I didn't see that coming! I'm sure you've heard by now the news about the phosphine gas discovered in the clouds of Venus. I think most people, especially the scientists who published the findings, are pretty quick to point out all the reasons to be appropriately skeptical. Scientific progress is built on healthy skepticism but as a layperson I can definitely embrace some cautious optimism. Cynical pessimism I can do without. Anyways my money was always on Europa so Venusian cloud bugs is a huge bonus even if it turns out phosphine can be produced by some process we just haven't seen before, without any life-form being involved. From what I understand we don't even really understand how micro-organisms produce phosphine here, just that we know they do.

I was reading a book on Overdrive and you know how when it expires it just says "too bad for you asshole stop reading!" and it goes away? And then you have to put it on hold again and wait until some random day when all 12 of your holds are available somehow on the same day. Well the Venus news reminded me to check and yay the book was available for download again! I only had two more days to claim it so lucky for me the cloud dwellers of Venus saved the day. The book is called Alien Oceans by Kevin Hand. He doesn't seem to have a personal website or blog but if you google him all sorts of stuff comes up. The book is mostly about the search for and probability of life on the myriad of ocean worlds just in our own solar system- Europa, Enceladus, even Ceres has just recently been discovered to have an ocean! Still very intriguing stuff, even if Venus is about as far from an ocean world (now) as you can get. Anyways I bring it up because I liked a point he makes in it and it is relevant today: in our history we have discovered geology works beyond Earth; chemistry works beyond Earth. So like, does biology work beyond Earth?

THE GIANT FLOATING INTELLIGENT FLYING WHALES FARTING OUT PHOSPHINE GAS ON VENUS SAY YES!!!!!