There is life on Venus. Was there life on young Venus? Why You Can't Live on Venus

When studying Venus, scientists discovered such unique phenomena as superrotation and lightning. Lightning is one of the signs of life, because thanks to it, discharges are separated, and lightning is a necessary stage in the formation of new microelements. Is there life on Venus?

The most powerful hurricanes of Venus

The research apparatus "Venera-Express" also found out that the winds on the surface of Venus move at great speed (60 times faster than the speed of the planet's rotation around its axis). These hurricanes at the poles churn the atmosphere into giant cyclones. These anomalous winds have been called super rotation.

On Earth, the wind speed roughly coincides with the speed of rotation of the planet, why is everything different on Venus? It's all about the density of clouds, the thickness of which reaches 19 km, so not all of the sun's energy reaches the surface of the planet. The energy of the Sun lingers in the upper layers of dense clouds, and makes these clouds move at great speed. For Venus, winds with a speed of more than 320 km / h are quite common.

Water and lightning on Venus

In 2006, electromagnetic flares were also detected in the atmosphere. These were signs of lightning. On Earth, thunderstorms are caused by water, but there is no water on Venus. It turned out that lightning is formed due to clouds of sulfuric acid from volcanic eruptions. The winds give energy to these clouds, which is how lightning appears on Venus. Lightning is an element of life, since during this process the separation of particles occurs.

It has also been discovered that the volcanoes on Venus are still active. This is an important discovery, since there are not many places in the solar system where there is volcanic activity. This further confirms that Venus is still a living planet and that there may even be life in one form or another.

Most of the planet Venus is covered with solidified lava, why are there so many of them? On Earth, volcanoes are located along the tectonic plates, through these faults the accumulated energy comes out, thereby cooling the Earth. On Venus, there are no tectonic plates, the crust is solid. When there was not enough space in the crust, Venus seemed to boil, there was a planetary volcanic eruption, thereby destroying rocks and forming a new landscape.

Scientists also found that in some places on Venus, rocks have been preserved that could only form in water. And these rocks are much older than the volcanic rocks that now cover most of the planet's surface. So, Venus still had oceans and seas.

Is there life on Venus?

If there was water and lightning on Venus, then life once existed there, is it now? The spacecraft studied the surface of the planet using ultraviolet light. It turned out that there are absorbers of ultraviolet light on the planet. If microorganisms exist in an acidic and hot environment like the Yellowstone geyser, then microorganisms were able to adapt to similar conditions on Venus!

Scientists suggest that on Venus, due to atmospheric pressure and high temperature, life is not adapted, but at a distance of 48 km. from the surface the temperature is only 80 degrees. If life originated on Venus, then when the water evaporated, the microbes evaporated along with the steam.

If terrestrial lichens survive without water with the help of water vapor, then microbes can exist in hot acidic vapor.

Studies show that microbes are able to live not only in the upper atmosphere. And theoretically, Venus could have life in hot acidic clouds.

Venus seems to have found life. Or something very similar to her, moving, changing shape. Unique shots of Venusian "inhabitants" codenamed "bird", "disk", "scorpion" were made in the 70-80s of the last century by the Soviet devices "Venera-9" and "Venera-13"! And only 30 years later they were declassified by the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, as if making such an original gift for the 50th anniversary. “MK” learned about the strange finds from Leonid Ksanfomality, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences from the IKI RAS, the author of the decoding of frames from Venus.

“We do not like the interpretation of the obtained results as signs of life on the planet. However, we cannot find another explanation for what we see in the panoramas of the surface of Venus, ”as one of its two authors Ph. But on the article by Xanfomality in the "Astronomical Bulletin" then, in the 80s, alas, that's how it all ended. The scientific community firmly stood its ground: at +500 Celsius and a pressure of 87–90 atmospheres, life cannot exist. Everything that refuted this dogma was considered unscientific, having no right to exist. And the work on deciphering the first films from Venus was sent to the most that neither is a box.

I would not say that we gave up, says Xanfomality. - We turned to old data again and again, as processing tools improved. And the most significant finds were made two or three years ago.

- Well, tell us, finally, about these "objects".

