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It is not for nothing that Venus received the nickname "the evil twin of the Earth": red-hot, dehydrated, covered with toxic clouds. But just one or two billion years ago, the two sisters may have been more alike. New computer simulations suggest that early Venus closely resembled our home planet and might even be habitable.
“One of the biggest mysteries of Venus is how it happened that it is so different from the Earth. The question becomes even more interesting when from the astrobiological side you consider the possibility that Venus and Earth were very similar during the dawn of earthly life, ”says David Grinspoon of the US Planetary Institute in Tucson, Arizona.
Grinspoon and his colleagues were not the first to suggest that Venus was once habitable. It is similar to Earth in size and density, and the fact that the two planets formed close to each other cannot be ignored, which suggests that they were created from similar materials. Venus also has an unusually high ratio of deuterium to hydrogen atoms, a sign that it once had a significant amount of water that mysteriously disappeared over time.
An artistic depiction of the climate of modern Venus. Credit: Deviantart / Tr1umph
To simulate early Venus, the researchers turned to the environmental model used to study climate change on Earth. They created four scenarios, slightly disagreeing on details, such as the amount of energy received from the Sun, or the length of a Venusian day. Where information was scarce about the climate of Venus, the team filled in the gaps with educated guesses. They also added a shallow ocean (10% of the Earth's ocean volume), covering about 60% of the planet's surface.
Looking at the evolution of each version over time, the researchers hypothesized that the planet might look like early Earth, and be habitable for a significant period. The most promising of the four scenarios was the model with moderate temperatures, thick clouds and little snowfall.
Could there be life on early Venus? If this did not happen, the reason is that oceans and volcanoes boiled away later, which dramatically changed the landscape about 715 million years ago. Still, the team did not rule out the possibility of the development of life in ancient times on the second planet of the solar system.
“Both planets probably enjoyed warm oceans of water combined with rocky shores and organic molecules chemically evolved in those oceans. As far as we understand, today these are the requirements for theories of the origin of life, ”says David Grinspoon.
To reinforce these findings, future missions to Venus should focus on signs of water-related erosion that would provide evidence of past oceans. Such signs have already been found on Mars. NASA is currently considering two potential Venus exploration projects, although none has been approved yet.
Tatiana Zimina. According to ESA and IKI RAN.
A snapshot of Venus in the ultraviolet range (wavelength 0.365 microns), taken from a distance of 30,000 km using a camera installed on the European spacecraft Venera-Express. The photo shows dark and light areas associated with unknown
Billions of years ago, Venus likely had significantly more water than it does now. The European spacecraft Venera Express, which has been operating in Venusian orbit since April 2006, has confirmed that the planet has lost large amounts of water in the past.
Venus and Earth are considered superficially similar planets - they have approximately the same size, gravity and are very similar in basic chemical composition. This allows us to assume that in the past on Venus, as on Earth, there were oceans, which means there could be life. Today, the planet is heated to 460 ° C, and water is present only in its atmosphere and in such small quantities that, if it condenses on the planetary surface, it forms a layer only 3 cm thick.
Why did Venus lose her water? According to astrophysicists, once, from about 500 million to 4 billion years from the birth of the planet, under the influence of the ultraviolet rays of the Sun, water molecules disintegrated into atoms - two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, and were carried away, probably by the solar wind, into the interplanetary space. After all, Venus, in contrast to the Earth, does not have a magnetic field that could protect it from the solar wind - a stream of charged particles that freely bombard the upper atmosphere of the "blue" planet, carrying away ions from it.
Experiments carried out with the Analyzer of Space Plasma and Energetic Atoms (ASPERA), installed on board the European spacecraft, have shown that there are indeed huge losses of hydrogen and oxygen on the night side of Venus, and in the ratio, characteristic of water molecules. The "exit" rate of these atoms was measured. At the same time, as experiments have shown, the upper layers of the planet's atmosphere contain an increased amount of deuterium, which, being a heavier atom in comparison with hydrogen, breaks out of the planet's embrace with less ease.
According to Colin Wilson of the University of Oxford (UK), experimental data indicate that Venus had a lot of water in the past. However, this still does not mean that there were oceans on its surface.
Eric Chassfier from the University of Paris-South (France) developed a mathematical model according to which water on Venus was mainly present in its atmosphere and existed only in the earliest stages of the planet's development, when it was in a molten state. After the decayed water molecules escaped into space, the temperature dropped, which probably led to the solidification of the planet's surface. That is, according to this model, there have never been any oceans on Venus. True, even if Chassfier's model turns out to be correct, this does not exclude the possibility that water could be delivered to the planet by comets after its surface has become solid. This water could become a habitat for living organisms.
