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Venus might never have been habitable

A sophisticated climate model suggests that liquid-water oceans never formed on Venus, and that some planets outside the Solar System that were thought to be habitable might not be.
  1. James F. Kasting

    1. James F. Kasting is in the Department of Geosciences, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA.

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  2. Chester E. Harman

    1. Chester E. Harman is in the Planetary Systems Branch, Space Science and Astrobiology Division, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California 94035, USA.

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Today, Earth’s sister planet Venus is more like a distant relative than a sibling. Its atmosphere is thick with carbon dioxide, its surface is hot enough to melt lead, and any water that it once had is gone — except for a tiny amount that remains as vapour in its atmosphere. But some scientists have argued that Venus might once have been habitable. Writing in Nature, Turbet et al.1 report a climate model that suggests the steam atmosphere produced during Venus’s formation never condensed on the planet’s surface to create oceans. Instead, water vapour was transported to Venus’s night side (the hemisphere facing away from the Sun), where it cooled and condensed to form clouds that warmed the surface by absorbing and re-emitting the planet’s outgoing infrared radiation. If the authors are correct, Venus was always a hellhole.

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Nature 598, 259-260 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02720-2

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Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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