Venus Archives

MIT researchers have found that amino acids — major building blocks for life on Earth — are stable in highly concentrated sulfuric acid. Their results support the idea that these same molecules may be stable in Venus’ highly sulfuric clouds. Credit: JAXA/J. J. Petkowski

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biophysics, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Habitable Zones, Press Release, Venus

Study: Life’s Building Blocks Are Surprisingly Stable In Venus-like Conditions

by Keith CowingMarch 20, 2024March 20, 2024

If there is life in the solar system beyond Earth, it might be found in the clouds of Venus. In contrast to the planet’s blisteringly inhospitable surface, Venus’ cloud layer, […]

This image was processed from archived Mariner 10 data by JPL engineer Kevin M. Gill.

Astrogeology, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Habitable Zones, Origin & Evolution of Life, Status Report, Terraforming & Geoengineering, Venus

Venus As An Anchor Point for Planetary Habitability

by Keith CowingMarch 15, 2024March 15, 2024

A major focus of the planetary science and astrobiology community is the understanding of planetary habitability, including the myriad factors that control the evolution and sustainability of temperate surface environments […]

Sequence of zonal winds from NIR measurements obtained on different dates. Results are based on averages over bins of 10º in latitude x 1 hr in local time. (I, II) From Venus Orbit Insertion to orbit 948 (dates from 12 April 2006 till 23 November 2008; 2515 measurements), (III, IV and V) Orbits 1043-2115 (dates from 26 February 2009 till 03 March 2012; 2071 measurements). -- astro-ph.EP

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Status Report, Venus

Six Years Of Venus Winds: Observations From VIRTIS On Venus Express

by Keith CowingFebruary 8, 2024February 8, 2024

Venus Express provided a long-term monitoring of Venus atmosphere. Several works focused on the dynamics of the upper cloud visible on the day-side in ultraviolet images sensitive to the 65-70 […]

Zonally and temporally averaged temperature field (K) for the current IPSL Venus GCM model at the end of simulation (300 Vd). Data is averaged over 360◦ in longitude and 2 Vd in time. -- astro-ph.EP

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Habitable Zones, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Status Report, Venus

Latitudinal Variation of Clouds’ Structure Responsible for Venus’ Cold Collar

by Keith CowingFebruary 7, 2024February 7, 2024

Global Climate Models (GCM) are very useful tools to study theoretically the general dynamics and specific phenomena in planetary atmospheres.

Astrogeology, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Missions & Hardware, Origin & Evolution of Life, Press Release, Terraforming & Geoengineering, Venus

ESA Approves EnVision Mission To Venus – The Closest Planet To Earth

by Keith CowingJanuary 30, 2024January 30, 2024

ESA’s next mission to Venus was officially ‘adopted’ today by the Agency’s Science Programme Committee. EnVision will study Venus from its inner core to its outer atmosphere, giving important new […]

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biophysics, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Press Release, Venus

Venus: Cloudy With A Chance Of Life Forms?

by Keith CowingJanuary 26, 2024January 26, 2024

Max Seager is no different, with one big exception: for the third-year biochemistry major, those clouds are made of concentrated sulfuric acid, swirling high above the surface of Venus.

Unexplained and unexplored Venus’ atmospheric observations. The molecule models show individual detections and altitudes for the atmospheric observations (e.g. NH3 has been tentatively observed three times, twice, at two different altitudes by Venera 8, at ~32 and ~45 km, and once by Pioneer Venus at ~51 km, see also Table 3). If the observation has been made at the altitude range the molecule model is placed at the highest altitude of the range (e.g. SF6 has been tentatively detected between 35 and 58 km). The SO2 and H2O molecule models do not represent every individual observation but rather denote the anomalous abundance profiles for SO2 and H2O in the atmosphere (see (Bains et al., 2021a; Rimmer et al., 2021) and Section 3.5). Most of the unexplained atmospheric observations have been recorded within the clouds (48-70 km) and in the stagnant haze layer below the clouds (31-47 km). -- astro-ph.EP

Status Report

Astrobiological Potential of Venus Atmosphere Chemical Anomalies and Other Unexplained Cloud Properties

by Keith CowingJanuary 10, 2024July 27, 2026

Long-standing unexplained Venus atmosphere observations and chemical anomalies point to unknown chemistry but also leave room for the possibility of life.

Comparative gene expression during cloudy and clear conditions: (A) RNA-to-DNA concentration ratio for clouds and clear atmospheric conditions; dots indicate individual samples, and boxplots display medians, 25th and 75th percentiles, and whiskers 1.5 interquartile ranges; ** indicates highly significant difference, highlighting the relatively higher total RNA concentration in clouds (Mann-Whitney test, p-value=0.004); (B) Non-Metric Multidimensional Scaling (NMDS) polygons based on the 21,046 functional gene entries in MGs and MTs, illustrating the distinction between MGs and MTs, and the differences between MTs during cloudy and clear conditions; (C) volcano plot representing differential gene expression between atmospheric conditions, with genes significantly overexpressed in and outside clouds in blue and red, respectively; grey dots represent genes whose expression level is not affected; dashed lines represent significance thresholds; DEA coefficient: Differential Expression Analysis (DEA) coefficient, from the MTXmodel R package (78); this illustrates that overexpression of distinct genes depends on the atmospheric condition; (D) numbers of overrepresented Gene Ontology terms (GOs) derived from gene annotations during cloudy and clear conditions, in blue and red, respectively, referring to their classification as Biological Processes (BP), Cellular Components (CC) and Molecular Functions (MF). A number of biological functions are overexpressed in clouds compared with clear conditions. -- biorxiv.org

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biophysics, Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Microbiology & Virology, Status Report, Venus

Clouds, Oases For Airborne Microbes – Differential Metagenomics/ Metatranscriptomics Analyses Of Cloudy And Clear Atmospheric Situations

by Keith CowingJanuary 10, 2024January 10, 2024

Editor’s note: with recent speculation about the potential habitability of the clouds of Venus and the long-hypothesized notion of airborne life forms on Saturn and Jupiter these studies from Earth […]

Venus KEVIN M. GILL/DARTS/ISAS/JAXA/FLICKR (CC BY 2.0)

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biophysics, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Extremeophiles and Extreme Environments, Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Habitable Zones, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report, Venus

Stability of 20 Biogenic Amino Acids in Concentrated Sulfuric Acid: Implications for the Habitability of Venus’ Clouds

by Keith CowingJanuary 4, 2024January 4, 2024

Scientists have long speculated about the potential habitability of Venus, not at the 700K surface, but in the cloud layers located at 48-60 km altitudes, where temperatures match those found […]

The power spectra of the uniform weighting map shown in the central row of Figure 3. The shaded regions around the evolved Earth spectra represent the 1σ ranges of a set of 100 randomized simulations. The dashed lines highlight that, under the constraints of this model and its assumptions, the transformation of the surface consists of two essentially distinct steps: the smoothing of the continent/ocean bimodality via diffusion (shown by the red dashed lines), and the subsequent build-up of surface features through volcanic outflows (in green). This result implies that, while our model nominally assumes a constant surface diffusion rate and a fixed period of volcanism, the results will be virtually identical for equal values of the total diffusion (parametrized by ∆ in Table 1) and total volcanic outflow mass. -- astro-ph.EP

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Press Release, Terraforming & Geoengineering, Venus

Turning Earth Into Venus: A Stochastic Model of Possible Evolutions of Terrestrial Topography

by Keith CowingDecember 12, 2023December 12, 2023

Venus may have had both an Earth-like climate as well as extensive water oceans and active (or incipient) plate tectonics for an extended interval of its history. The topographical power […]