Is there life on Venus?

By Scott Douglas Jacobsen

There have been some recent reports as to the possibility of life on Venus. Is this an empirically verified or confirmed assertion from some recent news reportage? First things first, definitions, not necessarily, what is life? Instead, who studies that which has been defined as “life” on planets other than Earth? Those smarty pants are called astro-biologists with “astro-” meaning “constellation” or “star” and “-biology” meaning “study of life,” rooted in “biology” or “bio-” meaning “life” and “logy” meaning “branch of study.” Other prefixes used in place of “astro-” have been “exo-” and “xeno-” meaning “external” and “other”/“different in origin,” respectively. In this sense, astrobiology, exobiology, and xenobiology can be loosely interchangeable with astrobiology as, probably, the most used term.

So, to the question in some of the popular or mainstream reportage about Venus harbouring life, astrobiologists have looked for Earth-like planets as obvious candidates for planets harbouring life because the form of “life” known abundantly comes from Earth. As scientific skeptics, the obvious orientation on much of the popular media is, and should be, concerned skepticism and due critical thinking about the claims coming from the reportage because of the outlandish belief structures, individual beliefs, practices, and styles or processes of thinking throughout the culture, pervasive or ubiquitous. Nothing original in this orientation to the readership here.