The goal of the European mission "Venus Express" is to study the evolution of the atmosphere of Venus and the volatiles it contains: how they arose and how they interacted with the surface, as well as how the atmosphere interacts with the solar wind. In addition, it was assumed that the experiments would reveal volcanic and seismic activity on the planet.
The equipment of the European spacecraft includes several scientific instruments created with the participation of Russian scientists from the IKI RAS and NPO. Lavochkin. It is a high-resolution spectrometer and universal spectrometer (SPICAV-SOIR) designed to study the vertical structure of the atmosphere, temperature profiles, clouds and small atmospheric components. And also a planetary Fourier spectrometer, designed for optical analysis of the atmosphere and the study of its thermal structure (the device turned out to be inoperative).
Note that Venus is the main object of research of Russian planetary scientists, a total of 16 spacecraft of the Venera series and two Vega vehicles with landing modules and balloon stations were launched to it. Thanks to measurements made from the Soviet descent and landing space stations in the 1970s-1980s, a basic model of the atmosphere of Venus was built.
Currently, the Russian project "Venus-D" (the letter "d" means "long-lived") is being developed for further study of the chemical composition of the atmosphere, surface and clarification of the same question: where did the water disappear from the planet?
The main difference between the lander of the new Russian space complex is the relatively long (several days) performance of its scientific equipment under conditions of high temperatures and pressures. (The landing craft of the previous Venusian stations worked on the planet for no more than an hour and a half.) The mission will include an orbital block, a descent vehicle and a flotilla of balloons that will fly at altitudes from 35 to 60 km and from which the surface will be surveyed. The launch of the spacecraft is planned for the end of 2016.
Life came to Earth from the morning star
In recent years, the attention of curious and intelligent people around the world has been riveted to Mars due to the fact that the Curiosity rover crawls along its surface and transfers from there unique information, fantastically interesting images of the surface and a lot of useful and important things. Against this background, interest in other planets of the solar system, for example, Venus, somehow weakened. And, meanwhile, she, as some researchers believe, is our ancestral home. About two billion years later, the Morning Star had water: rivers, oceans, lakes, even swamps and puddles. This guess of scientists about water was confirmed by information from the Venus Express probe.
This means that life could well exist on Venus, which then migrated to .
Some researchers are inclined to believe that life on the planet has survived to this day in the form of extremophile microorganisms (which feel confident in an extremely dangerous and aggressive environment), or thrives in the thick clouds of Venus, where conditions are quite suitable for the simplest.
It is interesting
Non-crater relief forms of Venus are named in honor of mythical, fairytale and legendary women: the heights are given the names of the goddesses of different peoples, the lows of the relief - other characters from various mythologies
And not only
Even more daring assumptions were made by Russian scientists, saying that life on Venus thrives not only in the form.
In the images received from the probe, they saw much larger organisms.
Although opponents disagree, answering that there is nothing definite in the photographs, only what the researchers would like to see.
In fact, it's hard to believe even on a planet named after the goddess of love.
It is interesting
Maya called Venus - the planet Noh Ek - "Great Star", or Shush Ek - "Star of the Wasp" and believed that Venus personifies the god Kukulkan
There is no place for love on the surface today.
There, rather, hell, as it was imagined by the believers in the Middle Ages.
All the conditions have been created for a yellowish-white planet: an acid shower, a steam room (on the surface, the temperature goes off scale for half a thousand degrees).
It is interesting
In the Soviet film "Planet of Storms," \u200b\u200bVenus is depicted as a world seething with life. The fauna of Venus resembles terrestrial fauna in the Mesozoic era
Internal structure
Rotation around its own axis
The character of this eccentric planet is not easy. It is also expressed in her willfulness.
Solar systems rotate on their axis from west to east. Uranus and Venus are the exception to this rule.
They rotate in the opposite direction: from east to west. This kind of rotation is called retrograde.
The planet makes a complete revolution around its axis in 243 days.
It is interesting
In many of R. Heinlein's novels, Venus is depicted as a gloomy swampy world, reminiscent of the Amazon valley during the rainy season. The planet is inhabited by intelligent inhabitants that resemble dragons or seals
Planet Venus in the starry sky
Finding Venus in the sky is very easy.
In terms of the brightness of the glow, it is the third celestial body after the Sun and the Moon. It can sometimes be seen as a small white dot in the sky during the day.
