A powerful "electric wind" swept Venus and stripped away traces of water from its atmosphere billions of years ago, scientists say.
For a long time, scientists were baffled why Earth's twin planet, Venus, lacks traces of water in its atmosphere. But a recent discovery by NASA-backed researchers working on the European Space Agency's Venus Express space mission revealed that an "electric wind" powerful enough to suck all traces of water from its upper atmosphere was partly responsible for Venus' current waterless condition.
Nearly similar to Earth's size and gravity, Venus contains an ample amount of evidence suggesting that it used to have oceans eons ago. But with surface temperatures reaching 860 degrees Fahrenheit, all of its land water evaporated away to steam. However, no traces of water can be found in Venus' atmosphere due to a strong electric wind so powerful that it energized electrons to accelerate beyond the planet's gravity- a phenomenon made possible by the planet's distance to the sun.
"It's amazing, shocking. We never dreamt an electric wind could be so powerful that it can suck oxygen right out of an atmosphere into space. This is something that has to be on the checklist when we go looking for habitable planets around other stars," said Glyn Collinson, a scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center as quoted by Time Magazine.
According to a NASA report filed on Monday, the team uncovered Venus' strong electric field after monitoring electrons streaming out of the planet's upper atmosphere with the aid of a component of ASPERA-4 instrument called electron spectrometer. But the scientists noted that the electrons weren't escaping at their expected speed. The team later found out that the electrons were tugged on by Venus' powerful electric field, said to be five times stronger than Earth's.
The planet's electric field is so strong that it can "can accelerate even the heavier electrically charged component of water - oxygen ions - to speeds fast enough to escape the planet's gravity" When daytime comes, the sunlight breaks the water molecules down and the components are then stripped away by the Venus' potent electric field. The phenomenon explains why some planets with promising attributes that could potentially support life suddenly become extremely dry and barren.
"Even a weak electric wind could still play a role in water and atmospheric loss at any planet," said Alex Glocer of NASA Goddard, a co-author on the paper, as quoted by Popular Mechanics. "It could act like a conveyor belt, moving ions higher in the ionosphere where other effects from the solar wind could carry them away."
