The images taken on Venus in the 1980s by Soviet landing probes show moving objects, possibly having the "properties of living beings," said Leonid Ksanfomality, chief researcher at the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
“Appearing, changing or disappearing objects of noticeable size, from decimeter to half a meter, were discovered, the random appearance of images of which due to noise is difficult to explain,” the scientist writes in an article published “as a matter of discussion” by the Astronomical Bulletin magazine.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Soviet scientists carried out a number of successful missions to explore Venus, during which the first ever photographs of its surface were obtained, invisible from Earth due to the constant dense cloud cover in the planet's atmosphere. The devices "Venera-9" and "Venera-10" in 1975, and then "Venera-13" and "Venera-14" in 1982 received a series of television panoramas of Venus using scanning photometric cameras of the optical-mechanical type.
According to the author of the article, the impetus for a new attempt to analyze the previous results of the Venusian missions was "an extensive stream of new results from studies of exoplanets of moderate mass, among which there should be bodies with physical conditions close to those of Venus."
The scientist recalls that since 1995, more than 500 planets have been discovered in other stars. The search for planets where life is possible is based on the postulate of normal physical conditions in the "life zone", that is, pressure, temperature, and possibly the composition of the atmosphere, similar to those on Earth.
“But shouldn't this approach be viewed as 'earthly chauvinism'? In other words, is it completely excluded the possibility that life forms can exist under completely different conditions inherent in many exoplanets?”- asks Ksanfomality.
In his opinion, the possibility of the existence of life at relatively high temperatures should not be completely ruled out, despite the fact that experimental data of this kind are not yet available.
In his article, the scientist analyzed images from Venera-13 and Venera-14, his greatest attention was attracted by nine panoramas from Venera-13, transmitted on March 1, 1982, within two hours and six minutes. In these panoramas, Ksanfomality discovered several objects that appear and disappear in a series of consecutive shots.
Promotional video:
& quot; Scorpio & quot; pictured from Venus 13 / L. V. Ksanfomality / & quot; Astronomical Herald & quot;
Among them is a "disc" that changes its shape, a "black flap" that appeared in the first picture near a cone to measure the mechanical properties of the soil, and disappeared later, as well as a "scorpion", which in its structure resembles large terrestrial arachnids or insects.
In particular, the "scorpion" appeared about 90 minutes after the cameras were turned on, and after 26 minutes it disappeared, leaving a groove in the ground in its place.
According to the Ksanfomality hypothesis, at first the lander made a loud noise - squibs were fired, the drilling rig was working. Some of the "inhabitants" left the dangerous area, and they are not in the next pictures, but some of them (for example, the "scorpion") were covered by the ground thrown out during landing, and they slowly got out of it, which explains the 1.5 hour delay in their appearance.
“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 allow us to assume that some of the objects found have the properties of living beings,” the scientist writes.
He notes that his article does not include other similar materials obtained during the analysis of data from "Venera-13" and other spacecraft of the "Venus" series, which the scientist plans to publish separately.