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SUMMARY:Murdin Prize Ceremony -- Proposed energy-metabolisms cannot explai
 n the atmospheric chemistry of Venus - Sean Jordan ( University of Cambrid
 ge)
DTSTART:20230125T133000Z
DTEND:20230125T134500Z
UID:TALK196345@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Hannah Uebler
DESCRIPTION:The clouds of Venus have been proposed as a potential abode fo
 r life. Life\, if present in sufficiently high abundance\, must be interac
 ting with the atmospheric chemistry via its metabolism. Three possible sul
 fur-based metabolisms have been previously suggested which Venusian life c
 ould use to obtain energy from its environment. These metabolisms raise th
 e possibility of Venus’s enigmatic cloud-layer SO2-depletion being cause
 d by life. We perform a test for the possiblity of abundant Venusian life 
 by coupling each proposed energy-metabolism to a photochemical-kinetics co
 de and predicting the composition of Venus’s atmosphere under the scenar
 io that life produces the observed SO2-depletion. Using this coupled photo
 -bio-chemical kinetics code\, we show that all three metabolisms can produ
 ce SO2-depletions\, but do so by violating other observational constraints
  on Venus’s atmospheric chemistry. We therefore calculate an upper limit
  on the possible biomass of sulfur-metabolising life in the clouds of Venu
 s before violating observational constraints.
LOCATION:The Hoyle Lecture Theatre + Zoom 
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