The Solar System actually has three planets located within the “habitable zone,” but British scientists have just delivered some bad news.
In recent years, while Mars has emerged as the leading candidate in the search for extraterrestrial life, Venus has also garnered attention due to signs of geological activity as well as some unique components in its atmosphere.
Both of these planets, along with our Earth, are situated in the “Goldilocks zone” of the Solar System, which is believed to have conditions favorable for life.
However, planetary researcher Tereza Constantinou and her colleagues from the University of Cambridge (UK) disagree.
Venus is sometimes referred to as Earth’s “twin planet” – (Photo: NASA).
According to Sci-News, there are two main theories regarding the evolution of conditions on Venus since it formed 4.6 billion years ago.
- The first suggests that surface conditions on the planet were once temperate enough to support liquid water, but uncontrolled greenhouse effects due to widespread volcanic activity have caused the planet to become increasingly hotter.
- The second hypothesis posits that Venus was born hot and that liquid water was never able to condense on its surface.
Dr. Constantinou stated: “Both of these theories are based on climate models, but we wanted to take a different approach based on observations of the current chemical composition of Venus’s atmosphere.”
To keep Venus’s atmosphere stable, any chemicals removed from the atmosphere must be returned, as there is always a chemical “communication” between the inside and outside of the planet.
In a study recently published in the journal Nature Astronomy, the authors calculated the current destruction rates of water, carbon dioxide, and carbonyl sulfide molecules in Venus’s atmosphere.
These must be replenished by volcanic gases to maintain atmospheric stability.
However, new calculations indicate that with the current atmospheric composition, volcanic gases on this planet contain at most 6% water.
These dry eruptions suggest that inside Venus, the magma source releasing volcanic gases is also depleted of water.
With such a dry planet from the inside, it is very unlikely that liquid water oceans ever existed on its surface.
This finding could help astronomers narrow down the search for potentially habitable planets orbiting other stars in the galaxy.
If Venus is indeed uninhabitable, then perhaps we should eliminate planets with similar atmospheric compositions in other star systems from the list of potential habitable worlds, even if they lie within their star’s habitable zone.
