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The Planet Venus

This is odd and interesting ... Newly reported modeling research suggests Venus' hellish environmental conditions are Jupiter's fault.
Venus Might Have Been a Temperate Habitable World if It Wasn't For Jupiter

Venus might not have been the sweltering, inhospitable planet of acidic clouds and desert rock that it is today if it hadn't been for the interference of Jupiter, according to new research.

In fact, our neighbouring planet could have turned out to be quite temperate and habitable. The new study proposes that the gravitational pull of Jupiter pushed Venus closer to the Sun, creating a runaway greenhouse effect and vaporising surface oceans.

Scientists used a computer model to track the position of planets across the Solar System, revealing that as Jupiter moved away from the Sun about a billion years ago, it would have nudged Venus into the almost perfect circular orbit that it has today.

"As Jupiter migrated, Venus would have gone through dramatic changes in climate, heating up then cooling off and increasingly losing its water into the atmosphere," says astrobiologist Stephen Kane from the University of California, Riverside. ...
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FULL STORY:
https://www.sciencealert.com/venus-...rate-habitable-world-if-it-wasn-t-for-jupiter
 
Here are the bibliographic details and abstract of the published research. The full research paper is accessible at the link below.

Could the Migration of Jupiter Have Accelerated the Atmospheric Evolution of Venus?
Stephen R. Kane, Pam Vervoort, Jonathan Horner and Francisco J. Pozuelos
Published 2020 September 4 • © 2020.
The Planetary Science Journal, Volume 1, Number 2

Abstract
In the study of planetary habitability and terrestrial atmospheric evolution, the divergence of surface conditions for Venus and Earth remains an area of active research. Among the intrinsic and external influences on the Venusian climate history are orbital changes due to giant planet migration that have both variable incident flux and tidal heating consequences. Here, we present the results of a study that explores the effect of Jupiter's location on the orbital parameters of Venus and subsequent potential water-loss scenarios. Our dynamical simulations show that various scenarios of Jovian migration could have resulted in orbital eccentricities for Venus as high as 0.31. We quantify the implications of the increased eccentricity, including tidal energy, surface energy flux, and the variable insolation flux expected from the faint young Sun. The tidal circularization timescale calculations demonstrate that a relatively high tidal dissipation factor is required to reduce the eccentricity of Venus to the present value, which implies a high initial water inventory. We further estimate the consequences of high orbital eccentricity on water loss, and estimate that the water-loss rate may have increased by at least ~5% compared with the circular orbit case as a result of orbital forcing. We argue that these eccentricity variations for the young Venus may have accelerated the atmospheric evolution of Venus toward the inevitable collapse of the atmosphere into a runaway greenhouse state. The presence of giant planets in exoplanetary systems may likewise increase the expected rate of Venus analogs in those systems.
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FULL ARTICLE Accessible At:
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/PSJ/abae63
 
The amino acid glycine has allegedly been detected in Venus' atmosphere. Glycine is the simplest amino acid participating in our DNA, but it is no a sure-fire biosignature.
Astronomers Report That Venus' Atmosphere Contains an Amino Acid Found in DNA

Does it feel like all eyes are on Venus these days? The discovery of the potential biomarker phosphine in the planet's upper atmosphere last month garnered a lot of attention, as it should. There's still some uncertainty around what the phosphine discovery means, though.

Now a team of researchers claims they've discovered the amino acid glycine in Venus' atmosphere.

The paper announcing the finding ... is at the pre-print site arxiv.org, which means it hasn't been peer-reviewed and published in a journal… yet.

There are about 500 known amino acids, but only 20 are present in the genetic code. Glycine is the simplest of them.

Though glycine and other amino acids aren't biosignatures, they are some of the building blocks of life. In fact, they're the building blocks of proteins. They were also some of the first organic molecules to appear on Earth. Glycine is important for the development of proteins and other biological compounds. ...
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FULL STORY:
https://www.sciencealert.com/astron...n-amino-acid-found-in-dna-in-venus-atmosphere

RESEARCH REPORT (Preprint; In Peer Review Phase):
Detection of simplest amino acid glycine in the atmosphere of the Venus
Arijit Manna, Sabyasachi Pal, Mangal Hazra

Abstract available at:
https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.06211
 
Sadly it may not be so. I long for the swamps and seas of Venus in the old SF stories.