The earliest finds began to come from Venera-9, which landed on the planet of the same name, in 1975. On the very first panorama transmitted by the apparatus, the attention of several groups of experimenters was attracted by a symmetrical object resembling a sitting bird with an outstretched tail. Geologists cautiously called it "a strange stone with a rod-like protrusion and a bumpy surface." "Stone" was discussed in the final collection of articles "The first panoramas of the surface of Venus" edited by Mstislav Keldysh and in a hefty volume of the international edition "VENUS". It interested me on October 22, 1975 - as soon as the tape with the panorama crawled out of the bulky telegraph apparatus at the Evpatoria Center for Deep Space Communications. The strange “bird” object was symmetrical about the longitudinal axis, its entire surface was covered with strange growths, and some kind of symmetry could also be seen in their position. To the left of the object protruded a long straight white appendage, under which a deep shadow was visible, repeating its shape. The white process is very similar to a straight tail. On the opposite side, the object ended in a large white rounded protrusion that looked like a head. The whole object rested on a short thick "paw". True, in the eight minutes that had elapsed before the camera lens returned to the object (it scanned the entire visible surface of the planet), it did not change its position at all.

- But then there were other objects?

Then the information came from the Venera-13 and Venera-14 missions in 1982. So, "Venus-13" gave us an image of a strange "disk" that changes its shape. The "disk" has a regular shape, apparently round, about 30 cm in diameter and resembles a large shell. On the first two frames (32nd and 72nd minutes), the appearance of the “disk” hardly changed, but at the end of the 72nd minute a short arc appeared in its lower part. On the third frame (86th minute), the arc became several times longer, and the “disk” began to divide into parts. At the 93rd minute, the "disk" disappeared, and instead of it, a symmetrical light object of approximately the same size appeared, formed by numerous V-shaped folds - "chevrons". After 26 minutes, on the last frame (119th minute), the “disk” has completely recovered and is clearly visible. Thus, five frames demonstrate a complete cycle of changes in the shape of the "disk".

But, perhaps, the most important “object” found on the frames transmitted from Venera-13 was an object code-named “scorpion”. It appeared at about the 90th minute along with a half-ring adjacent to it on the right. First of all, his attention was attracted, of course, by his strange appearance. "Scorpion" is about 17 cm long and has a complex structure, reminiscent of terrestrial insects or arachnids. Its shape cannot be the result of a random combination of dark, gray and light dots. The image of the "scorpion" consists of 940 points, the probability of the formation of such a structure due to a random combination of points is small. In other words, the possibility of the accidental appearance of a "scorpion" is excluded. In addition, it casts a distinct shadow, and therefore it is a real object and not an artifact. A simple combination of points cannot cast a shadow.

Now about the dynamics of the appearance of the "scorpion". The impact of the apparatus on the soil during landing caused the destruction of the soil at a depth of about 5 cm and threw it in the direction of lateral movement, filling the surface. In the first image (7th minute), a shallow groove about 10 cm long is visible in the ejected soil. In the second image (20th minute), the sides of the groove have risen, and its length has increased to about 15 cm. In the third (59th minute) the regular structure of the "scorpion" became visible in the groove. Finally, at the 93rd minute, the “scorpion” completely got out of the 1–2 cm thick layer of soil that covered it. At the 119th minute, it disappeared from the frame and is absent in subsequent images.

Couldn't the wind have blown it away?

We have considered this option. Wind speed was measured in many experiments and estimated to be between 0.3 and 0.48 m/s. Such a speed could hardly move an object. Another likely reason for the disappearance of the "scorpion" may be that it was moving around.

- What methods did you use in your work?

During processing, the most simple and "linear" methods were used - adjusting brightness, contrast, blurring or sharpening. Any other means - retouching, adjusting, or using any version of Photoshop - was completely excluded.

Well, our scientists, as always, are modest in their repertoire, a little embarrassed about the fame that is about to fall on them. Even now, after so many years, they either pretend or really underestimate the results obtained. Judge for yourself: the director of the IKI RAS, Professor Lev Zeleny, accidentally mentioned the moving “objects” discovered by Xanfomality and other employees of the institute at a press conference held on Monday, without attaching much importance to them. It only remains for us in this case to recall the well-known aphorism that new ideas in science usually go through three stages: 1. What nonsense! 2. There is something in this ... 3. Well, who doesn’t know this!

Venus is not the most pleasant place for people in the solar system. Credit: NSSDC Photo Gallery

Why can't humans survive on Venus?

