Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Let's Conquer Venus!

Holy crap did the Soviets find life on Venus back in the 80's? Probably not, but wouldn't it be rad? Venus has a crazy dense atmosphere which, according to Wikipedia (which is like science), locks in the heat (and presumably the freshness) making life as we know it unlikely, but then that's why we call them aliens right?
Xenomorph: Latin for 'what the shit is that thing?'
'Pssch...amateurs.'
-Marvin the Martian
Wait, hang on, can you believe that the U.S.S.R. was exploring Venus back then? Didn't we kick their ass in the space race? I mean we conquered the Moon. Of course to the Russians it probably just looks like we planted a flag on the lunar surface and spent the next 40 years telling everyone about it. Sure, we did a little Venereal probing (sorry, that's the adjective) ourselves but they out-Venus'ed us 3 to one. Anyway, some of their missions involved landings which is how Russian space-scientist Leonid Ksanfomaliti discovered his Venereal crabs (again, sorry).

X-tremophiles on the other hand
subsist solely on caffeinated
sugar-water and snowboarding.
Yep, space crabs, or space scorpions-he's not really sure and in fairness the photos aren't totally clear. Dr. Ksanformaliti is claiming that these half-circle objects photographed by the landers are Venusian (ok, so there is another adjective) life forms. It's not totally off the wall. There are these creatures on Earth called extremophiles (not to be confused with x-tremophiles) that exist in environments that have no business supporting life like super-hot geothermal vents, the South or even in acid. The extremophiles here on Earth are often pointed to as a reason to believe life might exist elsewhere in the solar system.

The Venusians shall tremble
before our mighty kitchen gadgets.
Most scientists insist that the objects are most likely the lens caps off the lander's camera but that's just quitter talk. Sure, they happen to appear in exactly the place the probe's lens cap would land once it pops off the camera, but who knows? Maybe these are actual Venusians investigating our probes. If so I suspect their puny crab-like forms are no match for our superior technology and that their planet is ripe for the plucking. On the other hand we can't seem to get aliens visiting Earth to hold still for photos, so what are the chances that two probes plunked down randomly on Venus strike space crab pay dirt in one go?
Behold: The Venusian Blurry Lens Cap Crab in its natural monochromatic habitat.
Like seriously, it was 1982. I know it was Soviet Russia, but they couldn't
have put a nicer camera on the thing? Like maybe one with color?

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