Thread by @DrPhosphine

It's been ~1 day since our Venus papers came out and it seems there is a lot of excitement, a lot of skepticism, and some accessibility concerns. I feel all these things too but I think I can help with all three 1/6

You're excited. We're excited too! If you have questions or just want to chat you can #AskTeamVenus e.g., Twitter Q&A today (10amEST/3pmGMT) with @RoyalAstroSoc; Reddit #AskScience AMA tomorrow (12pmEST/6pmGMT); Maunakea Observatories Q&A on YouTube Friday (4pmEST/9pmGMT). 2/6

You're skeptical. I'm skeptical too! I have seen many hot takes on PH3 formation without life on Venus; so far these have all been addressed and ruled out in at least one of the papers we wrote on "PH3 as a biosignature", or their supplementary info, but do keep them coming. 3/6

You noted that the articles are not all freely available. That is not ok. Here are direct links for all 3 papers. 1) the “prediction” paper: arxiv.org/pdf/1910.05224…; 2)
the “discovery” paper: arxiv.org/pdf/2009.06593…; and 3)
the “analysis” paper: arxiv.org/pdf/2009.06499… 4/6

Whatever we discovered on Venus, I can guarantee it's cool. But it's also hard to understand, and scientific articles can be impenetrable. Fortunately there are many excellent journalists reporting on this story e.g., @shannonmstirone @ScolesSarah @adamspacemann @marinakoren 5/6

I hope you stay excited and skeptical. I'll do the same (skeptical face provided). More in this ambitiously tagged url: news.mit.edu/2020/life-venu… 6/6

So you can trust me to do quantum simulations of phosphine but not to tell time. Twitter Q&A is at 11amEST...