Oceans may never have existed on Venus, says new research
Instead of condensing on the planet's surface, any water in Venus' atmosphere likely remained as steam, suggests the research from the University of Cambridge.
Monday 2 December 2024 16:39, UK
Venus may never have hosted oceans on its surface, according to new research.
Despite a scientific debate raging for years over the history of Venus and whether it ever held liquid oceans, new research by astrochemists from the University of Cambridge suggests it has always been dry.
"Two very different histories of water on Venus have been proposed: one where Venus had a temperate climate for billions of years with surface liquid water and the other where a hot early Venus was never able to condense surface liquid water," said the report's authors Tereza Constantinou, Oliver Shorttle and Paul B. Rimmer.
Ms Constantinou and her colleagues modelled the current chemical makeup of Venus' atmosphere and discovered "the planet has never been liquid-water habitable".
"Venus today is a hellish world," suggests NASA. It has an average surface temperature of around 465C (869F) and a pressure 90 times greater than Earth's at sea level, as well as being permanently shrouded in thick, toxic clouds of sulfuric acid.
In their study, the scientists found the planet's interior lacks hydrogen, which suggests it is much drier than Earth's interior.
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Instead of condensing on the planet's surface, any water in Venus' atmosphere likely remained as steam, suggests the research.
Back in 2016, a team of scientists working for NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York suggested the planet may once have been habitable.
The team used a computer model similar to the type used to predict climate change on Earth.
"Many of the same tools we use to model climate change on Earth can be adapted to study climates on other planets, both past and present," said Michael Way at the time, a researcher at GISS and the paper's lead author.
"These results show ancient Venus may have been a very different place than it is today."
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Another study, by researchers at the University of Chicago last year, suggested that Venus "has been uninhabitable for over 70% of its history, four times longer than some previous estimates".