A team from the University of Cambridge found that Venus’ interior is dehydrated, suggesting it never had Earth-like oceans.
“The atmospheric chemistry suggests that volcanic eruptions on Venus release very little water,” study first author Tereza Constantinou told IE.
“Venus and Earth are often called “sister planets” because of their similarities in mass, radius, density, and distance from the Sun,” Constantinou, a PhD student at Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy, explained. “However, their evolutionary paths diverged dramatically.” To be precise, the team calculated the rate at which water, carbon dioxide, and carbonyl sulfide molecules are destroyed in Venus’ atmosphere today. These must be restored to keep the planet’s atmosphere stable. So, by knowing these rates, they could infer the amount of water in Venus’ volcanic gases.
Meanwhile, the European Space Agency’s EnVision mission will investigate Venus from its inner core to its upper atmosphere. EnVision’s “spectrometers will monitor trace gases and analyze the surface composition, potentially identifying changes linked to volcanic activity — a key process for understanding the interior composition, and critically, water content, of the planet,” Constantinou explained.
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