Despite lead-melting surface temperatures, lava-spewing volcanoes and billowing sulfuric acid clouds, lifeless Venus offers vital lessons about the potential for life on other planets, a new paper claims.

“We often assume that Earth is a model of habitability, but when we look at this planet in isolation we don’t know where the boundaries and limits are,” said UC Riverside astrophysicist and first author Stephen Kane. “Venus gives us that.”

An article published in a journal Nature Astronomy, collected most of the known information about Earth and Venus. He also describes Venus as a vantage point from which scientists can better understand the conditions that prevent life on planets around other stars.

Although they have a pressure-cooker-like atmosphere that would flatten a human in an instant, Earth and Venus share some similarities. They have approximately the same mass and radius. Given its close proximity to this planet, it’s natural to wonder why Earth is so different.

Theories of the development of Venus

Many scientists think that the flux of sunlight, the amount of energy Venus receives from the sun, causes the greenhouse effect that is destroying the planet.

“If we take 100 percent of the solar energy that Earth receives, Venus collects 191 percent. A lot of people think that’s why Venus is different,” said Kane. “But wait a minute. “Venus doesn’t have a moon, which gives Earth things like ocean tides and affects the amount of water there.”

Besides some known differences, additional NASA missions to Venus will help clarify some unknowns. Scientists don’t know the size of its core, how it achieved its current relatively slow rotation rate, how its magnetic field has changed over time, or anything about the chemical composition of its lower atmosphere.

“Venus has no detectable magnetic field. “This may be related to the size of its core,” said Kane. “The size of the core also tells us about how the planet cooled. The Earth has a mantle that circulates heat through its core. “We don’t know what’s going on inside Venus.”

The role of volcanism and the atmosphere

The interior of a terrestrial planet also affects its atmosphere. This is what happens on Earth, where our atmosphere is mostly the result of volcanic outgassing. NASA has two missions to Venus planned for later this decade, and Kane is assisting with both. The DAVINCI mission will probe the acid-laden atmosphere to measure the content of noble gases and other chemical elements.

“DAVINCI will measure the atmosphere from top to bottom. This will really help us build new climate models and predict these types of atmospheres elsewhere, including on Earth, as we continue to increase CO2,” said Kane.

The VERITAS mission, led by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, will not land on the surface but will allow scientists to create a detailed 3-D reconstruction of the landscape to explore whether the planet has active plate tectonics or volcanoes.

“Currently, our maps of the planet are very incomplete. Understanding how active a surface is is a very different thing from understanding how it changes over time. We need both types of information,” said Kane.

Study of exoplanets and implications for Earth’s future

In conclusion, the article advocates such missions to Venus for two main reasons. One is the ability to use Venus with better data to make sure conclusions about life on distant planets are accurate.

“The sobering aspect of the search for life elsewhere in the universe is that we may never have in situ data for an exoplanet. “We don’t go there, we don’t land and we don’t make direct measurements,” said Kane.

“If we think there is life on the surface of another planet, we may never know if we are wrong, and we dream of a planet without life. “But we can achieve this if we get the Earth-sized planets right that we can visit, and Venus gives us that chance.”

Another reason to explore Venus is that it offers a preview of what Earth’s future might look like.

“One of the main reasons to study Venus is our sacred responsibility as stewards of this planet to safeguard its future. My hope is that we can learn lessons by studying the processes that created modern Venus, especially if Venus had a more benign past that is now devastated by our own.” It might come, it’s just a question of how and when,” said Kane.