[HN Gopher] Atmospheric analysis shows Venus never had Earth-lik...
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Atmospheric analysis shows Venus never had Earth-like life,
scientists say
Author : aguaviva
Score : 33 points
Date : 2024-12-02 22:27 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| GenerocUsername wrote:
| Venus dry now. Venus dryness not changing. Therefore Venus always
| dry. Therefore Venus never had earth like life
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Venus planetary science (Venusian?) lacks the abundance of in-
| situ data that Mars has. We'll know more in a decade.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| Are there any probes planned?
| kulahan wrote:
| Yes, they cover this in the article. Flyby + probe.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Yes! Venus just got a lot of attention lately, when it was
| clear Mars priorities were declining.
|
| https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/planets/venuspage.htm
| l DAVINCI - NASA Venus Flyby and Probe
| (2029) VERITAS - NASA Venus Orbiter (2031)
| EnVision - ESA Venus Orbiter (2031)
|
| Davinci: https://ssed.gsfc.nasa.gov/davinci/
|
| Veritas: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/veritas/
|
| EnVision: https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Sci
| ence/Envisi...
|
| That davinci page is pretty cool!
| dylan604 wrote:
| What new tech have they used to allow the in-situ data to be
| obtained that allows the lander to not be crushed/melt on the
| surface?
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Crushing is manageable but melting is the issue. At this
| point all planned missions are still orbiters, so Venus
| will still not have the wealth of in-situ data that Mars
| does.
|
| There are two major concepts that I found really fun: 1)
| airships and 2) steampunk rovers.
|
| Airships:
|
| 2018 JPL: https://science.nasa.gov/resource/aerial-
| platforms-for-the-s...
|
| 2020s report on in-situ sampling using airships as
| mothership https://kiss.caltech.edu/final_reports/Venus_In_
| Situ_Final_R...
|
| Clockwork rover for long-lived venus exploration:
| https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/a-clockwork-rover-for-venus/
|
| I don't think that last one was (too) serious, but it was
| interesting to sus out the costs/benefits at TRL1-2 at
| least.
|
| AGU is a fairly open, very accessible conference for
| tracking progress on these. Here's a short paper on venus
| long lived surface missions.
|
| https://arxiv.org/pdf/1611.03365
| tivert wrote:
| > Clockwork rover for long-lived venus exploration:
| https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/a-clockwork-rover-for-
| venus/
|
| STRANDBEEST EVOLUTION 2021:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C97kMKwZ2-g
|
| Screw Venus, they need to work on adding mechanical
| computers to these Strandbeests, so they can turn around
| and wander the world's beaches autonomously for _years_
| at a time.
| risenshinetech wrote:
| The article absolutely does not support the claim made in the
| title. Either the writer did an awful job of summarizing the
| findings, or the findings are very weak.
| kulahan wrote:
| Huh? They specifically said, in a quote from the article, that
| it rules out Earth-like life. It's too dry to have supported
| that kind.
| LegionMammal978 wrote:
| The paper's arguments [0] are from climatic modeling. When
| Venus formed, it had lots of water in its interior. If its
| magma oceans cooled very slowly, most of the water would have
| escaped into space. But if its magma oceans cooled quickly,
| there may have been liquid water on the surface at some point,
| and there would have also been lots of interior water left.
| This interior water wouldn't have much chance to escape, even
| after the surface water boiled away.
|
| They found that there's very little hydrogen present in its
| volcanic gases, suggesting that it doesn't have much interior
| water, and that it didn't in the past, which precludes the
| formation of surface oceans. It's not incontrovertible proof
| (something we'll most likely never have), but it's still solid
| evidence against oceanic life.
|
| [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-024-02414-5
| Teever wrote:
| But how can they rule out the water leaving the planet very
| quickly _after_ a long time of Earth Like conditions?
|
| It's been a while since I took a solar system geology course
| but IIRC Venus undergoes periodic planet wide resurfacing
| events that wipe out the geological record.
|
| I'm not sure if we can tell when those events started
| happening. It's entirely plausible they only started
| happening recently (geologically speaking) which possibly
| would not show up in the gas analysis.
|
| Again, I'm no expert.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| We should still be looking at Venus cloud cities, they are much
| better than Mars, with at least as a magnetosphere.
| kirykl wrote:
| ultimately we need to move away from the Sun not closer
| gambiting wrote:
| If by "ultimately" you mean "in the next few hundred million
| years" - sure. But that's an absolutely nonsensical time
| scale to be worrying about when we're at a stage where we can
| barely escape Earth's orbit.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| We have a few hundred million years before we need to worry
| about the sun.
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