Can you live on venus

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Tereza Pultarova is a London-based science and technology journalist.

Already a subscriber? Sign in. Thanks for reading Scientific American. Create your free account or Sign in to continue. See Subscription Options. Discover World-Changing Science. Get smart. Sign up for our email newsletter. Sign Up. Between its desiccated, red-orange landscape and surface temperatures hot enough to melt lead, Venus is our solar system's analog to hell. Setting up a livable base on the planet is a feat far beyond our technological capabilities right now, but here's what life would be like if we could actually live on Venus.

Venus is often thought of as Earth's twin sister because the size and composition of the two planets are similar. So it should come as no surprise that NASA, the Soviet space program, the European Space Agency ESA and others have sent numerous spacecraft to explore the planet second closest to the sun — more than 40 in all since the s. In the early s, NASA's Venus orbiter spacecraft, Magellan, used radar signals to map 98 percent of the planet we can't see Venus's surface directly because of its thick cloud cover.

Radar images from Magellan showed that the Venusian surface is decorated with mountains; craters; thousands of volcanoes, some of which are much larger than Earth's; lava-borne canals up to 3, miles 5, km in length; ringlike structures called coronae, or crowns; and odd, deformed terrain called tesserae. The planet's defining surface characteristic, however, is its flat, smooth plains, which cover about two-thirds of Venus — these plains would, arguably, be the best places to set up a home base to live.

Walking around on Venus wouldn't be a pleasant experience. The Venusian surface is completely dry because the planet suffers from a runaway greenhouse gas effect. That is, its thick atmosphere is full of heat-trapping carbon dioxide that keeps the planet's surface temperatures at about degrees Fahrenheit degrees Celsius. Venus' gravity is almost 91 percent of Earth's, so you could jump a little higher and objects would feel a bit lighter on Venus, compared with Earth.

Both facilities observed Venus at a wavelength of about one millimetre, much longer than the human eye can see. The team painstakingly measured levels of phosphine in the clouds, and ruled out any alternative reasons for its presence. The team believes their discovery is significant because they can rule out many alternative ways to make phosphine, but they acknowledge that confirming the presence of life needs more study, and possibly a mission to our next-door planet.

Dr Anne Jungblut is a microbiologist at the Museum studying life in extreme environments. She commented, 'The finding of a compound such as phosphine that is associated with microbial life on Earth is exciting news. It highlights the importance of studying microbes and their metabolisms in the environment as it might potentially provide information on the conditions that are required for life to produce the gas on Earth, and might help to find more clues on the origin of the gas on Venus.

By studying how organisms survive and thrive on Earth, scientists have identified key ingredients that appear to be essential for life. Peering into our solar system's origins with light brighter than ten billion suns - discover the work of a planetary scientist.

Growing up in the Apollo era of the seventies, Prof Sara Russell fantasised about working on space missions. Get email updates about our news, science, exhibitions, events, products, services and fundraising activities. You must be over the age of Privacy notice. Smart cookie preferences. Change cookie preferences Accept all cookies. Skip to content. Read later. You don't have any saved articles. By Katie Pavid. Phosphine gas has been found in the clouds of Venus that could have been created by microbes.

Researchers are left with another possibility - that small organisms are responsible. What is phosphine? Biologists don't yet know the exact biochemical path that produces the gas, even here on Earth.