NASA new climate modelling suggests Venus could have supported life

Image credit: NASA

New Delhi: Ancient Venus was likely once had a habitable surface temperature with shallow liquid-water ocean, according to the computer modeling of the planet's climate by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York.

Scientists said that the Venus and the Earth are mostly formed out of the same materials and roughly the same size. The only major difference is that today's Venus is more closer to the sun and has 90 times thicker and crushing atmosphere than our home planet.

The findings, published this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, showed that things were quite different in the past and the planet might have provided a comfortable place for life – for up to 2 billion years of its early history.

The computer simulations done by NASA scientists have shown the now-un habitable, hellish atmosphere of Venus once had a life-supporting surface temperatures. GISS team suggested that planet's topography was largely affected by its climate.

Ancient Venus had more dry land overall than Earth, especially in the tropics. That limits the amount of water evaporated from the oceans and, as a result, the greenhouse effect by water vapor.

This type of surface appears ideal for making a planet habitable; there seems to have been enough water to support abundant life, with sufficient land to reduce the planet’s sensitivity to changes from incoming sunlight, according to NASA.