbears or members of other contemporary species have attained an afterlife, why should anyone believe that Homo sapiens are destined for a different fate?"

Then asking the $64 question:

"What evolutionary adaptation occurred that permitted the existence of something within humans to survive death?"

She then answers the question by naming what most of us already understand  as that manifestation of sentience known as consciousness,  but pointing out "it is not exclusive to our species."

Adding:

"The emergence of consciousness occurred within a hierarchic evolutionary context. So does it even make sense to conceive of the conscious mind outside of systemic structures that supply it contextual meaning?   In other words if I am a product of nature and nurture, what good is an afterlife in which the physical context that shaped my personality is no longer relevant?"

To fix ideas, in a post in which I skewered the concept of a "natural afterlife" (Feb. 9, 2014) I noted the fundamental unit of neural dynamics:

In this 'cartoon' graphic we are looking at an electro-chemical signal (action potentials in (B) ) which are conveyed to the receptor neurons in the region of the temporal lobes. The waveform really represents changes in permeability, we note that when an axon is in its resting state it maintains a constant potential difference, or ‘resting membrane potential’ of –70 mV. When it is excited, it rises to a peak voltage of around 40 mV. This is sketched as the wave pulse peak in (B) with the ‘baseline’ value of (-70 mV) included for reference. One could say that (A) portrays the axon segment shown in a kind of equilibrium condition, or one conducive to a dream state. Only levels of partial consciousness are available in these states.  Generally, a full peak voltage of 40mV is associated with some level of consciousness.

Now, we go to the driver of consciousness localized at the site of the synaptic cleft or terminal.















In the diagram, we focus on Axon 1 and note that when the action potential arrives at the terminal it’s depolarized. This depolarization enables Calcium ions (Ca+2) already within the terminal to diffuse out into the mediating space. These ions follow a concentration gradient, unlike the case of the Na+ ions in the sodium pump. As the ions migrate, then diffuse to the post-synaptic cell (at Axon 2), they leave a channel in their wake that allows quantal releases of neurotransmitter (shown as a solid dot). These, like the Ca+2 ions diffuse across to the post-synaptic cell(s).

One neurotransmitter is acetylcholine. If the transmission of this or any similar chemical is rapid firing will occur, if not it won’t. Note also that Axon 2 must have a way of eliminating neurotransmitters almost as soon as they arrive. For acetylcholine, the enzyme cholinesterase acts to break it down into choline and acetate. In these inactive forms the neuron is spared being in a state of maximal and continuous excitation that would otherwise destroy it.

Generalizing the electrical cable analogy, the synapses act as switches in the system, the ‘on’ or ‘off’ positions denoted by information, in the form of chemical messages, to cross the synaptic cleft and trigger firing of the post-synaptic neuron(s) or not. Most probably there are bundles of similar neurons linked together by their respective connections, to perform critical functions. One might refer to the neuronal super-assembly or 'super-circuit’ within which considerations such as networks, and optimization of paths as well as 'adjacency and order' take precedence. Again, this is almost absurdly oversimplified since there really are no neurons that have only one connection to another. Indeed, we expect the typical neuron to have something like 10,000 connections to others.

What happens if this entire neural dynamic is terminated? We can begin to grasp the effects by first noting from the above diagrams that all waves of polarization and de-polarization cease. Hence, all synaptic activity ceases. There is no more firing of neurons, nor is there any movement of neurotransmitters across axons. 

Consider the same  electric cable analogy described above in terms of what happens at death. Well, the putative electrical signal cable is cut. What happens if an electrical cable to your home is cut? Well the service is terminated...there is no energy "leakage' or  residue that continues after cutting because this would violate the physical laws we know. The electrical energy cannot continue to propagate into your home devoid of the cable within which it's carried. In the same way, all the brain's potential energy terminates at death, there are no 'residuals' left to continue anywhere. Hence, there can be no afterlife.

Ms. Knight in line with this basis,  writes (ibid.):

"The dying system decomposes into subsystem structures lower in the holarchic order that are sustainable within the systemic environment of the deceased system. A dead body becomes a nutrient source for other living systems and not a ghoulish distribution of functioning organs."

What is this "holarchic order" to which she refers?

She notes that the term  "holarchy" (first used by Arthur Koestler in The Ghost in the Machine) embodies  the "interdependence, interrelations and interaction of subsystems which results in a form of self-organization from which a larger system is an emergent product".  In other words, consciousness is not an epiphenomenon of the brain but this very emerged product.  But the extinction of such a system (and emergent product) occurs when the system fails to retain stability.  That is triggered when the key components die, e.g. neurons, neuronal sub-assemblies etc.

