Washington - (AP) - Nearby Venus is looking a bit more Earth-like with frequent bursts of lightning confirmed by a new European space probe.

Now a magnetic antenna on the European Space Agency's Venus Express probe proved that the lightning was real.

The lightning is cloud-to-cloud and about 35 miles above the surface, said University of California, Los Angeles geophysics professor C.T. Russell, lead author of a paper on the Venusian fireworks.

Bursts of electrical energy from lightning are something that scientists have long theorized could provide the spark of life in primordial ooze.

The idea of Earth-like lightning is fascinating, Russell said. However, you couldn't see it from Venus' surface, nor would you want to look because the Venusian atmosphere is 100 times more dense than Earth's, is about 900 degrees hotter and has clouds of sulfuric acid, he said.
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So, there's basically a possibility that Venus is in its first stages of life? That's what it sounds like to me, however other things factor in, the extreme heat. Then again, there are the bacteria that can survive through that kind of temperature. Arachaic bacteria? no, that's not it. Well, something like that.

There are no bacteria that can survive that kind of heat. We are talking about temperatures at which lead and tin melt. Archaea (which is the term you was looking for I believe) can survive temperatures up to 115^oC (239^oF). The surface temperature of Venus is around 480^oC (900^oF)

I HATE it when the news people throw in the L word when talking about other planets. They were really grasping at straws here.

I'm taking an astrophysics class right now - as it turns out, venus was almost certainly much more earth like several billion years ago. In addition, in a billion years or so Earth will go into Venus mode! If anyone's interested I can elaborate.

sure elaborate im interested enuf

Please elaborate because in my opinion that sounds kind of strange.

Okay, here's how it works:

First you need to understand that stars slowly increase in brightness during their lifetimes, before they ever reach a giant stage. It's because as hydrogen is turned into helium, the helium nuclei are for all intents and purposes almost the same size as hydrogen nuclei but 4 times as massive - you can pack more mass into the same volume of plasma. So the interior of the star contracts and gets denser, and the remaining hydrogen fuses faster under the higher pressure. Its estimated that the Sun was only about 70% as bright as it is now when the solar system first formed, and that it will brighten by up to another 30-40%

Okay, now for the planets: Venus is almost the same size as the Earth. This means it retains similar amounts of heat inside it driving similar volcanoes, and can hold onto its atmosphere with about the same strength as Earth.

If you look at Earth's history, we actually went through several total global freezes, the most recent of which was right before the Cambrian (~600 million years ago). During these epochs we see evidence for glaciers on landmasses that were near the equator at the time. These are unlikely to happen again, because the sun has constantly been increasing in brightness. The key point, though, is that we have a low level of atmospheric CO2, despite volcanoes and weathering of carbonate rocks constantly putting the gas into our atmosphere. This is because of our oceans. When CO2 dissolves in water, it reacts with water to form the carbonate ion which reacts with other dissolved ions to form carbonate rocks, which are deposited on the ocean floor and eventually subducted away back into the crust. In this way our CO2 level stays at a low equilibrium. Plants taking up CO2 also influence this equilibrium but not nearly as much as the presence of our oceans does.

Venus on the other hand has no oceans, and ANY CO2 that enters its atmosphere from volcanoes, reactions with rocks, etc. stays there with no place to go. Its atmosphere gets perpetually thicker and hotter. Here's the thing though - Venus could've had oceans in the past! I'm talking billions of years ago - no one knows but it is a distinct possibility. It is closer to the Sun so it would've received radiation similar to ours earlier on in the solar system's history. However, as the solar radiation increased, more and more of the water would've evaporated. Water vapor is an even more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 - it has a feedback effect. Once you reach a certain point, the extra water vapor holds in enough heat to completely boil the oceans. Without the oceans, CO2 has nowhere to go, and you get the classic Venus runaway greenhouse. There is no water in the atmosphere now because ultraviolet light reacts with water vapor to make hydrogen gas which escapes the atmosphere and the remainder of the molecule reacts with other gases to make, among other things, sulfuric acid.

What does this mean for Earth? Eventually, as solar radiation increases and we get more and more water vapor in our atmosphere, we will reach the runaway point as well. Our oceans will evaporate faster and faster, and eventually boil away. Our planet will follow the same path Venus did, but delayed by several billion years. Life is certainly helping by lowering the average CO2 concentration SLIGHTLY, but it will not save us in the end. In one or two billion years solar radiation will have increased enough that we will likely have hit the runaway point. It seems the ultimate fate for any earth-sized planet close enough to its star to eventually enter a runaway greenhouse mode.

I just found it amusing that it could be construed from the article that Venus was undergoing processes similar to the early Earth, when really Earth will eventually resemble Venus. And they even SAY that the lightning cannot produce prebiotic chemicals on Venus... they just threw in that sentence to get people to read it.

Boy I know how to kill a thread, huh.

Anyways, yeah we only have a billion or two years until we fry like Venus. It seems to me that planets like it may be rather common in the universe.

VEX-MAG is a space qualified magnetometer with two fluxgate sensors to measure the magnetic field magnitude and its direction. Among the many scientific objectives of the magnetic field observation, we will define the Venus plasma boundary and study the solar wind interaction with the Venus atmosphere.

Venus Express Fluxgate Magnetometer



The magnetic field magnitude, high-resolution data show bursts of electromagnetic waves in the upper ionosphere, being produced by lightning in the lower atmosphere.

Lightning in the Venusian Atmosphere



Atmospheric Electrification in the Solar System- Karen L. Aplin

"Atmospheric electrification is not a purely terrestrial phenomenon: all Solar System planetary atmospheres become slightly electrified by cosmic ray ionisation. There is evidence for lightning on Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, and it is possible on Mars, Venus and Titan. Controversy surrounds the role of atmospheric electricity in physical climate processes on Earth; here, a comparative approach is employed to review the role of electrification in the atmospheres of other planets and their moons.

This paper reviews the theory, and, where available, measurements, of planetary atmospheric electricity which is taken to include ion production and ion-aerosol interactions. The conditions necessary for a planetary atmospheric electric circuit similar to Earth’s, and the likelihood of meeting these conditions in other planetary atmospheres, are briefly discussed.

Atmospheric electrification could be important throughout the solar system, particularly at the outer planets which receive little solar radiation, increasing the relative significance of electrical forces. Nucleation onto atmospheric ions has been predicted to affect the evolution and lifetime of haze layers on Titan, Neptune and Triton. Atmospheric electrical processes on Titan, before the arrival of the Huygens probe, are summarised. For planets closer to Earth, heating from solar radiation dominates atmospheric circulations. However, Mars may have a global circuit analogous to the terrestrial model, but based on electrical discharges from dust storms.

There is an increasing need for direct measurements of planetary atmospheric electrification, in particular on Mars, to assess the risk for future unmanned and manned missions. Theoretical understanding could be increased by cross-disciplinary work to modify and update models and parameterisations initially developed for a specific atmosphere, to make them more broadly applicable to other planetary atmospheres."

Link, pages 1-80

well as they say.. twins are alike in the end which ever path they take. I would like to have Waspies opinion on this.