Abstract The old idea that Venus might possess surface conditions similar to those of an overcast Earth has been thoroughly refuted by space-age measurements. Instead, the two planets may have started out similar, but diverged because of the greater solar flux at Venus. This cannot be proved, but is consistent with everything we know. A runaway greenhouse could have evaporated an “ocean”. The hydrogen would escape, and most of the oxygen would be incorporated into the crust. Without liquid water, CO2 would remain in the atmosphere. Chlorine atoms would catalyze the recombination of any free oxygen back to CO2. The same theories apply to the future of the Earth, and to the explanation of the polar ozone holes; the analogies are striking. There is no likelihood that the Earth will actually come to resemble Venus, but Venus serves both as a warning that major environmental effects can flow from seemingly small causes, and as a test bed for our predictive models of the Earth.
Venus: Lessons for Earth
Advances in Space Research ; 12 , 9 ; 35-41
1992-01-01
7 pages
Aufsatz (Zeitschrift)
Elektronische Ressource
Englisch
NTRS | 1992
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