The announcement in September took the world by storm: Researchers using two radio telescopes found signs that the clouds of Venus were harboring phosphine, a toxic compound that on Earth is only made in significant quantities by microbes and chemists.

The unexpectedly high levels detected on Venus could point to a floating microbial biosphere, the researchers suggested in a paper published in Nature Astronomy. But almost immediately, other astronomers began to criticize the results, with four independent studies pointing out questionable methods or failing to reproduce the results.

Now, after reanalyzing their data, the original proponents are downgrading their claims. Even the most favorable interpretation of their data now suggests phosphine levels are at least seven times lower than first reported, making it a much more tentative finding, the authors reported in a preprint posted on 17 November to arXiv. But the team still believes the gas is there, with the possibility that local pockets rise to higher levels, said Jane Greaves, an astronomer at Cardiff University who led the work, in a talk today to NASA’s Venus Exploration Analysis Group (VEXAG). “We have again a phosphine line.” ...

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/202...g-astronomers-downgrade-their-original-claims
 
Science moves forward, but also takes strange turns left, right, and even moves backwards when the data isn't repeatable. There is still a chance there is, or was, life on Venus and I'd love to know either way.
 
ramonmercado said:
... Researchers using two radio telescopes found signs that the clouds of Venus were harboring phosphine, a toxic compound that on Earth is only made in significant quantities by microbes and chemists. ...
Now, after reanalyzing their data, the original proponents are downgrading their claims. ...
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Update ... The prospective amount of phosphine detected in Venus' atmosphere was significantly reduced as a result of further analysis. Now, additional review and analysis suggests there wasn't any phosphine at all ...
Purported Phosphine – An Indicator of Life – On Venus More Likely to Be Ordinary Sulfur Dioxide

In September, a team led by astronomers in the United Kingdom announced that they had detected the chemical phosphine in the thick clouds of Venus. The team’s reported detection, based on observations by two Earth-based radio telescopes, surprised many Venus experts. Earth’s atmosphere contains small amounts of phosphine, which may be produced by life. Phosphine on Venus generated buzz that the planet, often succinctly touted as a “hellscape,” could somehow harbor life within its acidic clouds.

Since that initial claim, other science teams have cast doubt on the reliability of the phosphine detection. Now, a team led by researchers at the University of Washington has used a robust model of the conditions within the atmosphere of Venus to revisit and comprehensively reinterpret the radio telescope observations underlying the initial phosphine claim. As they report in a paper accepted to the Astrophysical Journal, the U.K.-led group likely wasn’t detecting phosphine at all.

“Instead of phosphine in the clouds of Venus, the data are consistent with an alternative hypothesis: They were detecting sulfur dioxide,” said co-author Victoria Meadows, a UW professor of astronomy. “Sulfur dioxide is the third-most-common chemical compound in Venus’ atmosphere, and it is not considered a sign of life.”
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FULL STORY: https://scitechdaily.com/purported-...us-more-likely-to-be-ordinary-sulfur-dioxide/
 
That's annoying. No, it is not a sign of (conventional) life.

And I find it very ironic that my most-favourite star (the beautiful morning / evening messenger of the twilight skies) has an atmosphere composed of horrible-old SO2, one of the many past lab accident reagents that I've unwillingly (and intimately) encountered.

I probably only breathed-up a tiny amount (a pressurised cannister vented explosively) but enough to empirically-confirm that it does appear to become H2SO4 in solution....(I'm probably needing just a bite from a radioactive spider to complete my already-extensive pathogenic dance card)
 
Scientists have found tectonic activity on Venus.

"Scientists have found evidence parts of Venus's surface move around like pieces of continent on Earth.

And while this activity is probably not driven by plate tectonics, as on Earth, it could be a "cousin" of that process.

