New Scientist reports that Venus may have been relatively cool and Earthlike for much longer than we thought. The second planet may have had oceans on it for as long as two billion years. Apparently, the calculations that led to the conclusion that Venus went inferno much earlier failed to take the cooling power of the planet's clouds into consideration.
Two billion years may have been enough time to develop not only life, but a wide diversity thereof. It will be while before we're able to explore Venus. It's a pretty hostile environment. If the temperatures hot enough to melt led don't get you, the regular downpour of sulfuric acid will. It seems unlikely that such conditions would allow any evidence of the planet's possibly lush past to have survived. Plus, the surface apparently got so hot at one point that it melted and had to re-cool.
So whatever was once there in the way of life, it seems unlikely that we'll ever find so much as a trace.
Posted by Phil at September 8, 2003 04:51 PM | TrackBackBeing closer to the Sun, impact velocities of asteroids on a past, habitable Venus would've been higher than at Earth. Without a crushingly thick atmosphere at the time, it is possible that significant (and if we're lucky, fossil-bearing) samples of the early Venusian surface were ejected and may, in fact, be lying about on our Moon. Yet another reason to go back...
Posted by: Eric at September 9, 2003 11:07 AMhttp://www.sff.net/people/Geoffrey.Landis/papers.html
Geoffrey A. Landis has couple interesting papers available, on possible colonization of venus as it is ... no not on the hot surface, but in the upper atmosphere.
Posted by: kert at September 10, 2003 02:12 AM