Venus May Have Once Supported Life
Extraterrestrial Life

Venus May Have Once Supported Life

Forty years ago, scientists first found evidence suggesting that Venus once had a body of water comparable to a shallow ocean. To explore whether Venus ever had a stable climate that could support liquid water, Michael Way and Anthony Del Genio from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies created five different simulations based on the potential extent of this water.

In all five scenarios, they concluded that Venus could have maintained temperatures between 20 and 50 degrees Celsius, allowing for a liquid ocean and potentially life for about three billion years, even if this is no longer evident today.

Their research findings, presented at the European Planetary Science Congress, shed new light on Venus's history and could provide insights into the habitability of exoplanets in similar orbits.

About 700 million years ago, the life-sustaining water completely evaporated from the now uninhabitable planet, where surface temperatures exceed 460 degrees Celsius. It is most likely that massive volcanic eruptions released large amounts of carbon dioxide from the rocks. As the magma solidified quickly upon reaching the surface, it prevented the rocks from reabsorbing the excess carbon dioxide. The trapped carbon dioxide in the atmosphere significantly accelerated the greenhouse effect, rapidly destroying the once pleasant climate.

Sources:
phys.org

Created: 2020-01-21 21:00
Last modified: 2020-01-23 21:00

0 0