Venus 'once had oceans of water'

Isnt this just kosy? Water on Venus at one point in time also..
That pretty much makes water an 'common' element to planets that form, imo.

Chances is that there might be water on other exoplanets we find and there of, an higher chance of life on other planets too..

Venus 'once had oceans of water'
Venus was once much more like Earth than thought, with oceans of water and drifting continents, new results from an orbiting space probe suggest. The second planet from the sun has been called Earth's evil twin because it is so hot and dry that it resembles hell.

Planetary scientists say its climate went out of control. They are keen to know why in case the same thing happens to our own world.

Venus is completely shrouded in clouds, causing its atmosphere to act like a greenhouse trapping heat. Now Europe's orbiting Venus Express probe has used mapped a large chunk of the planet using a cloud-piercing infrared camera.

The results support previous suspicions that Venus has ancient continents produced by volcanic activity and which used to be surrounded by seas of water.

Previous maps of Venus have been produced by radar. The new infrared chart of the planet's southern hemisphere, built up from thousands of individual images, is the first to tell scientists what the rocks might be made of.

Different types of rock radiate different levels of heat, in a similar way to how a brick wall gives off warmth at the end of a hot day. The measurements for the new map, made with the Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer, were similarly made of the night side of Venus.

Eight Russian probes which landed on Venus in the 1970s and 1980s discovered they were sitting on basalt rock in the few moments before they were crushed by the incredible weight of the planet's poisonous atmosphere. The surface was twice the maximum temperature inside a domestic oven.

Was wet Venus once home to life?
When I was a teenager in the Sixties, one of my favourite books was Exploring The Planets by Roy A. Gallant. Particularly intriguing seemed Venus.

We already knew by then what Mars looked like - covered with canals and fast-growing lichen :-) - but Earth's inner neighbour was a complete mystery.

The book presented two splendid pieces of artwork offering completely contrasting views of what might lie beneath Venus's permanent cloud cover.

Isnt this what Zachira S. said venus would look like, he got it from the Samerian clay tablets. S & F

well, so did mars.

many speculate there could potentially be like still living on venus to this day, but it would have to be some sort of acid loving bug, because of the sulphuric acid. and the temperatures are actuallly normal (from -20 degrees to 80 degrees) about 30 to 40 miles up in the clouds.

who knows.. its interesting to think about

I always thought the same thing about Mars. I wonder if the Venus dwellers and the Mars dwellers came here and fought it out.

reply to post by ChemBreather

I think water (liquid water, water ice, or water vapor) is ubiquitous in our solar system. I started a thread a little over a year ago that asked "Why are we still amazed to find water in our solar system" ....
(Link to Thread)
... because it seemed to me that wherever we look in the solar system (planets, moons, comets, etc) we find water in some form.

As I said in that other thread, I suspect that the early "protoplanetary disk" and nebula from which our solar system formed was rich in H20. If our protoplanetary disk contained water, then it's possible that other protoplanetary disks that formed out of the ancient (and long-gone) nebula from which our solar system was born.

Perhaps water is common through our galaxy (perhaps throughout the universe). I remember a story about a dying star some 8,000 LY away that was forming a nebula -- and that star was spitting out jets of water molecules
(Link to Space.com Article)

H2O could perhaps be ubiquitous throughout the galaxy. The general public should stop being surprised when astronomers find signs of it elsewhere.

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People


We find water just about everywhere we look for it. But everywhere (other than Earth) where we find it, it is either water vapor or water ice.

The good news is that there is other stuff too.
www.abc.net.au...
The bad news is you'll go blind. And I was so looking forward to a cosmic cocktail.

Originally posted by calihan_12
well, so did mars.

many speculate there could potentially be like still living on venus to this day, but it would have to be some sort of acid loving bug, because of the sulphuric acid. and the temperatures are actuallly normal (from -20 degrees to 80 degrees) about 30 to 40 miles up in the clouds.

who knows.. its interesting to think about

I remember reading a paper from NASA several years ago about the possibilities for life on Venus (past, preset, and future life) which talked about the very intriguing potential life in the atmosphere of Venus, and even some "hints" at biological activity. Let me search for it....

....Found it!!

It was published in 2003 by Geoffrey A. Landis, a scientist working at NASA's John Glenn Research Center in Ohio.

While of course not saying anything definite, the article seems open to the idea of life being currently present in the atmosphere of Venus.