The findings fit an emerging picture of a planet very much alive, in contrast to the traditional view of Venus.

Europe is launching a spacecraft, EnVision, to radar-map and gather spectroscopic measurements of the planet's surface and atmosphere."

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-57567577
 
The clouds on Venus are too dry to support life.

"It's not possible for life to exist in the clouds of Venus.

It's simply too dry, says an international research team led from Queen's University Belfast, UK.

Hopes had been raised last year that microbes might inhabit the Venusian atmosphere, given the presence there of the gas phosphine (PH3).

It was suggested the concentration could not be explained by geological activity alone. But the new Belfast study puts a dampener on this idea"

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-57641247
 
Newly published research claims Venus was always too hot to permit liquid water to collect on its surface.
Life on Venus may never have been possible

Venus was always too hot for oceans, a new study suggests.

Venus may not be such a tantalizing target for alien hunters after all.

In recent years, researchers have increasingly come to regard Venus, the second rock from the sun, as a potential abode for life. For example, modeling studies have suggested that ancient Venus had big oceans and a clement climate that might have persisted for several billion years.

Venus is famously hellish today, of course; its surface is bone-dry and hot enough to melt lead. But some scientists have argued that Venus life, if it ever existed, could persist there still, floating in the clouds about 30 miles (50 kilometers) up, where temperatures and pressures are similar to what we enjoy at sea level here on Earth.

A new study throws some cold water onto such hopes, however. ...

The previous, life-friendly modeling work determined that the planet cooled down enough to host liquid surface water thanks in large part to clouds, which bounced a lot of solar radiation back into space. The "faint young sun" was a contributing factor as well; in the early days of the solar system, our star was just 70% as luminous as it is now.

In the new study, which was published online Wednesday (Oct. 13) in the journal Nature, scientists led by Martin Turbet, a postdoctoral researcher at the Geneva Astronomical Observatory in Switzerland, simulated the climate of ancient Venus using a new model. And they came up with very different results.

Turbet and his team found that conditions on young Venus likely limited clouds to the planet's nightside, where they were worse than useless as far as the establishment of life is concerned. (Venus isn't tidally locked to the sun, so it doesn't have a permanent nightside; the term here refers to whatever hemisphere happens to be facing away from the sun at the time.)

Not only did these clouds bounce no sunlight away, they actually warmed Venus via a greenhouse effect, trapping lots of heat. So Venus never cooled down enough for rain to fall, and for rivers, lakes and oceans to form. ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/venus-never-habitable-no-oceans
See Also: https://www.sciencealert.com/there-s-no-way-venus-could-ever-have-had-oceans-new-research-finds

FULL RESEARCH REPORT: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03873-w
 
I am unsurprised!
 
SimonBurchell said:
Life in Venus' atmosphere? ...
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Newly concluded research has failed to support the notion some form of sulfur-metabolizing life could explain the chemistry of Venus' upper atmosphere.
New Analysis Finds No Signs of Life on Venus After Controversial Claims

A new and thorough analysis of the chemistry of clouds on Venus has revealed none of the biomarkers indicative of airborne, sulfur-metabolizing life.

For now, that means the question of detectable life in the clouds of Venus is pretty much answered. Until we get new information, it's likely to remain that way. The complex chemistry of the upper Venusian atmosphere simply cannot be explained by the presence of life as we know it.

After a team of scientists controversially announced that they had found phosphine gas in the clouds of Venus back in 2020, speculation about life in the clouds of Venus at temperate altitudes has run pretty rampant. ...

More recently, scientists have proposed that the chemistry could contain clues – and that life in the clouds of Venus may have developed sulfur-based metabolism, similar to what we have seen in microorganisms here on Earth. The signature of a compound of sulfur, sulfur dioxide (SO2), is very peculiar on Venus: abundant at lower altitudes, but really quite low at higher. ...

"We've spent the past two years trying to explain the weird sulfur chemistry we see in the clouds of Venus," says astronomer and chemist Paul Rimmer from the University of Cambridge. ...

