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Published online 13 January 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.24
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Venus may have had continents and oceans
Granite highlands point to past water — and perhaps life.
The planet Venus, now hellishly hot and dry, may have once have been far more like Earth, with oceans and continents. That is the implication of new research claiming to see evidence for granite highlands on the planet in data almost two decades old.
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It is likely that Venus and Earth have been exchanging rocks (blasted into space by asteroid impacts) for billions of years: http://tinyurl.com/3ywhyg This new research, if confirmed, raises the possibility that life originated on Venus and leapt to Earth by this mechanism.
The assumption that Venus lost its water in a hurry has been questioned by David Grinspoon & Mark Bullock after factoring in the role of clouds in moderating the greenhouse effect. If the oceans lasted 2 billion years instead of just 0.5 billion, then it's probable that Life hitch-hiked from Venus to Earth. But consider: in its late stages of dessication Venus could have built up quite high-levels of free oxygen as hydrogen was lost. Any life would've needed to adapt to the oxygen, even utilize it - was oxygen tolerance on Earth developed on Venus? The appearance of some oxygen in Earth's atmosphere c.2.5-2.3 Gya is suspiciously close to when Venus become inhospitable according to Grinspoon & Bullock: could oxygen-producing photosynthesisers have come from Venus?