A Clouded Potential

So far as “cloud-shrouded worlds” go, Titan might have displaced Venus in my general attention a while ago (although there’s only surface bodies of liquid on Titan near its poles, which makes it “warmer” than pre-Cassini speculation might have had me thinking). The recent news a molecule of possible biological origin has been detected in Venus’s atmosphere, though, did get my attention. I can remember speculation of a “survivable zone” well above the greenhouse effect-scorched surface (even as I thought further back to all those pre-Space Age science fiction certainties of “clouds” amounting to “steaming swamps”). However, I also got to thinking “so how long did that news of methane on Mars last?” (A bit of looking did turn up a Wikipedia article on the topic, although that then just brought back all those old “use it only as a pointer to more reputable sources” thoughts.) In the few days since then, I’ve at least noticed follow-up reports about potential Venus probes in competition of the Triton mission I took note of a few months ago, which reminded me of speculative designs for “clockwork rovers” intended to work for longer on the surface than electronics do. One idle thought I did have, though, was whether it’s at all possible “microbes in the clouds of Venus” might have got there on the first Soviet probes of the 1960s and hung on since then, which doesn’t seem quite as inspiring to contemplate.