Venus may have been habitable until 700 million years ago
Detailed maps of its surface from over 40 years of space probes indicate the existence of a shallow ocean of water
Despite Mercury being the closest to the Sun, Venus is the hottest planet in our Solar System due to the transformation that changed its atmosphere radically somewhere in the past. The average surface temperature of 462° C (864° F) of Venus can melt Lead. Add to this a dense atmosphere containing 96.5% carbon dioxide with sulphuric acid downpours, the hell exists literally next door in astronomical terms.
A recent study by the researchers, Michael Way and Anthony Del Genio of the Goddard Institute for Space Science (GISS) has concluded that things were not always as bad as they look today. On the contrary, Venus might have sustained liquid water for two or three billion years before runaway greenhouse effect changed things dramatically.
“Something happened on Venus where a huge amount of gas was released into the atmosphere and couldn’t be reabsorbed by the rocks. On Earth, we have some examples of large-scale outgassing, for instance, the creation of the Siberian…
