It is impossible to survive on the surface of Venus due to the overwhelming atmospheric pressure and high temperatures. So, if you could stand on the planet for a few minutes, would you see lightning? A new study concludes: probably not. The study, conducted by a team from the University of Colorado at Boulder, West Virginia University, University of California at Los Angeles and University of California at Berkeley, reanalyzed signals from the second closest planet to the Sun.

When NASA’s Pioneer Venus probe entered orbit around Venus in 1978, it detected waves called whistling waves. On Earth, these electromagnetic waves are often created by lightning, and leading researchers speculate that the waves are also signs of electrical activity on Venus. A new study suggests that versions of Venus may not be what they first appear.

“The lightning debate on Venus has been going on for about 40 years,” says lead author Harriet George, a magnetospheric physicist at the University of Colorado Boulder. “Hopefully we can help reconcile this debate with our newly available data.”

Whistle waves are very low frequency (VLF) electromagnetic waves, so named because they “whistle” when heard by radio operators. They are formed as a result of the collision of electrons in the atmosphere and are usually activated by lightning strikes.

This latest study used data collected on its way to the Sun by another NASA spacecraft, Parker Solar Probe, in 2021. Whistling waves were detected again, but something was wrong: The waves were moving in the wrong direction. Instead of exploding into space as in a storm, these whistling waves headed toward the planet’s surface. This means that lightning is not the main cause of these electrical signals.

“They’re going backwards from what everyone has been dreaming of for the last 40 years,” says cosmic plasma physicist David Malaspina of the University of Colorado at Boulder. This does not mean that lightning does not strike Venus, but it is unlikely that there will be many and many waves, the whistles received by passing spacecraft appear to be produced by other phenomena.

We’re not looking at what other processes might be involved in this study, but the researchers suspect magnetic reconnection may play a role when magnetic field lines around Venus bend, shorten, and then reconnect. Previous studies have argued both for and against the existence of lightning on Venus, and the case remains open. More detailed data is needed to know for sure, and the Parker Solar Probe still needs to make one more pass, giving researchers another chance to study weather on Venus more closely.

“It is very rare for new scientific instruments to reach Venus,” says Malaspina. “We don’t often get the chance to do such interesting work.” Source