I am so much more interested in Venus than Mars. They say the upper atmosphere is much more habitable than the surface of Mars. The density is apparently perfect for floating cities. I wonder why there is not more focus on it.<p>Edit: here are some interesting links, a NASA concept manned mission that revolves around the floating concept: <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Altitude_Venus_Operational_Concept" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Altitude_Venus_Operatio...</a><p>And some general info about colonizing venus, the advantages section outlines some of the reasons I'm excited about the idea: <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Venus" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Venus</a>
The accepted draft of the research paper is in <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1029/2020GL091327" rel="nofollow">https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1029/202...</a><p>Look at figure 10, graph O, P, Q in the last but one row. They are fitting the same data near 34 amu. The 3 vertical bars that show the error intervals are huge.<p>(The SAD values are in page 8, item 3.)<p>* In the graph O they fit the data using the expected curve of H2S+ and get a SAD value of 4.7<p>* In the graph P they fit the data using the expected curve of H3P+ and get a SAD value of 4.7 (again)<p>* In the graph Q they fit the data using the expected curve of of mix of H2S+ and H3P+ and get a SAD value of 4.0.<p>It's expected that with a mix you get a lower SAD, but it's clear that the error bars are so huge and the 3 fits so similar, that it's not possible to distinguish which one is the correct one. It looks like another case of overfitting.
It's still puzzling how to argue about life on Venus' atmosphere with the lack of water. It'd be interesting to speculate about pathways for life to synthesize their own water from the available chemicals.
"However, the detection of phosphine was suggested to be a possible false positive in October 2020,[11] and in January 2021 further research attributed the spectroscopic signal to that of sulphur dioxide.[12]"
This was debunked already. The phosphine didn't include any other markers for life and there are natural sources that are far more likely to create it.<p>In any case, what allows bacteria doesn't mean jack for humans.