Leonid Ksanfomality, an employee of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, intends to defend his hypothesis about the possible existence of life on Venus. The expert perceives the statements of Western colleagues that only noise due to the change of encoding is visible in the photographs from the neighboring planet as an attempt to "cloud the mind with terminology" and promises to publish new evidence
“We don’t like your explanation, but we cannot think of another,” Ksanfomality commented on the critical statements of foreign scientists to RIA Novosti.
Recall that the scientist published an article in which he provided evidence of the possible presence of relatively intelligent life forms on Venus. In nine photo panoramas from the Venera 13 probe, obtained in 1982, Xanfomality discovered several objects that appear and disappear in a series of successive images. In particular, he speaks of a “disc” that changes shape, a “black patch” and a “scorpion” that disappears from view after half an hour of shooting, leaving a groove in the ground.
“Without discussing the existing ideas about the impossibility of life in the conditions of Venus, let us make a bold assumption that morphological signs still suggest that some of the objects found have the properties of living beings,” the scientist wrote.
Western experts have criticized the Xanfomality hypothesis. Firstly, the "disk" is just a camera lens cover that fell off the Soviet probe during landing, experts say. And this "disk" didn't really move. The rest of the objects, including the "scorpion", are just noises, "amplified" when copying a picture and enlarging a fragment of it.
"Scorpion" on Venus could be created by modulation
Blogger Don Mitchell, widely known in a narrow circle of amateur astronomers, who is fascinated by the history of Soviet cosmonautics, made the assumption that strange objects in Venusian photographs appeared when the encoding of the radio signal was changed. In his blog, he explains how the image changes depending on the type of modulation used.
“The video was transmitted to the orbiter, which in turn transmitted a signal to the Earth … Two different signal transmission systems were used simultaneously. In the decimeter range, the video signal was transmitted unchanged by means of pulse-code modulation … By the way, American transmitters work … And in the centimeter range, used by old Soviet spacecraft, pulse-time modulation was used,”writes Don Mitchell. In the second case, the final image is fuzzy, with many artifacts.
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“Noises (in the photo) get lost in white spots,” the expert describes the disadvantages of the second method. "The" scorpion "that Xanfomality speaks of is not present at all in the picture obtained from the decoded signal transmitted by means of pulse code modulation."
Venusian life place in Popular Mechanics
Ksanfomality is also criticized by Russian colleagues. Alexander Bazilevsky, head of the laboratory of comparative planetology at the Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who participated in the preparation of the Venus-15 and Venus-16 missions, is also skeptical about statements about strange objects on Venus. “Now the possibility is being discussed that the jump in the panoramas of Venus-13 is the result of one of the two methods used to transmit information to Earth. I am far from these things and am waiting for our telemetry specialists to react to this,”Bazilevsky told RIA Novosti.
His colleague, an employee of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Oleg Korablev, believes that assumptions about the possibility of Venusian life have a right to exist, but they have no place in a serious scientific journal: “Discussions about inorganic life, silicon, they can be published, but, for example, in a journal Popular Mechanics.
However, Mikhail Marov, deputy director of the Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry and editor-in-chief of Astronomical Bulletin, where Ksanfomality published his article, recalled that the scientist presented his arguments in the “order of discussion”.
»The article is not based on any completely reliable experimental facts, this is the interpretation of the author of the article. But in principle, despite the fact that the majority of people involved in the studies of Venus and in general the problem of the existence of life in the solar system, very, very strongly doubt this, nevertheless, we do not have any clear definite reason to reject it all from the threshold ", - said Marov, noting that he himself" very, very strongly doubts "the conclusions of the scientist.
Whichever modulation you use, the dot remains a dot
Ksanfomality himself is in no hurry to admit defeat. He rejects the version that his "scorpion" turned out to be just noise caused by differences in the types of modulations: “This is brain fogging with radio technical terminology. Whichever modulation you use, the dot remains a dot."
As for the "disc" that "did not move" - so the Americans, according to Ksanfomality, discussed the wrong disc. The scientist explains that he did not mean the lens cover that fell off the probe and got into the frame, but a completely different object. And he is not in those pictures that Western experts cited as an illustration to their reasoning.
He recalled that he had not yet published all of his materials - in addition to the three objects discussed in the first article, the scientist has data on eight to ten more of the same mysterious objects. The editor-in-chief of Astronomical Bulletin did not rule out that a new article by Ksanfomality may appear in the next issue of the publication.