News: Latest – distributed around Yorkshire June 20, 2016 02:54:59 PM
ESA’s Venus Express may have helped to explain the puzzling lack of water on Venus. The planet has a surprisingly strong electric field – the first time this has been measured at any planet – that is sufficient to deplete its upper atmosphere of oxygen, one of the components of water.
Venus is often called Earth’s twin, since the second planet from the Sun is only slightly smaller than our own. But its atmosphere is quite different, consisting mainly of carbon dioxide, with a little nitrogen and trace amounts of sulphur dioxide and other gases. It is much thicker than Earth’s, reaching pressures of over 90 times that of Earth at sea level, and incredibly dry, with a relative abundance of water about 100 times lower than in Earth’s gaseous shroud.
In addition, Venus now has a runaway greenhouse effect and a surface temperature high enough to melt lead. Also, unlike our home planet, it has no significant magnetic field of its own.
Scientists think Venus did once host large amounts of water on its surface over 4 billion years ago. But as it heated up, much of this water evaporated into the atmosphere, where it could then be ripped apart by sunlight and subsequently lost to space.
The solar wind – a powerful stream of charged subatomic particles blowing from the Sun – is one of the culprits, stripping hydrogen ions (protons) and oxygen ions from the planet’s atmosphere and so depriving it of the raw materials that make water.
Now, scientists using Venus Express have identified another difference between the two planets: Venus has a substantial electric field, with a potential around 10 V.
This is at least five times larger than expected. Previous observations in search of electric fields at Earth and Mars have failed to make a decisive detection, but they indicate that, if one exists, it is less than 2 V.
“We think that all planets with atmospheres have a weak electric field, but this is the first time we have actually been able to detect one,” says Glyn Collinson from NASA’s Goddard Flight Space Center, lead author of the study.
In any planetary atmosphere, protons and other ions feel a pull from the planet’s gravity. Electrons are much lighter and thus feel a smaller pull – they are able to escape the gravitational tug more easily.
As the negative electrons drift upwards in the atmosphere and away into space, they are nevertheless still connected to the positive protons and ions via the electromagnetic force, and this results in an overall vertical electric field being created above the planet’s atmosphere.
- Raising awareness of mental health
- Wath All Saints Church Rear
- Hardship support for households from RMBC
- Wath Grammar School Prefects 1948
- Police Officers relay Special Olympics torch
- Penalty Charge Notices could end with clamping
- A new miller has been found for the 17th Century Worsbrough Mill
- New Sponsor for Wath Comprehensive School
- Wath-upon-Dearne Town End
- Have your say on where to vote in Rotherham
- NHS Trust looks to Doncaster school for future staff
- Unsung heroes honour at British Empire Medal presentation
- Wath-upon-Dearne John Payne Estate Auction
- One of the UK’s very best green spaces
- College helps to transform lives across South Yorkshire
- Sheffield student’s MDMA death – Two plead guilty
- Murder of 31-year-old man in Sheffield
- Rotherham Hospital criticised by inspectors over children’s care
- Shining a light on dark nights
- Teenager dies after falling ill on car journey to Rotherham
- Officers appeal for witnesses to Wath-upon-Dearne assault
- Barnsley PCs commended for saving man’s life
- Two businesses broken into in Wath, Rotherham
- Road networks targeted by Op Voyager
- South Yorkshire woodland body murder suspect bailed
- Mexborough teenager admits terror offence.
- Barnsley sex offender jailed for almost 15 years
- Fewer takeaways for Barnsley town centre?
- Melton Hall Mexborough
- Bedroom fire started by smoking materials
- Vet School success for Yorkshire Wildlife Park students
- Welcome of CSE sentencing in first Operation Stovewood case
- Sheffield charity taxi with a pub in the front seat
- Bell Tent Season
- Two more years in jail for Sheffield child abuser
- Council promotes diversity throughout Barnsley
- E-fit released in connection to Doncaster assault
- Seven years behind bars for knife-wielding robber
- Modern day slavery, human trafficking and the signs to look out for
- Grand Charity Football Match 1972