This is what Ms. Knight is getting at when she avers a conscious mind cannot exist outside of the function of the key systemic structures.  If then it is the impermanent character of all systems that "makes evolution a universal process"  then:

"If the conscious mind is located at the apex of this holarchic system , then the collapse of the substructure beneath it has terminal consequences."

Thus,

"The conscious mind becomes just another impermanent system subject to physical laws.  It does not survive death because it cannot exist outside the holarchic structure from which it emerged"

In other words, there is no conscious personal entity that survives the dissolution of the neural system with its synaptic connections, neurons etc. As I pointed out earlier.  

Is this plausible?  As I've repeatedly observed in my several  atheist books, it does represent - by the Ockham's Razor principle (simplest hypothesis is the most likely under several options) - the simplest answer for what happens when one dies. Thus, there is no "white light" waiting, no judgment of anything, just a big nothingness - analogous to what occurs with general anesthesia.

However, one specialist anesthesiologist by profession - Stuart Hameroff -   has offered a partial way out for those who think nothingness is too bleak an end.   

After 35 years of anaesthetizing patients and seeing the same results over and over Hameroff  was led to postulate that small structures in the brain called "microtubules" are at the root of apparent "escaped" consciousness and that they hold the key to what happens. He also surmises that at putative death (or even "near death") essential energy associated with the microtubules disperses out from the brain and becomes "entangled" in a larger, undifferentiated whole.

Hameroff cites certain aspects of quantum mechanics to explain his reasoning though, he leaves some ends open. In the brain, information persists through a phenomenon called quantum coherence. 

This means that a multitude of quantum wave states are stored in a multitude of microtubules. Precisely how this is done remains a speculative  area but the point is that if one is aware and conscious there is a high degree of locality. When one dies, those wave states presumably evacuate and one's consciousness enters the domain of non-locality.

Hameroff's basic argument then, is that death doesn't mean the final termination of consciousness, so much as the end of its localization. If that is so, you cease to be a "person" or an individual identity and instead merge with other dispersed quantum wave forms (I have called them "B-waves" or de Broglie waves) to enter an "oceanic" state. 

The difference between the individual and oceanic states is often depicted using an illustration similar to that below:

INDIVIDUALITY:

___Ç___Ç___Ç___Ç___Ç___  

DIRAC ENERGY SEA (IMPLICATE ORDER) 

This gives a nice analogy between the "ocean" and individual waves, i.e. localized beings, entities. Here the individual manifestations occur within the "explicate order" - in the language used by physicist David Bohm. This is contrasted to the oceanic or holographic view.

which he calls the "implicate order".  See e.g.

[PDF]

Wholeness and the Implicate Order

I have to reiterate again that Hameroff's conception isn't really any kind of recognizable "afterlife". Indeed, it is impossible to even remotely describe a putative nonlocal state (of being)  as experiencing an afterlife, if it perceives at all. 

It also leaves a decided negative slant on the question of preserving any sense of self. How can one if the self is no longer separable but one with an oceanic "sea"? It appears at first blush, however, to be: 1) consistent with Christina Knight's holarchic system approach (since B-waves are not apart from her holarchic system) and 2) only one step removed from the atheist's state of total obliteration and nothingness.

Indeed, for all intents, Hameroff's afterlife and the atheist's nothingness post -death may essentially be indistinguishable.   In the meantime, I understand (via an email from the Mensa Bulletin editor) there will be a response to Christina Knight's systems conception excluding an afterlife. When it arrives, I will examine it as well.

Did A Dark Matter -Generated Comet Kill The Dinosaurs? Unlikely!

Another dark matter-incepted cataclysm as conjectured by Michael Rampino of NYU.

The origin of  the Chicxulub  impact event that eliminated the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, originally based on the work of Luis Alvarez,  has once again come up for review with a novel speculation composed as a self-consistent model. This is compliments of Harvard astrophysicists Lisa Randall  and Matthew Reece, based on their exotic conjecture that a new form of dark matter (in combination with regular matter) exists in a thin disk at the mid-plane of our galaxy. And under the right confluence of conditions 65 million years ago,  this "combo" disk triggered a comet's crashing into the Earth to create the Chicxulub  impact .  Their conjecture is presented at a popular level in Randall's book, 'Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs'.

