The Soviet landing probe Venera-13 imaged several objects resembling living beings
Dr.
Ksanfomality is a senior researcher and a head of the Laboratory on Photometry
and Thermal Radiometry at the Space Research Institute, Russian Academy of
Sciences, and a contributor to the Venera missions in 1970-80s.
A: Over
the years, I have constantly studied all aspects of physics of Venus. Among my
other experiments, people know about the discovery of thunderstorms on this
planet (1978). I am proud that the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has
named an asteroid in honor of me, in recognition of my works and books on
Venus.
The idea
that some signs of life can be found on Venus had come to me much earlier. It
happened when the first panoramas of the Venus surface were obtained in October
1975. I was at the radio receiving station and working with the data from the
Venera-9 and 10 spacecrafts. One object on images, looking like a ‘sitting
bird’ and measuring about 20 cm, attracted my attention. Later, geologists
called it a ‘strange stone’.
I had been
repeatedly returning to the obtained images, and in 1978, I put a view of this
object as a possible inhabitant of Venus in my first popular scientific book
“Planets Discovered Anew”. The negative pressure from the administration and my
colleagues at the Space Research Institute, of course, affected partly, but not
convinced me.
Inspired by
the growing number of exoplanet discoveries, I have re-analyzed images from the
Venera missions using new processing tools. The fact is that a large portion of
exoplanets has physical conditions rather close to the Venusian, than to those
on Earth, with high temperature and high pressure of the atmosphere, similar to
the Venusian in composition.
I succeeded
in improving the images in the period of 2003 to 2006, but the major result was
achieved in 2009. Since that time, more and more Russian academic institutes
have been interested in it.
The first
article has been recently published, the second will be much more interesting. Within
a triptych of concepts: “what a nonsense!” – “it is something there” – “who
does not know this,” I’m between the first and second stage.
Q: Your
hypothesis has been criticized from various sources. How do you respond to
skeptics?
A: One
often hears: “I do not believe it! It’s something like a theology, it cannot be
helped, to believe or not is not my area of expertise.” Strange enough, our
hypothesis sparked skepticism and even outrage among some readers and
listeners. Well, almost aphoristically, put one of the authors of the Venera
TV-experiments Dr. Ju. M. Gektin: “We do not like the hypothesis that life may
exist on Venus. But the problem is that we cannot offer any other explanation
to what we see on the Venera panoramas.”
A close-up of three objects resembling living beings: a
disk, a black rag and a scorpion (Dr. Leonid Ksanfomality / Astronomicheskii
Vestnik)
One can propose many artificial situations to explain the
observed phenomena. For example, someone in the internet authoritatively
discusses the form of modulation of radio signals and uses different technical
terms, but apparently, understands poorly what he says, because he states that
an image’s content depends on a type of modulation.
This
resembles the following situation: you’re listening to the same radio program,
but if you change the type of amplitude modulation to the frequency modulation
– by changing, say, from the middle or short waves to FM – instead of
Tchaikovsky’s Symphony, the Mozart’s Requiem appears. You are curious about
those who came up with this tricky modulation, who brought it and who has built
it into your receiver and why.
Something
like this explanation can be found in the internet. As an argument, two blurred
images are provided, which are the different images at all after the
processing. Whether it has been done by mistake or as a deliberate fraud, I do
not know.
In general,
to scrutinize who said and what – life is not enough. In science there is a
principle, if you believe the author has made an error, you can submit a proof
of the error to a journal for publication. It is true that the matter may be complicated
if the result is on the edge of yes/no as, for example, it was in the case of
the interpretation of the inclusions in the ALH84001 meteorite. In our case,
the images are clear enough, so the shadow of Hamlet’s father is introduced by
opponents.
Q: Are you
planning to undertake additional research e.g. to further process the images or
study the objects in detail?
A: Yes,
the published paper is a small part of findings. The second paper has been just
submitted to a journal, where together with new spotted objects a question on
the liquid stuff on Venus is raised. I have enough findings for many papers.
Q: Does the
Russian Federal Space Agency Roscosmos or the Space Research Institute plan new
missions to Venus for searching life?
A: The
Space Research Institute is the research institute of the Russian Academy of
Sciences, while Roscosmos is a bureaucratic bureau with rules, which are
unclear for me. Venera-D lander has been for a long time expected as the next
mission to Venus, but the problem of its funding is still not resolved. Unfortunately,
there is nothing to announce at the moment about new missions for searching
life on Venus.
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