Latest Study: There's Never Been An Ocean On The Planet Venus

Image of the planet Venus (photo: dock. NASA)

JAKARTA A number of researchers, particularly at NASA, believe that the planet Venus has oceans and climates like the Earth so that signs of life may be there. However, there is a group of researchers who disagree.

Scientists at the University of Cambridge are making research on the possible presence of the ocean on Venus. In a journal published in Nature Astronomy, a number of these astronomers concluded that the oceans may not exist on the planet.

Please note that Venus is a very hot planet with an average temperature of 463 thousand Celsius. Most of its atmosphere consists of carbon dioxide and surface pressure is about 92 times greater than Earth's pressure.

With the current state of Venus, there are still many researchers who make the hypothesis that Venus once had a Martian-like ocean. However, according to Tereza Constantinou and a number of her colleagues, Venus is too dry so the atmosphere doesn't have enough water.

This is a plausible reason because water will be difficult to survive in the extreme weather of Venus. The researchers also denied the theory that stated that Venus was heating up slowly because of the greenhouse effect and was ultimately unfit to live in.

"Both theories are based on climate models, but we would like to take a different approach based on the present chemical observations of the atmosphere of Venus," Constantinou said in his study results, citing from74k.

Constantinou calculates the rate of water, carbon dioxide, and carbonyl sulfide damage in Venus' atmosphere with a chemical approach. From the results of these observations, the gases released by the volcano on Venus are estimated to contain only 6 percent water.

If the Venus volcano had low water content, the atmosphere of Venus could not be maintained in a stable condition. Of course, the oceans would be impossible if the atmosphere of Venus was so bad from the start.

"To keep Venus' atmosphere stable, any chemicals ejected from the atmosphere must also be returned to it, because the interior and outer parts of the planet always communicate chemically with each other," Constantinou said.

Although Constantinou admits that it is difficult to imagine the presence of water on Venus, it does not rule out the possibility of oceans there, or at least signs of the sea ever existed. The reason is, there has never been a spacecraft that can explore Venus up close because of its temperature.

"We will not know for sure whether Venus can or has ever supported life until we send spacecraft at the end of this decade," Constantinou said. "If Venus could be habitable in the past, it means another planet we have discovered may also be habitable."