Of course, at the moment, Venus is not a place suitable for life. The planet has too active volcanic activity and constant greenhouse effects. These processes make the survival of living organisms on this planet almost impossible. The temperature of the red-orange surface of Venus reaches the limits capable of melting lead. What is happening on this planet and what it looks like for humanity from ancient times to the present day is comparable only to hell, not otherwise. But what if you believe that human life on this planet is possible? What would humanity face when trying to populate it?

Given the characteristics of the planets, Venus is often perceived as the twin sister of the Earth. The sizes and chemical composition of both cosmic bodies are almost the same. Plus, Venus has an atmosphere. This is what attracted the attention of space researchers from all over the world to the orange planet and the creation of programs for its study from European, Soviet and American space agencies since 1960.

In the early 1990s, the NASA-led Magellan spacecraft acquired radar data to display 98% of Venus' topographical information that cannot be seen due to very high cloud levels. Mountains, craters, thousands of volcanoes, lava rivers up to 5000 km long, ring-shaped structures and unusual mosaic-like terrain deformations have been found on the surface.

But plains have also been discovered, and they, by the way, occupy two-thirds of the surface of Venus. These places can be designated as the only possible for the existence of the alleged life.

However, walking on the plains of Venus, to put it mildly, would not seem pleasant to a person. There is no water on the surface of the planet because it is subject to a constant greenhouse effect. Its atmosphere is supersaturated with carbon dioxide that retains heat, resulting in temperatures above the crust reaching about 465 degrees Celsius.

The mass of Venus is approximately 91% of the mass of the Earth, so jumps on the planet are possible a little higher, and objects weigh a little lighter. But due to the density of the atmospheric layer and its resistance, the movement of a person would become much slower, approximately the same as if he were in the water. Speaking of water. The atmospheric pressure that a person would experience on Venus is comparable to the pressure that he would experience being at a depth of 914 meters below sea level.

There is an obvious similarity in size between Venus and Earth. And the presence of a dense atmosphere on the second planet from the Sun, obvious to observers using even primitive telescopes, has long prompted scientists to think about whether there is life on Venus.

Temperature on Venus

It was assumed, as a rule, that it was stronger than our planet. But not enough to create a serious obstacle to the existence of life there. So stated, for example, the English astronomer Richard Proctor in 1870:

“It is clear that with such a proximity of Venus to our star, at least most of its surface is unsuitable for the existence of organisms living on Earth. Such conditions would undoubtedly make the heat of the Sun almost unbearable in the equatorial regions of the planet. But in its temperate and subarctic regions, the climate must be well suited to our needs. And life there may well exist ... ".

In 1918, the Swedish chemist and Nobel laureate Svante Arrhenius came to the following conclusion:

“There is a lot of water on Venus ... most of its surface ... is undoubtedly covered with swamps corresponding to those of the earth, in which coal deposits have formed ... The same climatic parameters that exist everywhere lead to a complete lack of adaptation to changing external conditions. Thus, life on Venus is represented only by the lower ones. Mostly, undoubtedly, belonging to the vegetable kingdom. And organisms of almost the same type are distributed all over the planet.

This description of Venus, frozen in a kind of Carboniferous period of the world, was the first of a series of intriguing hypotheses that emerged in the first half of the 20th century.

Seas and swamps

During the 1920s, scientists tried to detect water vapor in Venusian clouds. But, to everyone's surprise, he was not found. Instead of water vapor, a large amount of carbon dioxide was found. This seemed to put an end to the swamp theory. And a radically new picture emerged. It began to be considered dust, and the surface - a dry, wind-blown desert. According to another theory, the clouds of Venus were composed of formaldehyde.

In 1955, American astronomers Frank Whittle and Donald Menzel argued that the Venusian atmosphere could be rich in ice crystals. They just can't be seen in the spectrum of the atmosphere. According to their version, Venus is completely covered with a carbonated ocean. Scientists argued that any protruding patches of land would remove most of the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. And they would fix it in the rocks in the form of carbonates (as happened on Earth).

An intriguing hypothesis emerged of a planetary ocean populated by marine organisms. They seemed to dreamers similar to those that existed on Earth in the Cambrian era. Which ended 500 million years ago. Isaac Asimov described his vision of the water world in the 1954 novel Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus.

However, hopes of finding at least a puddle of liquid water on Venus, not to mention antediluvian life, quickly evaporated in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Measurements were made, first with radio telescopes on Earth and then with spacecraft. They showed that the Venusian climate is by no means favorable, but, on the contrary, extremely hostile.

