In the interview with Sci-News.com, Dr. Leonid Ksanfomality comments on his recent claims that 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.

Q: Dr. Ksanfomality, when did you make the decision to review panoramic images taken by the Venera spacecrafts for the possible presence of living organisms and why?

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.”

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.