Venus once had water like Earth but lost it. Various theories attempt to explain how the Earth's sister planet becomes a hellish world. The newest explanation suggests that the water loss was due to a chemical reaction.
Venus Lost Water Due To a Chemical Reaction
There is a theory suggesting that Venus may have had seas or other substantial bodies of surface water at some point in its history. Venus may have experienced a runaway greenhouse effect over time as geological activity produced more carbon dioxide and solar radiation. As a result, all surface water would have evaporated, atmospheric pressure would have increased, and high temperatures would have followed, turning the planet into the hostile environment it is today.
However, a new study argues that a chemical process known as HCO+ dissociative recombination is the possible reason all water in Venus evaporated. Previous hypotheses proposed that hydrodynamic outflow -- a process that describes how gas escapes from a planet's atmosphere --was the mechanism by which Venus lost its water.
However, not enough water could have been eliminated by this mechanism to produce the current dry conditions on Venus. On the other hand, HCO+ dissociative recombination would result in water loss twice as fast as hydrodynamic outflow indicated. Any disparities in data from earlier Venus spacecraft instruments would likewise be explained by it.
This mechanism almost doubles the Venus H escape rate, the amount of current volcanic water outgassing and/or impactor infall needed to sustain a steady-state atmospheric water abundance, according to the researchers. They also claim that these larger loss rates allow for speedier desiccation in the wake of hypothesized late ocean scenarios and answer long-standing problems in concurrently explaining the measured abundance and isotope ratio of Venusian water.
More studies are needed to determine if HCO+ dissociative recombination is indeed the reason why Venus lost its water.
HCO+ Dissociative Recombination in Mars and Venus
Another study also examined the effect of HCO+ dissociative recombination in nonthermal hydrogen loss at Mars. According to the researchers, Mars' atmospheric development has been impacted by hydrogen escape to space, which has resulted in a notable loss of water. A portion of atmospheric H lost that is unknown gets its escape energy from photochemical reactions. Some observational investigations indicate that the density of this "hot" H is significantly higher than predicted by models.
More escaping hot H is produced by HCO+ dissociative recombination than by any other process that has been examined so far. This process may be responsible for approximately 5% of the projected long-term average loss and more than 50% of escape during solar minimum aphelion circumstances.
The estimated impact of this hot H on observed brightness profiles is expected to be negligible, which presents a major challenge to the interpretation of remote sensing observations from satellites.
The high (63%-83%) albedo of the planet to H at 1-10 eV energies is largely responsible for the mechanism's efficacy, suggesting the significance of such photochemical mechanisms for the desiccation of Mars, Venus, and other rocky planets throughout the universe.
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