Related papers: The Venus Life Equation
One popular view of Venus' climate history describes a world that has spent much of its life with surface liquid water, plate tectonics, and a stable temperate climate. Part of the basis for this optimistic scenario is the high deuterium to…
Venus is Earth's sister planet, with similar mass and density but an uninhabitably hot surface, an atmosphere with a water activity 50-100 times lower than anywhere on Earths' surface, and clouds believed to be made of concentrated sulfuric…
For over half a century, scientists have contemplated the potential existence of life within the clouds of Venus. Unknown chemistry leaves open the possibility that certain regions of the Venusian atmosphere are habitable. In situ…
We explore the atmospheric and surface history of a hypothetical paleo-Venus climate using a 3-D General Circulation Model. We constrain our model with the in-situ and remote sensing Venus data available today. Given that Venus and Earth…
A major focus of the planetary science and astrobiology community is the understanding of planetary habitability, including the myriad factors that control the evolution and sustainability of temperate surface environments such as that of…
Current models indicate that Venus may have been habitable. Complex life may have evolved on the highly irradiated Venus, and transferred to Earth on asteroids. This model fits the pattern of pulses of highly developed life appearing,…
Venus's past climate evolution is uncertain. General circulation model simulations permit a habitable climate as late as ~0.7 Ga, and there is suggestive-albeit inconclusive-evidence for previous liquid water from surface geomorphology and…
The search for life elsewhere in the universe is one of the central aims of science in the 21st century. While most of this work is aimed at planets orbiting other stars, the search for life in our own Solar System is an important part of…
Present-day Venus is an inhospitable place with surface temperatures approaching 750K and an atmosphere over 90 times as thick as present day Earth's. Billions of years ago the picture may have been very different. We have created a suite…
We have investigated the possible evolutional history of the water ocean on Venus, adopting the one dimensional radiative-convective model,including the parameters as albedo and relative humidity. Under this model, it has the possibility…
Here, we evaluate our nearest planetary neighbor, Venus, as an exemplar of the runaway greenhouse state that bounds the inner edge of the habitable zone. Despite its current hellish surface environment, Venus may once have been habitable…
Venus' atmosphere -- specifically its clouds buoyed up 40 to 60 km above the surface -- has long been suspected to encompass a biosphere where Earth-like living organisms could grow and flourish. This idea has been recently rekindled by the…
Venus may have had both an Earth-like climate as well as extensive water oceans and active (or incipient) plate tectonics for an extended interval of its history. The topographical power spectrum of Venus provides important clues to the…
Why are the terrestrial planets so different? Venus should be the most Earth-like of all our planetary neighbours. Its size, bulk composition and distance from the Sun are very similar to those of the Earth. Its original atmosphere was…
The key goals of the astrobiology community are to identify environments beyond Earth that may be habitable, and to search for signs of life in those environments. A fundamental aspect of understanding the limits of habitable environments…
An ancient Venusian rock could constrain that planet's history, and reveal the past existence of oceans. Such samples may persist on the Moon, which lacks an atmosphere and significant geological activity. We demonstrate that if Venus'…
Venus currently rotates slowly, with its spin controlled by solid-body and atmospheric thermal tides. However, conditions may have been far different 4 billion years ago, when the Sun was fainter and most of the carbon within Venus could…
Little is known about the early evolution of Venus and a potential habitable period during the first one billion years. In particular, it remains unclear whether or not plate tectonics and an active carbonate-silicate cycle were present. In…
Venus is known for its extreme surface temperature and its sulfuric acid clouds. But the cloud layers on Venus have similar temperature and pressure conditions to those on the surface of Earth and are conjectured to be a possible habitat…
This work reviews the long-term evolution of the atmosphere of Venus, and modulation of its composition by interior-exterior cycling. The formation and evolution of Venus's atmosphere, leading to contemporary surface conditions, remain…