University of Helsinki - Research news
There may have been life on Venus
According to the most recent research on the planet Venus, this extremely hot, rocky world may once have had atmospheric conditions similar to that of the Earth for much longer than was previously thought.
Week 51/ 2007
“If Venus has been like the Earth, and was that for a sufficiently long period, it may have been able to sustain life," says Professor Hannu Koskinen, a member of an international Venus research group, who works for the University of Helsinki Department of Physical Sciences.
Previously, Venus was presumed to have transformed into a fiery furnace hundreds of millions years after the planet was formed. According to the current understanding, this climate change is estimated to have taken place when the planet was two billion years old.
The new estimates rely on atmospheric observations made with the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Venus Express spacecraft, which carried Aspera 4 equipment. The Aspera 4 analyser detected that water is evaporating from Venus into space. The climate change on Venus was caused by a dramatic greenhouse effect. Carbon dioxide and water vapour have bound some of the energy from the Sun to the planet.
Scientists are using the new measurements to find out why the greenhouse effect on Venus has become so strong and made the temperature on the planet too hot for life.
Koskinen describes the current climate of Venus as “hell”. The air pressure on the surface of Venus is 90 times that on Earth. The temperature on its dry surface is 450–500 degrees Celsius. Professor Koskinen stresses that the greenhouse effect on Earth does not parallel climate change on Venus. He thinks the greatest benefit of Venus research is that we can learn about the solar system we live in.
Koskinen is not the only Finn in the Venus research project: a research group from the Finnish Meteorological Institute participated in the development of Aspera 4.
Aspera 4 will be measuring phenomena on Venus until the end of 2009.
Text: Anu Vallinkoski
Photo: European Space Agency ESA