Their hypothesis (I am not going to call it a theory yet) claims the Earth transits this disk at regular intervals (oscillating above and below the galactic equator) while revolving about the galactic center.  The varying gravitational force arising from these oscillations could then be enough to perturb comets (planet killer or slightly less on the Torino scale) and send them hurtling toward Earth. (Their dark matter model purports to show a 32 million year (Myr) cycle "three times more likely than random cratering hypotheses".)

Their work also bears many similarities to Michael Rampino's,  described in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, whereby Earth - passing through concentrated regions of this (hitherto unobserved)  dark matter-  could also send comets on an Earth-bound collision course. Even more alarming, dark matter particles could also ramp up temperatures in our planet’s core, which could affect then geological systems and trigger extinction events. In an extreme case it could cause the cataclysm illustrate at the top. (More on this at the end of this post)

I don't buy it, sorry. Like many astronomers, I'm convinced an ordinary, garden variety (albeit large)  asteroid spelled the end of the dinosaurs and roughly 75 percent of the terrestrial organisms at that time. 

Randall and Reece claim their model of the galaxy yields a means to ascertain what the cyclic period for collisional catastrophes would be, and it turns out to be very close to the 32 million year cycle of their dark matter disk model. (Deemed three times as likely to occur as random cratering, e.g. from a large Apollo object of 6 miles or more in diameter).  To revisit this latter model, as I pointed out in a previous post (Oct. 6),   the probability of an Earth-crossing Apollo asteroid event is based on an estimated 15 Apollo objects acquiring an Earth-crossing orbit every million years. 

From this it has been reckoned that the odds of a given Apollo Object eventually hitting Earth are 5 in one billion. This works out to one impact, on the average, every 200 million years. This is about six times less frequently than the estimate on which Randall-Reece's work is based. But wait. There are about one thousand such objects in all so that the probability that any one will strike Earth is now: (1000) x (5/1000000000) = 5/1000000. This figure: 5 in one million means that time wise, 5 asteroids would be expected to strike Earth every million years, or one every two hundred thousand years.

The most recent crater formed by a true Apollo object (as opposed to a large meteoroid) is at Lake Bosumtwi basin in Ghana, Africa. This is about 1.3 million years old. On this basis, the Earth is certainly long overdue for another hit of staggering proportions. Indeed, from the mean frequency of collisions we have worked out, the Earth should have been struck at least six times since the last impact by an Apollo object. The point is the collisional frequency is really higher than the one the Harvard authors propose, although these are not necessarily on the "planet killer" scale . Still, each such collision, like the one at Lake Bosumtwi, would be expected to wreak much havoc.

The authors claim:

"Our analysis furthermore yields a posterior distribution that, based on current crater data, singles out a dark matter disk surface density of approximately $10M_{\odot }/{\mathrm{pc}}^2$ . " 

They also append a scale height of z » 10 pc.  But it can be shown that their putative disk, with density falling exponentially with radius, e.g.  r _d (R,z) ~ exp(- R/ R _d ) is unstable for any length of protracted rotation given the electrodynamic environs of the galaxy. As the authors themselves point out: "In reality, a thin disk will fragment into smaller clouds the final size of which depends on details of cooling and angular momentum transfer", e.g. L  = I w  where I is the moment of inertia of the disk.

Which elicits the question of how stable their matter disk would be over time. The dark matter is presumed distributed in a "roughly spherical halo growing less dense over a distance of 20 kpc". However, the authors leave open the possibility for a "small fraction" of the non-baryonic dark matter to have interactions similar to the baryons and thence to "emit dark photons", dissipating energy - thereby "cooling into an even thinner disk embedded into the ordinary baryonic matter disk".

Consider this dual dark-ordinary matter model shown below (not to scale), which incorporates the assumption of at least  2 $M_{\odot }/{\mathrm{pc}}^2$ of hot gas, i.e. plasma, and R = 3 kpc  with V _q =  0.4 x 10^-1   rd yr^-1

The mass element dm does not remain stable over even a 1 Myr period and denotes a potential "smaller cloud", i.e. that has become detached owing to plasma instabilities that arise in the core region of the disk and propagate outwards. 

More importantly, as soon as the dark matter disk is embedded into the ordinary matter disk, we have the potential for two stream instability. This occurs when one relatively colder plasma component has a slower relative velocity with respect to the other (warmer) component. The authors give the mass density of the dark disk as  13 $M_{\odot }/{\mathrm{pc}}^2$  and their dark halo energy density is given as 0.037 GeV/ cm³ .  (They revise their mass density toward the end of the paper to make it comport with a more probable process). This includes 2 $M_{\odot }/{\mathrm{pc}}^2$ of "hot gas" so it must be a form of plasma. Hence, the two stream instability is incepted by the difference in relative velocities between the disk dark matter and disk regular matter. (I assume at least half the halo energy density is transferred to the disk dark matter).

