Narrow range of early habitable Venus scenarios permitted by modeling of oxygen loss and radiogenic argon degassing.

ABSTRACT: Whether Venus was ever habitable is a key question driving missions to Earth's sister planet in the next decade. Venus today has a dry, O₂-poor atmosphere, but recent work has proposed that early Venus may have had liquid water [J. Krissansen-Totton, J. J. Fortney, F. Nimmo, Planet. Sci. J. 2, 216 (2021)] and reflective clouds that could have sustained habitable conditions until 0.7 Ga [J. Yang, G. Boué, D. C. Fabrycky, D. S. Abbot, Astrophys. J. 787, L2 (2014), M. J. Way, A. D. Del Genio, J. Geophys. Res.: Planets 125, e2019JE006276 (2020)]. Water present at the end of a habitable era must since have been lost by photodissociation and H escape, causing buildup of atmospheric oxygen [F. Tian, Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 432, 126-132 (2015)]. We present a

SUBMITTER: Warren AO 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10089166 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature