A new look at the evolution of Venus

A new study effectively rules out that life may have once existed on Venus and its water oceans. Scientists say the planet was always like helland the only common feature between it and Earth is that it is located in the so-called “habitable zone” of the Sun, where the mass and temperature allow life to develop. But in everything else, it looks like we never had a twin, Channel 24 reported, citing Nature Astronomy. The “atmospheric chemistry” of Venus is responsible for this sad fact.

These results were made by a group of scientists from the University of Cambridge. The team’s research could help astronomers choose targets to study outside the solar system; This means exoplanets that are most likely to be habitable.

Although Venus is the closest planet to us, it is important to exoplanet science because it gives us a unique opportunity to study a planet that evolved very differently from our own, right at the edge of the habitable zone.
– points out the group’s leader, Teresa Konstantinou, a graduate student at the Cambridge Institute of Astronomy.

Currently, the surface temperature of Venus is about 500 degrees Celsius, hot enough to melt lead. There are also clouds of sulfuric acid that will kill any life that tries to spawn or land there.

Despite these extreme conditions, many scientists think that Venus may have been a habitable place billions of years ago, but that it has “degraded” over time and is now a harbinger of our own future if we do not stop global warming. Much of the research on this topic has focused on water, which science now suggests is an essential component for life.

There are two main concepts about how Venus has evolved over the last 4.6 billion years.

• One suggests that the planet was once cold enough to have liquid water on it. According to this theory, the situation changed due to the greenhouse effect caused by volcanic activity. As a result, Venus became increasingly hotter, reaching the point where it could no longer hold liquid water.
• Another theory suggests that Venus never had liquid water because the planet was “born hot.” The team’s findings appear to support this thirsty alternative history.

Both of these theories are based on climate models, but we wanted to take a different approach based on observations of the current chemistry of Venus’ atmosphere. For Venus’s atmosphere to remain stable, chemicals removed from the atmosphere must also return to it, since the interior and exterior of the planet are in constant chemical contact with each other.
Teresa says to Konstantin.

Specifically, the researchers analyzed how quickly water, carbon dioxide, and carbonyl sulphide decay in the Venusian atmosphere and how quickly they must be replenished from the planet’s interior through volcanism.

Magma triggered by volcanism brings material from the mantle to the planet’s surface and releases it as gas, providing a glimpse of what these worlds were like.

Since the bowels of our Earth are rich in water, volcanic eruptions on Earth are mostly steam. In contrast, the team found that volcanic gases on Venus contain no more than 6% vapor. From these dry eruptions, researchers concluded that Venus’s interior was too dehydrated to have enough water to feed the oceans on the planet’s surface.

We won’t know for sure whether Venus supports life until we send probes later this decade. But given that it likely never had oceans, it’s hard to imagine Venus supporting Earth-like life that would need liquid water.
– said the scientist.

Future exploration of Venus

NASA’s DAVINCI mission is expected to launch in June 2029 and reach Venus two years later. Once deployed near the nether planet, DAVINCI will collect vital data by sending a probe into its atmosphere. Although the probe is not designed to survive landing, there is a chance to catch a 7-second look at the surface of Venus.

If Venus was habitable in the past, this means that exoplanets we have previously discovered may also be habitable.

Instruments like the James Webb Space Telescope are best at studying the atmospheres of planets close to their stars, such as Venus. However, if Venus were never habitable, this would make Venus-like planets elsewhere less likely to be candidates for life.
– says Konstantin.

But fortunately, this does not completely exclude such a possibility, because each planet develops in its own way.