So in the new study, a team of researchers led by astronomer Sean Jordan from the University of Cambridge set out to investigate the chemical reactions we should expect, given the available energy sources in Venus' atmosphere. ...

Using these as a basis, Jordan and his colleagues sought to model the chemical reactions that would be taking place were those lifeforms present, to see if they produce the observed composition of the Venusian atmosphere.

They found that sulfur-metabolizing life could produce the observed depletion of sulfur dioxide; but the output of the metabolic processes of a biomass of the size required would produce other compounds in abundances that, in brief, are simply not there. ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.sciencealert.com/it-s-official-we-can-detect-no-signs-of-sulfur-munching-life-on-venus
 
Balloons above Venus.

The balloon was floating over the Pacific Ocean when the first sound waves hit. For 11 seconds, a tiny device dangling beneath the large, transparent balloon recorded sudden, jerky fluctuations in air pressure: echoes of an earthquake more than 2,800 kilometers away.

That scientific instrument was one of four hovering high above the Malay Archipelago on December 14, 2021. That day the quartet became the first network of devices to monitor an earthquake from the air, researchers report in the Aug. 16 Geophysical Research Letters.

The finding could help scientists track earthquakes in remote areas on Earth, and also opens the door to one day sending specially equipped balloons to study the geology of other worlds, including our closest planetary neighbor.

“Venus is the sister planet of Earth, but it’s the evil twin sister,” says David Mimoun, a planetary scientist at the University of Toulouse in France. “We don’t know why the two planets are so different. That’s why we need measurements.”

The idea of using balloons to study far-off rumblings on Earth has its roots in the Cold War. In the 1940s, the U.S. military launched a top secret project to spy on Soviet nuclear weapons testing using microphones attached to balloons floating high in the atmosphere. When the ground shakes, it releases low-frequency sound waves that can travel long distances in the atmosphere. The military planned on using the microphones to pick up on the sound of the ground shaking from a nuclear explosion. But the project was eventually deemed too expensive and dropped — though not before one of the balloons crashed in New Mexico, launching the Roswell conspiracy.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/balloons-earthquake-detection-venus-geology
 
Venus is volcanically alive, stunning new find shows

For half a century, scientists have dreamed of spying erupting volcanoes on Venus. This unfathomably hot world is obfuscated by noxious clouds, but past missions have revealed the surface is covered in volcanic features. And now, thanks to the recorded memories of a long-dead spacecraft, scientists have struck scientific gold: They’ve seen a vent on Venus change shape, expand, and appear to overflow with molten rock.

“My bet is there was an eruption of a lava lake,” says Robert Herrick, a planetary scientist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and one of the new study’s two co-authors.

As reported today in the in the journal Science, Herrick and a colleague spotted the volcanic maw—on the side of the colossal volcano Maat Mons—in radar images taken by NASA’s Magellan spacecraft in 1991.

“This is one of the most convincing pieces of evidence we’ve seen,” says Stephen Kane, a planetary astrophysicist.

Hoping to map the planet’s features in unprecedented detail, NASA’s radar-equipped Magellan spacecraft arrived in 1990.

By repeatedly orbiting the planet and examining the same places several times, scientists hoped to spot signs of volcanic activity.

[Herrick said] “Whenever I had an hour here or there, I just started looking” at the old Magellan data. He manually aligned images of Venus’s volcanoes, searching for anything odd.

During one search, Herrick forensically examined Maat Mons. Named after the Egyptian goddess of truth and justice, it is the tallest volcano on the planet—and on one of its flanks, between February and October 1991, something changed. In those eight months, matter appears to have flooded into an open vent, which grew from 0.8 to 1.5 square miles, and a fresh stream of material seemingly oozed downslope.

