“The Lost Oceans of Venus”

We do not know exactly what happened to Venus in the past, though it is widely suspected—and almost all planetary geologists would agree—that Venus was originally like the planet shown in the video; it once had water. In fact, Venus currently sits near the inner edge of the solar system's habitable zone—the region where a planet receives enough energy from its star to maintain a temperate climate with oceans and liquid water on its surface (though the presence or absence of an atmosphere also plays a role).

Venus is currently located in the innermost, hottest band—right on the edge—yet if it possessed water like Earth, it would not receive enough heat to produce such a terrible climate. The hellish conditions it currently experiences are due to its stifling atmosphere, which traps the heat received from the Sun, preventing it from escaping into space. Consequently, the consensus among experts—despite a few dissenters who argue Venus was always a hellscape—is that the planet originally had water and oceans, and was actually situated in the center of the habitable zone; this is because, billions of years ago, the Sun was cooler, gradually increasing in brightness and heat output over time.

This has nothing to do with climate change, because I am discussing processes spanning hundreds of millions of years—not the single century-long timeframe we are witnessing now. It is an unstoppable yet very slow process. Three billion years ago, the Sun was fainter than it is today, and Venus received less solar energy than it does now. Since Venus is a planet similar to Earth, it is assumed that it originally possessed the same amount of water as Earth—and perhaps enjoyed more favorable temperatures, given its location right in the center of the habitable zone. In principle, then, Venus was better positioned for life to emerge.

The question is: how long did Venus retain its water? Some argue it was for a very short time, while others suggest a scenario similar to Mars—perhaps up to a billion years. However, a study titled "The Lost Oceans of Venus" has been released; it analyzes the planet's polygonal plains—low-lying areas featuring polygonal structures. These differ from the ones found on Mars (which we discussed in a previous livestream) in that they are gigantic, with angles spanning several kilometers—otherwise, they wouldn't be detectable. Keep in mind that the only actual images we have of the Venusian surface are a few photos taken by Soviet probes; everything else consists of other types of imagery.

According to this research, these large polygons on Venus likely formed due to marine sediments; this implies that Venus once had oceans before undergoing a runaway greenhouse effect. The bombshell here is that these polygons formed a billion years ago. This leaves us with two possibilities—though the researchers are extremely cautious, perhaps even overly so.

The study outlines two potential scenarios. One is that Venus, like Earth, originally possessed oceans that persisted for 3.5 billion years—since we know these polygons date back roughly a billion years (give or take). This means the planet retained its water and oceans until just a billion years ago.

We know that on Mars, the presence of water did not extend beyond that one-billion-year mark; yet, during that era, Venus, Earth, and Mars all held water. Crucially, water was present when life emerged on Earth; given the shared presence of the necessary elements, there is nothing to prevent us from speculatively asserting that life—at least in a primitive form—could have arisen on Venus and Mars as well. However, since we know water did not persist on Mars beyond a billion years, it is unlikely that life there could have evolved beyond the bacterial stage.

It is worth noting that complex life on Earth has existed for less than a billion years; for the vast majority of life's history on this planet, it consisted of bacteria and single-celled organisms. Why did we make that leap to complex life? That is another of life's great mysteries. However, according to this research, Venus possessed liquid water—oceans on its surface—for more than three times as long. That provided enough time not only for bacteria and single-celled organisms to emerge but also for them to evolve into complex life forms.

Then, of course, there is the fact that we do not know the rate at which life evolves; under certain circumstances and with elements different from those on Earth, evolution might proceed much faster. It is a complex subject that we do not fully understand, but what if that leap had occurred much earlier? Life emerged over 3.8 billion years ago, and 500 million years later, it made the leap to complexity—transitioning from a bacterial state to complex life after hundreds of millions of years.

Instead of evolving as complex beings for less than a billion years, we could have evolved as such for 3 billion years—three times as long. Presumably, specific events trigger these evolutionary spurts. Just as there are events that cause mass extinctions, there are also events that drive evolutionary progress, and Venus may have experienced them. We cannot state this with certainty. Nor can we confirm that life actually emerged on Venus; however, if it possessed the same elements, was a planet like ours, and had the time, it is difficult to imagine that life—even in its most basic form—would not have arisen.

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