Here is an excerpt:

3.3 Present Life

Could bacterial life exist in the atmosphere of Venus today? Although this is considered unlikely, the possibility of life in the clouds or the middle atmosphere of Venus has not been ruled out by any observations made to date. While the atmosphere is both dry and acidic,extremophilic life has adapted to far more harsh conditions on Earth.

There is some evidence that the trace-gas constituents of the Venus atmosphere are not in chemical equilibrium with each other. On Earth, the primary source of disequilibrium in the atmospheric chemistry is the activities of biological processing; could disequilibrium on Venus also be a sign of life? In 1997, David Grinspoon made the suggestion that microbes in the clouds and middle atmosphere [4] could be the source of the disequilibrium. In 2002, Dirk Schulze-Makuch [6] independently proposed that observations of the Venus atmosphere by space probes showed signatures of possible biological activity.

As noted by Grinspoon and Schulze-Makuch, the Venus atmosphere has several trace gasses which are not in chemical equilibrium. The Venera missions and the Pioneer Venus and Magellan probes found that carbon monoxide is scarce in the planet's atmosphere, although solar radiation and lightning should produce it abundantly from carbon dioxide. Hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide, two gases which react with each other and thus should not be found together, are also both present, indicating some process (possibly biological?) is producing them. Finally, although carbonyl sulfide is difficult to produce inorganically, it is present in the Venusian atmosphere. On Earth, this gas would be considered an unambiguous indicator of biological activity. While none of these chemical combinations are in themselves an unambiguous sign of life, it is interesting enough to warrant a more careful look at the atmospheric chemistry.

Another interesting sign is the nature of the ultraviolet-absorbing aerosols that form the markings seen in UV images of the planet (figure 2). The nature of these aerosols, and whether they are biological in origin, is still unknown.

On Earth, viable microorganisms are found in clouds...

Here is the source NASA web page I got the PDF from (scroll down on the website to find the PDF link):
NASA.gov -- Astrobiology: The Case for Venus

Or, here is the direct link to the PDF file:
Source PDF -- Astrobiology: The Case for Venus

Very intriguing possibilities.


[edit on 8/17/2009 by Soylent Green Is People]

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by Soylent Green Is People

 

We find water just about everywhere we look for it. But everywhere (other than Earth) where we find it, it is either water vapor or water ice...

This is true.

However, if H2O molecules are indeed ubiquitous (or at least common) in protoplanetary disks and existing solar systems in our part of the galaxy, then it seems likely to me that some planets or moons in those solar systems or born out of those disks could potentially be warm enough, and have atmospheres that are dense enough, for water to be liquid.


[edit on 8/17/2009 by Soylent Green Is People]

reply to post by Phage


I see what you mean Phage :

Alcohol cloud spotted in deep space
Astronomers say they have spotted a cloud of alcohol in deep space that measures 463 billion kilometres across, a finding that could shed light on how giant stars are formed from primordial gas.

reply to post by Phage

Yeah. In Against A Dark Background by Iain M. Banks, one of the characters explains that the reason humanoids exist is to deal with all that alcohol in the dust clouds.

I need that Alcohol clould hovering over my house with a tap attached!

Alcohol cloud spotted in deep space
Astronomers say they have spotted a cloud of alcohol in deep space that measures 463 billion kilometres across, a finding that could shed light on how giant stars are formed from primordial gas.

reply to post by Phage


but there is not only water and and Alcohol ,i made a topic about this but it gone in the deep space
it's an article from reuters Los Angels Tue Aug 18, 2009

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The amino acid glycine, a fundamental building block of proteins, has been found in a comet for the first time, bolstering the theory that raw ingredients of life arrived on Earth from outer space, scientists said on Monday. Microscopic traces of glycine were discovered in a sample of particles retrieved from the tail of comet Wild 2 by the NASA spacecraft Stardust deep in the solar system some 242 million miles (390 million km) from Earth, in January 2004.

www.reuters.com...

"The discovery of glycine in a comet supports the idea that the fundamental building blocks of life are prevalent in space, and strengthens the argument that life in the universe may be common rather than rare," said Carl Pilcher, the director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute in California, which co-funded the research.

if we can find glycine i a comet and asteroid we can also find it in all this planet no? so is it possible life was appear on other planet in a different way?

i have the feeling that we are getting closer and closer ... what's next .



[edit on 19-8-2009 by pitchdragon]

I'm no scientist, but maybe all the planets are in decaying orbits. Venus maybe started getting hotter and hotter until water and everything was destroyed. Maybe Earth follows it. And maybe Mars will follow Earth and Have oceans and forests one day. Is all this stuff possible?