Letter: From Venus to Earth?

From Jack Wickings, Norman Lockyer Observatory Society

Could Venus be a “haven of life” (28 September, p 16)? Our late Director Emeritus, Donald Barber, worked at the Norman Lockyer Observatory in Sidmouth from 1936 to 1963. During his time there he exposed many photographic plates recording the spectra of variable stars. He noted that his plates suffered sporadic attacks by bacteria in the spring water fed to his laboratory. The bacteria liquefied the gelatine emulsion and were immune to both silver and silver halides. The Lister Institute attempted to identify the organism but failed.

In an attempt to explain these events it was discovered that they occurred when Venus and Earth were on the same side of the Sun and there was a concurrent geomagnetic storm. Each attack was preceded by heavy rainfall and a wind direction predominantly northerly. Barber speculated that the bacteria could have originated in the cloud tops of Venus and were carried to the Earth by the solar wind. See www.ex.ac.uk/nlo/news/nlonews/1997-01/9701-14.htm.

Dirk Schulze-Makuch writes: This is intriguing. But it is difficult to understand why Venusian organisms, if they exist, would be adapted to eating gelatine, and to do so in the relative cold temperatures of the observatory location. I would expect them to be adapted to quite the opposite: hot, acidic conditions and basic nutrients such as inorganic sulphur compounds. If they were indeed extraterrestrial, they would more likely be from Mars, based on the properties described.

It is most likely they are terrestrial, suspended in the atmosphere and reactivated in suitable conditions. However, the correlation to Venus’s position and the geomagnetic storms is puzzling, and it is certainly possible that microbes could travel from Venus relatively unharmed – Ed

Sidmouth, Devon, UK