Balmy Venus Before Its Climate Changed
NASA’s new climate model of ancient Venus shows a picture of a habitable world
Ben Guarino, August 12, 2016 (Washington Post)
“For a 2-billion-year-long span, ending about 715 million years ago, Venus [now a dry, toxic, 864 degrees Fahrenheit hellscape where a super-strong electric wind is believed to suck the smallest traces of water into space] was likely a much more pleasant spot…Ancient Venus, according to a new computer model from NASA, [may] have been prime solar system real estate [with much balmier temperatures and a liquid ocean. NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies] calculated that the average surface temperature 2.9 billion years ago was about 50 degrees Fahrenheit…Old Venus would have orbited a sun about 30 percent dimmer…[but would have] baked in unearthly amounts of sunlight…Exactly when Venus overheated remains a mystery. Despite how hot and dry our solar system twin is today — Venus is about the same size as Earth, and possibly within the ‘Goldilocks zone’ of habitable worlds — the odds seem increasingly good that it may have had the right conditions for life…” click here for more
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