“Venus has never fully recovered from dashing our dreams.
“Our original vision of Venus was rudely destroyed,” said David Grinspoon, a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute and a long-time proponent of Venus exploration. The clouds and carbon dioxide lock in the Sun’s warmth, creating a runaway greenhouse effect that bakes the planet.
Revised average surface temperatures shot up to a scorching 470 degrees Celsius (880 degrees Fahrenheit)-hot enough to melt lead.Īdditionally, space missions found that unlike Earth’s puffy water-vapor clouds, Venus’ clouds contained mostly carbon dioxide with droplets of skin-searing sulfuric acid. Subsequent Soviet, U.S., and European missions in the 1960s and ‘70s only made the prospect of life worse, confirming it was the surface, not the atmosphere, that was oppressive. It is more likely that if there is life on Venus, it is probably of a “It is just possible that the surface temperature could then be almostĮarthlike and life as we know it could exist there,” he said. That the planet’s harsh conditions might only exist in the atmosphere. Science communicator-conjectured in the NASA film The Clouds of Venus Professor named Carl Sagan-still years away from becoming a well-known “Venus Says No,” lamented a headline in the New York Times, opining that Mariner 2’s “message from Venus may mark the beginning of the end of mankind’s grand romantic dreams.” (300 to 400 degrees Fahrenheit) and a punishing atmospheric pressure 20 Venus, recording temperatures of at least 150 to 200 degrees Celsius
Mission, dashed this idyllic view in December 1962. NASA’s Mariner 2 spacecraft, the very first successful planetary Tropical paradise with oceans and abundant vegetation. Shrouds Venus’ surface, some hoped that the world next door was a Nearly the same size and density, and because a thick veil of clouds Planet, perhaps even habitable like our own. Did life ever flourish on Venus, and is there something still alive in its clouds, or will these latest findings only add to a long list of false hopes?īefore the Space Age, scientists considered Venus as Earth’s sister But Greaves’ finding has renewed interest in a planet some scientists say has been neglected for far too long. Venus, once hoped to harbor paradise, was written off as the most inhospitable place in the solar system. “I spent ages thinking there was nothing there, but one evening, I was pushing the data around, and suddenly, I realized it all came together,” Greaves told The Planetary Society. It wasn’t a strong signal, but it definitely seemed to be there. Nothing we know of on Venus could produce more than just a trace of phosphine-unless there is something living in the planet’s pale clouds.Ī year later, as Greaves sat alone in her office, she saw what she was looking for in her Venus data: indications of phosphine. It’s also manufactured as an industrial fumigant to rid houses of moths, beetles, and fruit flies.įor decades, some scientists have theorized that Venus could harbor life in its upper atmosphere, where temperatures and pressures are benign despite the hellscape beneath. On Earth, you can find phosphine in swamps, where bacteria produce it as a waste product. Greaves and her team were looking for a little-known chemical called phosphine. The telescope’s instruments dutifully recorded the light coming from the planet for Jane Greaves, an astronomer and astrobiologist at Cardiff University in Wales. One night in 2017, the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawai’i turned its 15-meter dish toward the bright-yellow dot of Venus.