Astronomers discovered the presence of a thin layer of ozone in the atmosphere of Venus. The European Space Agency (ESA) Venusian probe, Venus Express, transmitted data that a team of scientists has determined is a thin band of ozone near top of the planet’s thick atmosphere.
The discovery has caused a small stir among exobiologists.
The find will assist scientists in determining the composition of other planetary atmospheres and possibly expand their parameters in the ongoing search for extra-terrestrial life.
As far as life goes, scientists wrote off Venus decades ago. Once it was known that Venus has a crushing, acidic atmosphere and a temperature of almost 800° F, with a surface crushed under a pressure measured at about 92 times the sea level pressure on Earth, most thought the Earth’s sister world too inhospitable for life.
Since those discoveries decades ago, no serious scientist theorized life might be flourishing there.
Now some are giving Venus a second, cautious look.
Life has been found on Earth under the most unlikely conditions: thriving next to undersea magma fissures, in total darkness, in extremely arid regions and parts of the world with temperatures far below freezing.
Franck Montmessin of the Laboratoire Atmospheres, Milieux, Observations Spatiales (LATMOS) in Guyancourt, France, was the leader of the team that amassed and studied the Venus Express data obtained by analyzing starlight at a right angle to the planet’s atmosphere. The analysis of the spectrum and the wavelengths absorbed by the atmosphere revealed the presence of an ozone layer in the upper atmosphere.
“According to the data, ozone is located at varying altitudes in the Venusian atmosphere, between 90 and 120 km, and is always confined to a rather thin layer, measuring 5 to10 km across.” [Read more]
The discovery of ozone is considered important because many scientists consider it a biomarker that increases the probability of life.
“This detection gives us an important constraint on understanding the chemistry of Venus’s atmosphere,” Montmessin explained in a prepared statement.
Håkan Svedhem, a project scientist for the Venus Express mission at the ESA observed, “This ozone detection tells us a lot about the circulation and the chemistry of Venus’s atmosphere. Beyond that, it is yet more evidence of the fundamental similarity between the rocky planets, and shows the importance of studying Venus to understand them all.”
The statements of the team leaders about the discovery came at an October 6 conference in Nantes, France—a joint meeting of the European Planetary Science Congress and the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences
The complete study is scheduled to appear in the November issue of the journal Icarus.
Sources
Life on Venus?
Scientists Discover Ozone Layer On Venus
Ozone Layer Found Over Venus: Is There Possibility of Life?
