Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to Will Life Be Found On Mars? Your opinions and guesses:

For former life, I'd bet on Venus first
dtb — (archived)

While clearly *not* a pleasant vacation spot today (much like Los Angeles -- hot, smoggy, and entirely paved over), Venus should have had plenty of water, sunshine, and volcanic/geothermal activity back in the good old days. My understanding is that models are now suggesting it had liquid water for a while before the runaway greenhouse kicked in (vs earlier models which predicted it was never cool enough to condense). Long enough to allow a warm, wet period after the heavy bombardment ended, perhaps.

Plus, Venus should have been receiving meteorites from Mars and Earth in case it's own chemistry was lagging.

Now, given Venus today, what are the chances that 3 billion year old rock is exposed, that any recognizable fossil signature hasn't been baked out of it, and that we will ever locate it? Pretty darn low. So the likelihood of FINDING evidence of Venusian life seems very low.

But for speculative purposes at least, early Venus seems a pretty good prospect.

And there's always Europa.

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