Was Venus surrogate mother for Earth?

by William Atkins

Sunday, 27 July 2008

Page 1 of 2 ! Venus and Earth have often been called “sister” planets because of their similarities, but a new British research study finds that mother Venus may have sent microorganisms to daughter Earth via father Sun and created life on Earth. The Tuesday, July 22, 2008 article “On the possibility of microbiota transfer from Venus to Earth” appears in the journal Astrophysics and Space Science. Its authors are British astrobiologist Professor N. Chandra Wickramasinghe and British research fellow Dr. Janaki T. Wichramasinghe, both from the Centre for Astrobiology, School of Mathematics, Cardiff University, in Cardiff, United Kingdom. The two British scientists contend that microbes (microscopic organisms) from Venus could have been blown by the solar wind, in a journey of days or weeks, into the Earth’s atmosphere.  According to their abstract, “The possibility of the clouds of Venus providing habitats for extremophilic microorganisms has been discussed for several decades. We show here that the action of the solar wind leads to erosion of parts of the atmosphere laden with aerosols and putative microorganisms, forming a comet-like tail in the antisolar direction.” Their results are based on data taken from the Venus Express spacecraft, which was launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) on November 9, 2005 to study Venus, along with the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), which was launched on December 2, 1995 as a joint NASA-ESA mission to study the Sun. The two scientists state that bacteria have been found in sulfurous hot springs on Earth—an extreme climate not conducive to life—and that the extreme atmospheric environment of Venus also holds the necessary chemical composition for the existence of microorganisms and that they could be transported by the actions of the Sun to Earth. They state that the cloud’s surrounding Venus contain chemicals that allow for the presence of microorganisms. Further, if properly aligned with the Sun and the Earth, the solar wind—a stream of charged particles (plasma, mostly electrons and protons) ejected from the upper atmosphere of the Sun—could have blown past Venus and taken microbes along for its trip to Earth. Please read page two for additional information << First page <   1 2 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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