Many watched as the first star lights up at dusk in the still bright sky - this is Venus. As the dawn fades, Venus flares up brighter.
And when it envelops the Earth in a dense fabric and a whole host of stars appears in the sky, our star stands out among them. True, it does not shine for long, it comes in an hour or two.
The second star from the Sun is easy to see with ordinary field glasses, and people with good eyesight can see the sickle of Venus with the naked eye.
This happens because sometimes it approaches the Earth at a very close distance. In addition, the morning star is relatively large, slightly smaller than the Earth.
The light of Venus is so bright that when there is no sun or moon in the sky, it causes objects to cast shadows.
It is interesting
The planet Venus is very fond of rock musicians. One of the albums by Wings (Paul McCartney) is called Venus and Mars. Rammstein's song "Morgenstern" is dedicated to this planet. One of Boney M.'s albums is called "Night Flight to Venus", Lady Gaga's first promotional single is called "Venus"
In their search for extraterrestrial life, scientists have considered many different options. For example, Mars has geological features that suggest it once had liquid water, one of the basic conditions for life.
Scientists are also studying Saturn's moons Titan and Enceladus, and Jupiter's moons Europa, Ganymede and Callisto as possible safe havens for life in the ice-covered oceans.
Now scientists have returned to an old idea that promises a new perspective in the search for life beyond Earth: life on Venus, more precisely in the clouds of Venus.
In an article published March 30 in the journal Astrobiology, an international team of researchers led by planetary scientist Sanjay Limaye of the University of Wisconsin is looking at Venus's atmosphere as a possible habitat for extraterrestrial microbial life.
“Venus has had ample time for life to evolve on its own,” explains Limay, noting that some models suggest Venus once had the right climatic conditions and liquid water on the surface for 2 billion years. "It's much longer than Mars."
On Earth, ground-based microorganisms, mainly bacteria, can enter the atmosphere, where they have been found alive at altitudes up to 41 kilometers by scientists using specially equipped balloons from NASA's Ames Research Center, according to study co-author David Smith.
There is also a growing catalog of microbes known to inhabit the incredibly harsh environments on our planet, including the Yellowstone hot springs, deep-sea hydrothermal vents, toxic sediment from polluted areas and lakes around the world.
“On Earth, we know that life can thrive in very difficult conditions, can feed on carbon dioxide and produce sulfuric acid,” says Rakesh Mogul, professor of biological chemistry at California State Polytechnic University. He notes that Venus's cloudy, very dense, and acidic atmosphere is composed primarily of carbon dioxide and water droplets containing sulfuric acid.
The idea of \u200b\u200ba possible life in the clouds of Venus was first raised in 1967 by biophysicist Harold Morowitz and famous astronomer Carl Sagan. Decades later, planetary scientists David Grinspoon, Mark Bullock and their colleagues have expanded on this idea.
Confirming the notion that the atmosphere of Venus could be a suitable niche for life, a series of space probes on the planet, launched between 1962 and 1978, showed that the temperature and pressure conditions in the lower and middle parts of the Venusian atmosphere are between 40 and 60 kilometers - would not interfere with microbial life.
It is known that the surface conditions on the planet are very inhospitable - the temperature reaches 460 degrees Celsius, and the pressure is 90 atmospheres.
Sanjay Limaye, who is doing his research as a NASA scientist on the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Akatsuki mission to Venus, wanted to get back to the idea of \u200b\u200bstudying the planet's atmosphere after a chance meeting at a seminar with co-author Grzegorz Slovik of Poland's Zielona Gora University.
Slovik told him about bacteria on Earth with light-absorbing properties similar to the unidentified particles that make up the unexplained dark spots seen in the clouds of Venus. Spectroscopic observations, especially in ultraviolet light, show that the dark spots are composed of concentrated sulfuric acid and other unknown light-absorbing particles.
These dark spots have been a mystery since they were first spotted by ground-based telescopes nearly a century ago, Limaye says. They were studied in more detail during flights of robotic probes to the planet.
“Venus exhibits some episodic dark, sulfur-rich patches, with contrasts up to 30-40 percent in ultraviolet light and muted in longer wavelengths of light. These stains persist for several days, constantly changing their shape and size, ”says Limaye.
The particles that make up the dark spots are almost the same size as some bacteria on Earth, although instruments that have studied Venus's atmosphere to date are unable to distinguish between organic and inorganic materials.
The spots can be something like the algal blooms that usually occur in the lakes and oceans of the Earth - only they must develop in the atmosphere of Venus.
