{"id":147811,"date":"2022-10-08T19:22:18","date_gmt":"2022-10-09T00:22:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/10\/the-clouds-of-venus-may-be-habitable-a-crewed-flyby-could-confirm-the-theory"},"modified":"2022-10-08T19:22:18","modified_gmt":"2022-10-09T00:22:18","slug":"the-clouds-of-venus-may-be-habitable-a-crewed-flyby-could-confirm-the-theory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/10\/the-clouds-of-venus-may-be-habitable-a-crewed-flyby-could-confirm-the-theory","title":{"rendered":"The clouds of Venus may be habitable \u2014 a crewed flyby could confirm the theory"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

What we know about Venus so far has been gathered from several past probes.<\/p>\n

\n

With a slightly smaller diameter than Earth, Venus orbits closer to the Sun. This means that any water on the surface would have evaporated shortly after its formation, starting its greenhouse effect. Early and sustained volcanic eruptions created lava plains and increased the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere \u2014 starting the runaway greenhouse effect, which increased the temperature from just a little higher than Earth\u2019s to its current high value of 475\u00b0C.<\/p>\n

While Venus\u2019s year is shorter than ours (225 days), its rotation is very slow (243 days) and \u201cretrograde\u201d \u2014 the other way round to Earth. The slow rotation is related to a lack of magnetic field, resulting in a continuing loss of atmosphere. Venus\u2019 atmosphere \u201csuper-rotates\u201d faster than the planet itself. Images from many missions show V-shaped patterns of clouds composed of sulphuric acid droplets.<\/p>\n

Despite the harsh conditions, some scientists have speculated that Venus\u2019 clouds might, at some altitudes, harbor habitable conditions. Recent measurements showing phosphine<\/a> \u2014 a potential sign of life as it is continuously produced by microbes on Earth \u2014 in Venus\u2019 clouds have been strongly debated. We need more measurements and exploration to work out where it comes from.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What we know about Venus so far has been gathered from several past probes. With a slightly smaller diameter than Earth, Venus orbits closer to the Sun. This means that any water on the surface would have evaporated shortly after its formation, starting its greenhouse effect. Early and sustained volcanic eruptions created lava plains and [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":631,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,493,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-147811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biological","category-climatology","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/631"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147811\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}