Therefore,  we obtain a "double" Maxwellian distribution such as shown below, where the faster forward "bump" on the tail (i.e. of the dark matter distribution f _DM  ) is advanced over the matter disk component.

The velocity v(DM) is estimated from the authors' parameters and from my assumption (0.5 r _d) to be:  v(DM) = 5 x 10 ⁷   cm/sec. In the region where the slope is positive (¶ f _M  / ¶ v > 0) there is a greater number of faster than slower particles so a greater amount of energy is transferred from particles to associated (e.g. Alfven) waves.  Since  f _DM   contains more fast than slow particles a wave is excited, and there is inverse Landau damping such that plasma oscillations arise in the positive gradient region which are unstable.

Instability can result provided: 

w_DM  ²   >   k²v²  or  êkv ê  <   w _DM ^.

Where w_DM denotes the plasma frequency of the dark matter particles. Resonant particles (at v_DM  »  w _DM  / k)   are the first to be affected by the local wave-particle interactions and have distributions altered by the wave electric field, E1, such that the total energy balance:

S E_tot = ½ E1 _w + E1 _k    =  ½[ ½ e_o | E1|²]  +  ½ r | ṽ|²         

For which the wave energy (E1 _w) balances against the kinetic (particle) energy (E1 _k ). Thus, for        S E_tot = const.,  as ṽ decreases, ½ e_o | E1 |²]   increases. In Landau damping the exact opposite occurs, so as the decrement associated with ¶f(v)/ ¶ v decreases, the wave amplitude (and  E1 _w) decreases, particle kinetic energy increases- i.e. energy is fed to the particles at expense of waves.

Using these parameters it can be shown the disk subsequently  becomes fully unstable via plasma wave instability (and rotation) within time scales much less than needed to make the 32- Myr cycle.

It should also be noted that a secondary 2-stream instability will be incepted in the dark matter disk itself as a result of the  hot gas region which is shown as a small bump on the tail in the sketch below:




Here a much smaller peak emerges on the tail of the principal distribution. In effect, we have an unstable model with two, 2-stream instabilities - plausibly occurring in tandem. A more complete examination of the details will be given in the near future.

It is instructive to point out that Michael Rampino of  NYU has also proposed a cataclysmic model based on dark matter (see earlier link to MNRAS).  He conjectures that about every 30 Myr the Earth passes through dense "knots" of normal dark matter, i.e. composed of baryons such as protons, neutrons.  Thus, one can theoretically examine physical parameters like the ion gyrofrequency e.g.

Ω _i  = qB/ m _i

and the gyro-radius or Larmor radius:

r = m/ q [v⊥ / B] =  v⊥/ (qB/m) = v⊥/ Ω

where the denominator denotes the gyro-frequency.

According to Rampino, quoted in an issue of Discover (Sept., 2016)  these baryonic particles could "tunnel" (like cosmic rays) to the center of Earth initiating a mutually annihilating reaction with baryons in the planet's interior- potentially heating the core by hundreds of degrees. (See graphic at top).  This would then induce volcanic eruptions, rising seas etc. and your basic cosmic incepted catastrophe.

The question remains whether all these exotic hypotheses are really needed. My take, as stated in previous posts over the past 7 years,  is that the sheer volume of published research in multiple areas now is making it much more difficult to arrive at truly original work. This in turn drives contributors to delve into ever more obscure, esoteric and even outlandish proposals.

Irrespective of the particular "outlier",  the single commonality is that the  all the  models violate one abiding principle applied to all good hypotheses:   "Ockham's Razor" . This is also known as the principle of parsimony. That is, the simpler of two or more competing hypotheses is to be preferred. In this case, Luis Alvarez hypothesis of an ordinary (but large) asteroid is to be preferred over a comet that requires a dark energy -matter disk generator making 32 Myr cycles. I'd also argue that Rampino's "normal dark matter" model isn't required to explain cosmic catastrophes, or any model that requires cycles "tuned" to galactic revolutions.

Perhaps again, what we really need is for the thousands of journals to emphasize more quality as opposed to sheer published quantity.  According to one 2007 study, half of academic papers are read only by their authors and journal editors. This is nothing short of astounding but makes the case again for limiting the published papers to only the best and in addition, referees rigorously applying the principle of parsimony before accepting a paper for publication.  We also need to impress on institutions to halt with their 'publish or perish' demands and use alternative means to determine whether  faculty qualify for tenure.