…the most probable scenario is that in 1991, a huge eruption of lava filled the expanding vent, and some of it poured over the rim or bled through a fissure. “We can definitely say it changed shape,” Herrick says. And when a volcano changes shape that dramatically on Earth, the root cause is always molten rock.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/venus-is-volcanically-alive

maximus otter
 
Very interesting. Venus appears to have a 'stagnant lid' tectonic regime; the crust doesn't move about much and is thicker and more solid, but occasional vents do break through.
299515_2_En_4_Fig3_HTML.png


More details here
https://worldbuildingpasta.blogspot.com/2020/01/an-apple-pie-from-scratch-part-vb.html#dripandplume
 
Phosphine has been found again:

"Last week, though, Greaves delivered some potentially groundbreaking news at the Royal Astronomical Society’s National Astronomy Meeting in Cardiff. Using Hawaii’s James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT), her team has spotted phosphine deeper in the atmosphere of Venus than before, in the middle of the planet’s stinky, acidic clouds. Based on their observations, they think that the chemical could be coming from somewhere lower in the atmosphere."

https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-c...en-life-on-venus-clouds-atmosphere-phosphine-
 
A Venusian Cloud City!

In the aftermath of the Titan submersible implosion near the site of the sunken Titanic, OceanGate — the company behind the fated expedition — has been a bit of a PR kick. Understandably! The company's co-founder, Guillermo Söhnlein, recently had a publicity chat with Business Insider in which he revealed his long-term plans to build a floating Venusian colony with at least 1000 human residents by the year 2050:

In spite of this, Söhnlein doesn't see why humanity shouldn't attempt to live on the planet. He points to research that suggests there is a sliver of the Venusian atmosphere about 30 miles from the surface where humans could theoretically survive because temperatures are lower and pressure is less intense.
If a space station could be designed to withstand the sulfuric acid in the clouds, Söhnlein says, hundreds to thousands of people could someday live in the Venusian atmosphere.
He says a floating colony could hold 1,000 people in the Venusian atmosphere by 2050, although exactly how this will happen is less clear.
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Technically speaking, the Venusian expedition would be the provenance of a separate startup from OceanGate, one called Humans2Venus. The Insider piece compares this aspiration to SpaceX's plans to colonize a Mars — a distant dream used to attract investors, so that the company can develop technologies such as Starlink on the path towards that lofty pitch goal.

https://boingboing.net/2023/07/31/o...o-send-1000-rich-people-to-venus-by-2050.html
 
ramonmercado said:
A Venusian Cloud City!

In the aftermath of the Titan submersible implosion near the site of the sunken Titanic, OceanGate — the company behind the fated expedition — has been a bit of a PR kick. Understandably! The company's co-founder, Guillermo Söhnlein, recently had a publicity chat with Business Insider in which he revealed his long-term plans to build a floating Venusian colony with at least 1000 human residents by the year 2050:


Technically speaking, the Venusian expedition would be the provenance of a separate startup from OceanGate, one called Humans2Venus. The Insider piece compares this aspiration to SpaceX's plans to colonize a Mars — a distant dream used to attract investors, so that the company can develop technologies such as Starlink on the path towards that lofty pitch goal.

https://boingboing.net/2023/07/31/o...o-send-1000-rich-people-to-venus-by-2050.html
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Think of the views of, well clouds of sulphuric acid.

"Was that Carson Napier in his anotar?"
"No just a wisp of sulphuric acid cloud."
"What shall we do now?"
"Let's go and see how fast the hull is corroding."
"At least it didn't cost as much as going to the Mars colony."

Research station, maybe. Colony, no. Unless they sent the Kardashians, I'd chip in for that.
 
Curiously the Venusian clouds are the second-most hospitable environment in the Solar System for humans; right temperature, right pressure, right gravity. The clouds are toxic, and there's no land up there, but you can't have everything. Saturn's clouds are a close third, except you have to go down to the 2 bar level to get warm.
 
eburacum said:
Curiously the Venusian clouds are the second-most hospitable environment in the Solar System for humans; right temperature, right pressure, right gravity. The clouds are toxic, and there's no land up there, but you can't have everything. Saturn's clouds are a close third, except you have to go down to the 2 bar level to get warm.
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Didn't know that. Well, who needs air and land anyway!! Technically I'd guess they would be harder and perhaps riskier to colonise than Mars or the Moon though. Is it possible to use the Venusian atmosphere to manufacture an Earth style atmosphere?
 
