Potential overlap of oceans on Venus and life on Earth sparks curiosity
Scientists at the University of Chicago have used a new time-dependent model of Venus's atmospheric composition to explore the possibility of oceans on Venus.
SAN FRANCISCO (TechtUSA) - Scientists believe that Venus may have had oceans in the past, but the planet's harsh environment with a thick atmosphere and high temperatures has made it difficult to confirm their existence.
According to modeling, it is possible that the planet closest to Earth in size and distance from the Sun may have had oceans that could have persisted for over a billion years, that is long after when life on Earth started.
A new study by researchers at the University of Chicago's Department of Geophysical Sciences, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, presents a time-dependent model of Venus's atmospheric composition to investigate the possibility of oceans on the planet.
They suggested that Venus might have had conditions that could have supported life in its early days, with reflective clouds and liquid water.
Life forms may have migrated between three planets in solar system
The researchers at University of Chicago proposes that Venus may have had liquid water and a habitable climate as recently as 700 million years ago, before it succumbed to a runaway greenhouse effect that boiled away its oceans.
To explore this hypothesis, the researchers developed a time-dependent model of Venus's atmospheric composition and ran it through 94,080 different scenarios with varying ocean levels and evaporation processes.
Only a few hundred runs produced results consistent with the current atmosphere of Venus, indicating that the planet may have been habitable for a limited period with a maximum ocean depth of 300 meters across its surface.
This suggests that Venus has been uninhabitable for more than 70% of its history, and that life could have existed on the planet if it had liquid water on its surface 3 billion years ago.
