LIFE! ... on VENUS ???

The planet Venus is like Earth in many ways. It has a similar size and mass, it is closer to us than any other planet, and it probably formed from the same sort of materials that formed Earth. For years scientists and science fiction writers dreamed of the exotic jungles and life forms that must inhabit Earth's twin sister.David Grinspoon, a research scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, writes in his book, "Venus Revealed," that, through the Mariner 2 and other Venus missions, "we found our 'sister planet' to be chemically alien, as well as hot and dry to quite unearthly extremes. With these revelations, the twin-sister imagery quickly disappeared, and the notion that 'Venus is hell' took hold."Only 20 percent of the sunlight that hits Venus makes it through the cloud cover, while the other 80 percent is reflected back into space. This reduced sunlight doesn't make Venus a cold world, however, because the thick carbon dioxide atmosphere traps the planet's heat. This greenhouse effect on Venus is often cited as a nightmare example of what could happen to Earth if we don't get our pollution under control.In an interview, Grinspoon explains how Venus evolved from a wet planet similar to Earth to the scorching hot, dried-out furnace of today. Then he discusses the possibility that Venus was once an inhabited world..... (page down to) ...The question of lifeAstrobiology Magazine (AM): You've suggested, in contrast to the conventional view, that Venus may have held onto its water for perhaps as long as 2 billion years. What are the implications for habitability?David Grinspoon (DG): For habitability, there are implications for Venus and there are implications for terrestrial planets in general. Venus almost certainly had liquid water when it was young. So the conditions for the origin of life, as conventionally defined, were satisfied there as much as on Earth and Mars.

Now we have three possible other places for life to have evolved

Mars is somewhat temperate compared to Venus,

RAZD writes:as far as I know these ones are listed as possible due to the presence of water.

RAZD writes:the hydrocarbons in a nitrogen/methane atmosphere would definitely be an alien brew.

RAZD writes:there would need to be energy available and a concentrating medium (one of the things water does)

the hydrocarbons in a nitrogen/methane atmosphere would definitely be an alien brew.

RAZD writes:The presence of hydrocarbons in outer space (detected at great distance even, so they were around when the solar system was forming) is now well known, more being added all the time. This means that they were probably accumulating on all the planets.