Related papers: A heterogeneous lithosphere on Venus
The clouds have a great impact on Venus's energy budget and climate evolution, but its three-dimensional structure is still not well understood. Here we incorporate a simple Venus cloud physics scheme into a flexible GCM to investigate the…
A key item of interest for planetary scientists and astronomers is the habitable zone, or the distance from a host star where a terrestrial planet can maintain necessary temperatures in order to retain liquid water on its surface. However,…
Young terrestrial planets, when they are still embedded in a circumstellar disk, accumulate an atmosphere of nebula gas. The evolution and eventual evaporation of the protoplanetary disk affect the structure and dynamics of the planetary…
The migration of U and Th inside a planet is controlled by its oxidation state imposed by the volatile composition. In the deep interior of a planet, an absence of oxidative volatiles will cause U and Th to stay in a state of metal or low…
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…
The composition of an atmosphere has integrated the geological history of the entire planetary body. However, the long-term evolutions of the atmospheres of the terrestrial planets are not well documented. For Earth, there were until…
The atmosphere of a transiting planet shields the stellar radiation providing us with a powerful method to estimate its size and density. In particular, because of their high ionization energy, atoms with high atomic number (Z) absorb…
Climate transitions on exoplanets offer valuable insights into the atmospheric processes governing planetary habitability. Previous pure-steam atmospheric models show a thermal limit in outgoing long-wave radiation, which has been used to…
The similarity of Venus and Earth in bulk properties make Venus an appealing target for future colonization. Several proposals have been put forward for colonizing and even terraforming Venus despite the extreme conditions on the planet's…
Giant impacts were common in the early evolution of the Solar System, and it is possible that Venus also experienced an impact. A giant impact on Venus could have affected its rotation rate and possibly its thermal evolution. In this work,…
The atmospheres of the terrestrial planets are known to have been modified as a consequence of the impact degassing and atmospheric erosion during the late accretion. Despite the commonality of these processes, there are distinct gaps --…
Earth has had oceans for nearly four billion years and Mars had lakes and rivers 3.5-3.8 billion years ago. However, it is still unknown whether water has ever condensed on the surface of Venus because the planet - now completely dry - has…
The volcanism plays an important part in mass exchange circle to bring matter from core of planet to atmosphere. Thus, it is a possible method to research the change of elements abundance in atmosphere by modeling the process of volatiles…
The light scattered by an extrasolar Earth-like planet's surface and atmosphere will vary in intensity and color as the planet rotates; the resulting light curve will contain information about the planet's properties. Since most of the…
Measuring Venus' atmospheric circulation at different altitudes is important for understanding its complex dynamics, in particular the mechanisms driving the super-rotation. Observationally, Doppler imaging spectroscopy is in principle be…
Extreme instellation on lava planets causes the rocky surface to melt and vaporize. Because the rock vapour composition is intrinsically tied to the mantle, atmospheric characterization of lava planets can hold valuable insight into the…
A major goal in the search for extraterrestrial life is the detection of liquid water on the surface of exoplanets. On terrestrial planets, volcanic outgassing is a significant source of atmospheric and surface water and a major contributor…
The zonal winds on the surfaces of giant planets vary with latitude. Jupiter and Saturn, for example, have several bands of alternating eastward (prograde) and westward (retrograde) jets relative to the angular velocity of their global…
A sufficient amount of water is required at the surface to develop water oceans. A significant fraction of water, however, remains in the mantle during magma ocean solidification, and thus the existence of water oceans is not guaranteed…
This document is the EnVision Venus orbiter proposal, submitted in October 2016 in response to ESA's M5 call for Medium-size missions for its Science Programme, for launch in 2029. Why are the terrestrial planets so different? Venus should…