So, what's the deal with phosphine?

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By now you've heard about the detection of phosphine on Venus, and how this may indicate there is life in the upper clouds of the Venusian atmosphere.
But what IS phosphine? What kind of life on earth produces this gas--and what kind of life would make it in the extremely acidic clouds of our nearest planetary neighbor?
Sources cited in this ever-growing twitter thread:
Original Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s4155...
RAS press briefing on the discovery: • RAS Press Briefing - P...
NASA Venus Mission concept: • A way to explore Venus
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This episode was produced on an accelerated time-frame to stay current--and therefore I didn't put this video through as robust a fact-checking process as I usually do. My best videos have been generously fact-checked by the BRILLIANT @Astroboi on discord
(check out his lecture channel here: bit.ly/astrolecture)
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All music is by Jeremy Blake( / redmeansrecording , released on the KZbin Audio Library.
Intro music: Let's Go Home (bit.ly/rmrlgh)
Outro music: Lost and Found (bit.ly/rmrlnf)
The style of this video was largely developed based on tutorials by Ben Marriot: (bit.ly/posterizethis)
Phosphine has been discovered in the clouds of Venus. What could this mean from a biochemistry perspective?

[@Abigail-hu5wf]

I desperately hope this is biotic! As a biologist, I'd love to see more life in the universe.

[@Nxck2440]

3 years on, what became of this? Apparently they didn't find phosphine on venus at all? How did they screw up the measurements so badly!?

[@TheTyTyXD]

It wasn’t a “screw up” it was more just a case of bad science communication. It’s long been a sci fi trope that somewhere up in the atmosphere of Venus, high in the clouds, the temperature and pressure is almost the same as earth’s at sea level. In 2019-2020 some scientists thought “well phosphine is a very good indicator of life, why don’t we point a telescope and look for phosphine in the clouds where we might expect life to be able to ‘survive’.” They got a very high sigma result showing that they did find phosphine in the atmosphere where they expected it and they published their work. Never did any of the scientists claim that they had found life or anything other than interesting results that require follow up research. Pop sci news got ahold of the paper and went wild with it and hyped it up as if we had actually found life there. Some more research was done calling into question if they had actually found phosphine or if they did or what inorganic processes might have created it. The debate is still on going in that regard. Fast forward to 2023 and a new team decided to look deeper in the atmosphere with the James Clark Maxwell Telescope and found phosphine AGAIN, except it was at a much lower altitude where temperature and pressure is a lot more hostile for life as we know it. Ultimately we are going to need to send a probe to venus again, and plans are in the works venuscloudlife.com/venus-phosphine-update-june-2023/

[@Gelatinocyte2]

Tl;dr: they DID find phosphene, but that doesn't necessarily mean there is life on Venus. Further research needs to be done to find out if there's an undiscovered natural process that produces phosphene, or if there really is any life form out there responsible for it.

[@TS-jm7jm]

​@@Gelatinocyte2 i would like to add that it is quitè probable the venera missions brought bacteria along with them

[@oasntet]

Multiple telescopes have done followup surveys and didn't find any phosphine; there's a spectral line for sulfur dioxide right near where (one of) phosphine's should be. These spectrographs are incredibly noisy and prone to error and random chance, so the measurements themselves supported a reasonably significant finding of phosphine. It's why we do followup studies.

[@eaudesolero5631]

swamps are honestly a cool place to hang out. nice and calm. quiet... well kind of, but also noisy

[@felpshehe]

It's a quiet noise, a nice noise

[@PowerhouseCell]

Really interesting! I enjoyed the current-events style approach you went for here. Animations are getting even better as well- keep it up! :D

[@Clockworkbio]

Thanks so much! I think I still prefer deeper dives--but it's pretty cool putting out a video in exactly 7 days instead of a month. I'll try to find a balance though. Congrats on being so close to 1K by the way! if anyone is reading this comment, subscribe to primo and get him over the hump!

[@VelvetRosa]

I really like how you transform the scientific knowledge into the greater picture and I can hear your excitement about the weird, fascinating way life has :D please preserve this excitement and light up the world with your wonderful videos!

[@fehzorz]

How much of a role does Phosphine play in the phosphorus cycle here on earth? I've always found the idea that extremely tiny concentrations of Phosphine in air do actually make a difference fascinating

[@the_saltiest_sea8037]

you are so underrated; your vids deserve way more attention!

[@zombitshe]

I'm so glad i went on the /biochemistry subreddit today, otherwise i don't think i would have been able to find this video. Great work, your animations are on point too.

[@jamesmitchell6925]

It turns out there’s no phosphine after all :(

[@Clockworkbio]

:( This is why you don't jump on popular trends even if you REEEEAALLLLLY trust the publication.

[@ZomBeeNature]

You SHOULD keep doing videos like this!

[@eaudesolero5631]

phosphorus distribution in space/galaxy, production by nova/etc, importance to life (dna,atp...)

[@bioZone101]

lol 10:02 lizard brains. & thank you for making this I have been meaning to look up about phosphine since all the hype and this is a great resource for that

[@particleonazock2246]

Got any plans for astrochemistry videos, bro?