Yes. Venus' atmosphere contains carbon dioxide and nitrogen. Earth's atmosphere contains nitrogen and oxygen. So it is reasonably straightforward to convert one to the other. The excess carbon could come in useful for food production.

What is missing from the mix is hydrogen to make water; hydrogen is very rare on this planet, and would require a lot of energy to gather or import.
 
eburacum said:
Curiously the Venusian clouds are the second-most hospitable environment in the Solar System for humans; right temperature, right pressure, right gravity. The clouds are toxic, and there's no land up there, but you can't have everything. Saturn's clouds are a close third, except you have to go down to the 2 bar level to get warm.
Click to expand...
What about the increased radiation from the Sun and solar flares?
 
Venus doesn't really have much of a magnetic field, since it rotates very slowly. But if you were located in the Venusian hospitable zone, you would have just as much atmosphere above your head as we do above ours. That would protect against cosmic rays and most flares (except perhaps the worst ones). A Venusian cloud-colony would need to be hardened against coronal mass-ejections, like any colony in the Inner system.

Sunlight would be brighter there, but all sunlight would enter the habitat through the outer skin of the balloon, so you could regulate this with tinted or reflective layers. Also important would be temperature regulation - a habitat in Venus' super-rotating atmosphere would travel around the planet every four days, much faster than the planet rotates, but still longer than an Earth day. In the Venusian day it could get a little too warm, and at night it could get too cool, so active temperature management would be necessary.
 
More phospine found:

"UK astronomers studying the clouds of Venus have detected what they describe as a robust phosphine signal in their latest set of observations, adding to the case for alien life.

A variant of phosphorus, phosphine in these concentrations, is a strong biosignature, meaning that if found on Earth, the best explanation would be it is being made from biological life."

https://thedebrief.org/another-robu...s-significantly-bolsters-case-for-alien-life/
 
Meteors rather than lightning causing flashes?

Occasional flashes light up Venus’ shroud of clouds.

Previous analyses have hinted that the bursts of light could be lightning in the hellish world’s atmosphere. But a new study suggests most of the flashes may be nothing more than the brief yet brilliant blazes of meteors.

With upcoming missions planned for Venus, scientists are eager to figure out the light’s origin (SN: 6/2/21). If the flashes are lightning, the electrical phenomenon could pose risks to future probes dropping through the Venusian atmosphere or carried by balloons for extended periods in the planet’s clouds, says Claire Blaske, a planetary scientist now at Stanford University. Small meteors that burn up in the atmosphere, however, wouldn’t pose much of a danger.

Previous landers on Venus have often detected electromagnetic static similar to the type picked up on AM radio and caused by lightning during thunderstorms on Earth, Blaske says. And orbiters and Earth-based telescopes have discerned brief, bright flashes in the atmosphere.

But the static and optical flashes have never been detected simultaneously, Blaske says. And, notes Paul Byrne, a planetary scientist at Washington University in St. Louis who was not involved in the study, “it’s not clear there is the potential for lightning on Venus” given how little is known about the dynamics of its atmosphere.

Blaske, then at Arizona State University in Tempe, and her colleagues wondered whether meteors could be masquerading as lightning on Venus. Two surveys counted the flashes of light: one by a telescope on Arizona’s Mount Bigelow and one by instruments aboard Japan’s Akatsuki orbiter (SN: 12/8/15).

Given that data, there are probably between 10,000 and 100,000 of these flashes each year, the researchers report in the September Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.

That may seem like too many flashes to all be caused by meteors. After all, Venus is a slightly smaller cosmic target than Earth. But meteors there will be substantially brighter — and thus more noticeable — because they are traveling faster on average: The space rocks zip through Venus’ atmosphere at about 25 kilometers per second, compared with 20.3 kilometers per second for meteoroids entering Earth’s atmosphere. In part, that’s because Venus is traveling around the sun faster than Earth is.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/venus-atmosphere-meteor-lightning-space
 
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