Venus Atmospheric Maneuverable Platform (VAMP).
Image: Northrop Grumman
In the hunt for extraterrestrial life, planetary atmospheres other than Earth remain largely unexplored.
One opportunity to study Venus's clouds, Limaye says, is on the drawing board: VAMP or the Venus Atmospheric Maneuverable Platform, a ship that flies like an airplane but floats like an airship and can stay aloft in the planet's cloud layer for up to a year to collect data and samples.
Such a platform could include meteorological, chemical sensors and spectrometers, Limay says. It can also carry a special type of microscope capable of identifying living microorganisms.
“To really know, we need to study the clouds in situ,” the scientists say. "Venus could be an exciting new chapter in the exploration of extraterrestrial life."
Scientists remain hopeful that such a chapter can be opened, as discussions are currently underway about the possible participation of NASA in the Russian mission of Roscosmos-Venus-D, which is slated for the late 2020s. Current plans for Venus-D may include an orbiter, a landing pad and ground station built by NASA, and a maneuverable aerial platform.
More information: Sanjay S. Limaye et al. Venus' Spectral Signatures and the Potential for Life in the Clouds, Astrobiology (2018). DOI: 10.1089 / ast.2017.1783
Is there life on Venus
We have very little knowledge of our solar system. Why is this happening to us? The fact is thatwe have forgotten how to contact with different higher Intelligences and receive from Them various useful information and due to our "ignorance" we are and live in ours " isolated the world "(so the Higher Forces said on contact) ... Therefore, the world of our Earth at the moment is "isolated world" from all those worlds where people like us live. But only They use all the information banks of the Universe, which contain all the information for billions of years of its existence, and we do not !!!
We have very little knowledge not only of the Universe, but also of our solar system. We even have very little knowledge about our Earth. But our Earth exists in 49 dimensions about which we know absolutely nothing! But it is on our Earth that the Hyperboreans live, who are much ahead of us in all respects. And when we sometimes see flying saucers, then in all likelihood, these are the ones flying. And on our Earth there is a very advanced Space zoo where representatives of the Higher Forces take the most advanced animals from all over the Universe. We believe that life in our solar system can exist, besides our planet, only on the planet Mars. But the Higher Forces said, - H then there, except for unicellular organisms there is no life at all !
And here alien Civilizations pay great attention to the planet Venus ... The fact is that the atmosphere there is very dense and consists of carbon gas, and the clouds that are in it consist of sulfuric acid. One day there is equal to 117 Earth days. And the pressure is 92 times higher than the Earth's. But it is there , where at first glance life is impossible , there is a life similar to Earth !
Here is one of the " parallel worlds " Venus is inhabited by humanoid creatures that have more than just an energy body, but also physical ( human body), and at the same time this civilization is much older than ours. I.e except for our planet Earth, people in our solar system inhabitonly on the planet Venus !!! And these people appeared on one of Her " parallel worlds "much earlier than our 5th race appeared on Earth !!!
But an experiment was carried out by the Forces of the Universe on resettlement of people from our planetto one of the parallel worlds of Venus. This experiment was 30% successful. And the main reason for such a low indicator was that the plant world in this world did not correspond at all to the Earthly one, to which people from the Earth were accustomed and adapted! And there is no humanoid life anywhere else in our solar system !!!
Throughout our Universe there are "Snails of time", and absolutely for all "snails of time" there is a strict hierarchy! Let's take our Earth as an example. She has two" at liters of time. "One is for our Earth, and the other" snail ", which is located behind it, connects it with other systems of the Universe. And approximately the same happens in the entire Universe. That is, one" snail of time "is necessarily located in another , which connects it with an even larger object. And in our Galaxy, all "temporary snails" exist just like that!
But in our solar system there are also four planets with shape-shifting "snails of time". These are Mars, Venus, Pluto and the Moon.
And due to the fact that on these planets the "snails of time" have the opposite location, people from our planet will not be able to stay there for any long time since after a while they will get there irreversible" psychological shock" and a number of irreversible changes, which they can never get rid of . And if they stay there long enough, they just " destroy each other "from aggression, which will flare up suddenly and involuntarily! Therefore, neither on Mars, nor on other planets of Humanoid life - no! Except Venus!!! True, those people who were resettled from our Earth to Venus were to some extent restructured for these " snails of time shifters " and therefore this influence did not extend to them !!! But for people from Earth, the Higher Forces have done a special job of adapting such people to life on Venus in one of Her "parallel worlds" !!
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