The article absolutely does not support the claim made in the title. Either the writer did an awful job of summarizing the findings, or the findings are very weak.
The paper's arguments [0] are from climatic modeling. When Venus formed, it had lots of water in its interior. If its magma oceans cooled very slowly, most of the water would have escaped into space. But if its magma oceans cooled quickly, there may have been liquid water on the surface at some point, and there would have also been lots of interior water left. This interior water wouldn't have much chance to escape, even after the surface water boiled away.
They found that there's very little hydrogen present in its volcanic gases, suggesting that it doesn't have much interior water, and that it didn't in the past, which precludes the formation of surface oceans. It's not incontrovertible proof (something we'll most likely never have), but it's still solid evidence against oceanic life.
But how can they rule out the water leaving the planet very quickly after a long time of Earth Like conditions?
It's been a while since I took a solar system geology course but IIRC Venus undergoes periodic planet wide resurfacing events that wipe out the geological record.
I'm not sure if we can tell when those events started happening. It's entirely plausible they only started happening recently (geologically speaking) which possibly would not show up in the gas analysis.
LegionMammal978|1 year ago
They found that there's very little hydrogen present in its volcanic gases, suggesting that it doesn't have much interior water, and that it didn't in the past, which precludes the formation of surface oceans. It's not incontrovertible proof (something we'll most likely never have), but it's still solid evidence against oceanic life.
[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-024-02414-5
Teever|1 year ago
It's been a while since I took a solar system geology course but IIRC Venus undergoes periodic planet wide resurfacing events that wipe out the geological record.
I'm not sure if we can tell when those events started happening. It's entirely plausible they only started happening recently (geologically speaking) which possibly would not show up in the gas analysis.
Again, I'm no expert.
kulahan|1 year ago