Was Venus once a tropical oasis?
Did it once have LIFE?
Well, if it did, it doesn’t any more because it’s a HELLHOLE.
Hello fellow terrestrial lifeforms!
Trace here for DNews and I want you to consider Venus.
Apparently that nasty, hot and toxic world is Earth’s “twin”, its EVIL twin.
Venus is around 80% the mass of Earth.
Earth and Venus have similar orbits and are likely made of similar materials.
In fact, Venus may have been once surprisingly Earth-like!
It sits on the inner edge of our solar system’s habitable zone and could have even been a
veritable oasis!
It's even thought that Venus could have once had oceans!
But today Venus has an atmosphere that crushes everything on its surface with about 90 times
more pressure we experience here.
It’s so hot that lead will melt.
It’s a planet where the greenhouse effect has gone into overdrive and probably is the
last place in the solar system you’d consider for your next vacay.
See, something catastrophic happened to the planet’s atmosphere, causing it to turn
into a swirling hot mess and, as Venus receives around double the solar energy of Earth, the
water content in its atmosphere was eventually broken down through a process called photodissociation.
Today, the planet is bone dry.
But again, we think it wasn't always this way.
In the journal Geophysical Research Letters, scientists used 3-D models of Venus and simulated
how its atmosphere would evolve if the planet had an ocean containing 10% the volume of
our oceans on Earth.
What they found was that because of Venus’ super slow rotation rate (it takes 243 Earth
days to complete one Venus day) and the fact our sun was cooler in the past, the planet
would have actually been pretty habitable for a very long period of time -- possibly
for billions of years!
This is even considering the fact that our sun got hotter as it got older.
In fact, this research says Venus could have been a habitable world as recently as 700
million years ago.12, 13
That’s not that much time.
This is surprising because until now, it had been assumed that Venus’ closer orbit around
the sun would have caused atmospheric temperatures to soar and any oceans to boil away billions
of years ago.
What they wanted to find out was how young Venus regulated its temperature.
And interestingly, to do this, researchers used the same models we use today to simulate
the effects of human-driven climate change.
These models predict that water vapor forming clouds in Venus’ atmosphere would have prevented
the sun’s extreme heat from driving atmospheric temperatures too high, allowing the planet
to remain very Earth-like for billions of years12.
And when you combine habitable temperatures with liquid water and billions of years, you
get the possibility of the evolution of life!
Sadly, we may never know if Venus once possessed life, as it’s currently almost impossible
for us to land a robot on the surface and expect it not to melt.
Though we have had landers there before, none have lasted for longer than a couple of hours.
But this research shows that planets found around other stars with orbits that were once
considered “too hot” to be habitable, may in fact have atmospheres cool and stable
enough for life to take hold.
This is awesome and may increase the number of potentially habitable worlds in our galaxy!
Guys, if you love DNews in English -- gracias por tu apoyo!
Now, we've got a new sister show, "DNews en Español" -- It's DNews, but in Spanish!
If you like space, but want it to be more espace: ¿Qué pasa si te traga un agujero
negro?
Check it out here.
Venus might sound pretty crappy for life, but we’ve found a possibly more habitable
world on our galactic doorstep -- welcome to Proxima b:
What do you guys think?
Would you rather go to Venus or Mars?