[@christianl151]

Hey man! (I don't know your name 😶) Your videos are great, fantastic info, fantastic editing and graphic design. I have no critique on the content of the video, glad you made a video on this too because it's an amazing discovery, I'm commenting to lend outside perspective as a viewer. The background template you use at 1:13 and use in basically every video, the sort of strobing outward pulsing starburst, it's really distracting. I think it might be too much and takes attention away from the thing in the middle. Eyes always go to contrast and the shift in contrast between each band is massive, but even if more muted I don't think it would be necessary. I do motion graphics professionally, I get the urge to always add movement to keep interest, but I think with your content a simpler, less frenetic style would improve the delivery, not detract. The wiggle you add to every scene (sometimes to give the sense of a timelapse, which is pretty clever) can be good in specific scenes but using it on everything distracts us from what you're saying. Your audio quality rocks too, I wish there was some more contemplative music in the background to complement it. Everyone knows the sort of music Vsauce used to use, or what Vox uses. Avoiding songs with vocals is generally advised because that distracts the human ear. One source of inspiration I'd recommend is looking to the channel Ahoy. His videos are far far on the other side of not using jittery mograph to the point of almost being a slideshow often. Yet it has a way of keeping attention perfectly. You have all the elements of becoming a very large channel, I've been subbed since I saw your first one on hemoglobin. Good luck and I'll keep sharing your stuff around.

[@Clockworkbio]

I can't tell you how much I appreciate this. I'm entirely self-taught in design/ motion graphics and I have been TERRIFIED to get feedback from folks who like, actually do this for a living. I've been trying to move away from the starbursts (and slow them wayyyyyy down) for a while now. Still working on that. I've been trying to figure out a way to 'sell' how frenetic and constantly in motion these molecules are without A. spamming the wiggle expression and B. distracting folks right when I'm hitting them with the most complicated part of a structure or reaction. Frankly--I'd pushed this worry to the back of my mind until you brought it up. I thought I was just being obsessive--but the fact you noticed and got distracted by it is EXTREMELY VALUABLE INFORMATION. I can't thank you enough for taking this much time and leaving this thoughtful of a comment. I cannot begin to express how valuable the care and consideration in here are to me.

[@drkillee3236]

Great video!

[@earmouse4924]

I hope its all true and one of them blimps takes a pic of a Venusian cloud worm before I die

[@adityasingh-yz7tr]

Absolutely amazing videos

[@rws8163]

I like your videos

[@Clockworkbio]

I like your comments

[@user-pr6ed3ri2k]

It turned out there was barely any.

[@graemelaubach3106]

Just... wow.

[@sudiptapaul6411]

why this channel no more post anything

[@Emanon389]

I like to think about future generation, thinking about us as some sort of Antics folks, wondering how was our vision of the people before we met sentient exta-terrestrial species

[@FR-kb1fc]

A paper published April 2024 entitled "Source of phosphine on Venus - An Unsolved Problem" speculates that phosphine could be produced photochemically from the reaction of phosphorus oxides with sunlight and a H source (this is intuitively reasonable to me) but they haven't identified the phosphorus oxide source in the Venusian atmosphere.

[@oasntet]

It's still very much debated that phosphine has actually been found.

[@1ATMStudios]

I hope the lack of detail in those short explanations of various biological processes means we're going to get an in-depth explanation of them at some point.

[@Clockworkbio]

Yea, let me go down the list and manage expectations here. For some of these--the science isn't as well explored as it could be. /// Sulfate reducing bacteria: I'm absolutely doing a video on this in detail sometime in 2021. /// /// Nitrogen fixation: this is probably a 2 part series that I'll tackle WAY later next year. There's enough research into the mechanisms that make this work, and also this is one of the most important biochemical processes on the planet. Definitely going to cover. it's just gonna be a complicated one. /// /// Annamox bacteria: Most of what we have here is conjecture, so I may delay this video until we have a better understanding of this process. That's the main slide that won't get a detailed video any time soon. I really appreciate you keeping me honest! These review videos will be garbage unless I do the follow up work of more in-depth process explanations!

[@1ATMStudios]

@@Clockworkbio Neat, that sounds pretty cool! Being able to see your take on any one of these would be lovely, and I can hardly believe we're getting all 3 of them.

[@Clockworkbio]

@@1ATMStudios BTW: kzbin.info/www/bejne/ppPKiIaYl8x2rrs

[@johnwilliams3555]

Does anyone know the temperature and pressure on the high plateaux on Venus? Also , now that Siberia is full , where so they put Russian dissidents?

[@kelechirichard54]

#idontknowhowsocialmediaruns *Literally has a youtube channel* 🗿

[@Redrum420CF]

#spaceblimps

[@Clockworkbio]

#SPACEBLIMPS

[@nekotokyokawaii]

E

[@Clockworkbio]

A

[@tyapca7]

Wiki: phosphine: Possible extraterrestrial biosignature. Simply, error. Life seems rare, if not unique. Use Occam's razor. Just my opinion. And, as always, it is about taxpayers, isn't it? Science needs some hoax to be financed :-( No offence, as usually.