2023-10-03 11:14:54
Illustration of NASA’s Parker Solar mission encountering Venus – NASA
MADRID, 3 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Strong new evidence suggests lightning probably won’t be seen flashing from the thick and acidic clouds of Venusor, at least, not very frequently.
“There has been a debate about lightning on Venus for almost 40 years,” he said it’s a statement Harriet George, lead author of the new study and a postdoctoral researcher at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado Boulder. “We hope that with newly available data we can help reconcile that debate.” She and her team published her findings in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Venus is about the same size as Earth, but its dense, carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere has caused a runaway greenhouse effect. Anyone standing on the ground would face scorching temperatures of nearly 500 degrees Celsius and crushing atmospheric pressures. No spacecraft has ever survived more than a few hours on the planet’s surface.
To explore this extreme world, researchers turned to a scientific tool that was not designed at all to study Venus: NASA’s Parker Solar Probe which was launched in 2018 as part of a 7-year mission to investigate the physics of the solar corona or outermost atmosphere and the solar wind.
In February 2021, the spacecraft flew by Venus at a distance of approximately 2,400 kilometers. In the process, its instruments picked up dozens of what scientists call “whistle waves”: pulses of energy that, at least on Earth, can be triggered by lightning. The team’s data showed that Venus’s hissing waves may not actually originate from lightning, but rather disturbances in the weak magnetic fields that surround the planet.
The results coincide with a 2021 study, which failed to detect radio waves generated by lightning coming from Venus. The research was led by Marc Pulupa of the University of California, Berkeley.
SIGNALS DETECTED BY A NASA SHIP IN 1978
Much of the debate surrounding Venus and lightning dates back to 1978, when a NASA spacecraft called Pioneer Venus entered orbit around Earth’s twin. Almost immediately, the spacecraft began picking up whistler wave signals hundreds of kilometers above the planet’s surface.
For many scientists, These signals were reminiscent of a familiar phenomenon on Earth: lightning.
George explained that on Earth, whistling waves are often, but not always, created by lightning. The rays, he said, can push electrons into the planet’s atmosphere, which then send waves spiraling out into space. These waves create whistling tones that early radio operators on Earth could hear with headphones, hence the name “whistlers.”
If Venus’s hissing waves have a similar origin, then the planet It could be a lightning monster, experiencing approximately seven times more impacts than Earth. Scientists have also detected lightning strikes on Saturn and Jupiter.
“Some scientists looked at those signatures and said, ‘That could be lightning,'” George said. “Others have said, ‘Actually, it could be something else.’ “Since then, there has been back and forth on this for decades.”
#rays #illuminating #surface #Venus