The atmosphere is planet Venus may appear totally disastrous and full of carbon dioxide today, however, it may have been habitable once. This is quite evident from a new climate change model released by the American space agency, NASA.
Venus' atmosphere is at least 90 times thicker than that of Earth. In fact, it has no water vapors in its atmosphere and its surface temperature may reach as high as 864 degrees Fahrenheit sometimes. This indicates that such a cosmic entity is a lot far from being livable for any kind of organism in the universe. However, it might have been completely the opposite at some point of time.
A team of scientists from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) has developed a climate change model, which is similar to what researchers currently use to study the history of Venus, according to Tech Times. The purpose of the model was to see whether Venus was once similar to Earth in terms of environmental conditions, despite the fact that its surface had no water and the atmosphere was always full of carbon dioxide.
The team previously believed that Venus has a slower rotation rate because of its thick climatic conditions. However, a new study published in the journal Geographical Research Letters claims that Earth-like thin atmosphere may also have a slow rotation rate.
This means that Venus, millions of years ago, had an atmosphere like that of Earth yet the same rotation rate as today. With the help of precise calculations, the researchers figured out that with the current rotation rate, Venus would have remained habitable until a minimum of 715 million years ago.
The team also revealed that Venus may have had a number of dry regions as compared to Earth. However, it had enough amount of water and variations in geographical features to protect against natural processes such as evaporation. This, in turn, may have helped host life. In addition, the sun was at least 30 percent dimmer at that time than what it looks like today.