The next step is to send a probe to test these ideas. One preferred embodiment includes a balloon tethered probe. It will look like a floating spaceship. Such an approach would make it possible to collect samples of cloud droplets and then send them to Earth for analysis.

Tatyana Zimina. According to ESA and IKI RAS.

Photograph of Venus in the ultraviolet range (wavelength 0.365 µm) taken from a distance of 30,000 km using a camera installed on the European Venera Express spacecraft. The photo shows dark and light areas associated with an unknown

Billions of years ago, Venus probably had significantly more water than it does today. The European spacecraft Venus Express, which has been operating in Venusian orbit since April 2006, has confirmed that the planet has lost large amounts of water in the past.

Venus and Earth are considered superficially similar planets - they have approximately the same size, gravity values ​​​​and are very similar in basic chemical composition. This suggests that in the past on Venus, as well as on Earth, there were oceans, which means that there could be life. Today, the planet is heated to 460 ° C, and water is present only in its atmosphere and in such small quantities that, if condensed on the planetary surface, it forms a layer only 3 cm thick.

Why did Venus lose its water? According to astrophysicists, once, approximately from 500 million to 4 billion years from the birth of the planet, under the influence of ultraviolet rays of the Sun, water molecules broke up into atoms - two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, and were carried away, probably by the solar wind, into the interplanetary space. After all, Venus, in contrast to the Earth, does not have a magnetic field that could protect it from the solar wind - a stream of charged particles that freely bombard the upper layers of the atmosphere of the "blue" planet, carrying away ions from it.

Experiments carried out using the Analyzer of Space Plasma and Energetic Atoms (ASPERA), installed on board the European spacecraft, showed that on the night side of Venus there are indeed huge losses of hydrogen and oxygen, and in the ratio characteristic of water molecules. The rate of "exit" of these atoms was measured. At the same time, as experiments have shown, the upper layers of the planet's atmosphere contain an increased amount of deuterium, which, being a heavier atom compared to hydrogen, breaks out of the planet's embrace with less ease.

According to Colin Wilson from the University of Oxford (UK), experimental data indicate that in the past there was a lot of water on Venus. However, this still does not mean that there were oceans on its surface.

Eric Chassfière of the University of Paris-South (France) developed a mathematical model according to which water on Venus was mainly present in its atmosphere and existed only in the very early stages of the planet's development, when it was in a molten state. After the disintegrated water molecules escaped into space, the temperature dropped, which probably led to the solidification of the planet's surface. That is, according to this model, there have never been any oceans on Venus. True, even if Chassfière's model turns out to be correct, this does not exclude the possibility that water could have been delivered to the planet by comets after its surface had become solid. This water could become a habitat for living organisms.

The purpose of the European mission "Venera-Express" is to study the evolution of the atmosphere of Venus and the volatile substances contained in it: how they arose and how they interacted with the surface, as well as how the atmosphere interacts with the solar wind. In addition, it was assumed that during the experiments volcanic and seismic activity on the planet would be detected.

The equipment of the European spacecraft includes several scientific instruments created with the participation of Russian scientists from the IKI RAS and NPO. Lavochkin. It is a high-resolution spectrometer and general-purpose spectrometer (SPICAV-SOIR) designed to study the vertical structure of the atmosphere, temperature profiles, clouds and trace atmospheric components. As well as a planetary Fourier spectrometer designed for optical analysis of the atmosphere and the study of its thermal structure (the device turned out to be inoperable).

It should be noted that Venus is the main object of research for Russian planetary scientists; a total of 16 spacecraft of the Venera series and two Vega spacecraft with landing modules and balloon stations were launched to it. Thanks to the measurements made on board the Soviet descent and landing space stations in the 1970-1980s, a basic model of the atmosphere of Venus was built.

Currently, the Russian project "Venera-D" (the letter "d" means "long-lived") is being developed to further study the chemical composition of the atmosphere, the surface and clarify the same question: where did the water disappear from the planet?

The main difference between the lander of the new Russian space complex is the relatively long (several days) performance of its scientific equipment under conditions of high temperatures and pressure. (The landers of previous Venusian stations worked on the planet for no more than an hour and a half.) The mission will include an orbital unit, a descent vehicle and a flotilla of balloons that will fly at altitudes from 35 to 60 km and from which the surface will be photographed. The launch of the spacecraft is planned for the end of 2016.