Without a better understanding of terrestrial planets and their atmospheres (habitable or not), we won’t know exactly what we’re seeing when exploring a distant exoplanet. Even if we discover such a planet showing signs of life, we will never be able to study it better and we will never be able to feel its atmosphere.
A study recently published in the journal Nature Astronomy examines how two planets separate and what might cause this separation.
Using the example of Earth and Venus, we can understand how two similar planets can have such different atmospheres. And the more we learn about this topic, the better we will understand how rocky worlds evolve over time and how different conditions increase or limit habitability.
Venus is a wealth of information to help determine the characteristics and parameters that make a planet habitable or uninhabitable. But we can’t see anything through Venus’ thick clouds except using radar, and no one has attempted to land a spacecraft there since the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Most of these attempts failed, and those that survived did not last long. Without more accurate data, we will not be able to understand the history of Venus’ development.
At the same time, scientists managed to discover many fundamental differences between Venus and Earth. They have different rotation speeds, tilt angles and magnetic fields. And these are just some of the differences.
True, we don’t know much about Venus either. For example, no matter how big its core is, there has never been any water on it. Some studies show that when the planet lost its water and became fully habitable, there was plenty of oxygen in its atmosphere.
Source: Ferra
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