Although astronomy has advanced a lot in recent years, the solar system is still not fully understood. We talk about three questions that scientists cannot yet unambiguously answer
What destroyed Venus?
The adjective “hellish” best describes the surface of Venus. Its atmosphere is filled with CO gases.2which creates the greenhouse effect. This, in turn, leads to consistently high temperatures of around 475°C. Clouds of corrosive sulfuric acid hover over a landscape of thousands of sharp volcanic rocks. The pressure on the planet exceeds the earth’s by 92 times. Nevertheless, many scientists are sure that in the distant past, Venus was similar to the Earth, it had large oceans, and the atmosphere was favorable for the emergence and development of life. Robin Andrews, volcanologist and author of Supervolcanoes: What They Reveal About Earth and Other Worlds, points out: “Venus and Earth were planetary sisters. They were created at about the same time and from the same materials, but Venus is apocalyptic and Earth is beautiful. So why is there a lost one next to an ordinary paradise? In the scientific community, there are two hypotheses in this regard. According to one, Venus was destroyed by global warming due to its proximity to the Sun. According to the second, extensive volcanic eruptions made the planet so.
Is there anything alive in the lunar debris?
During the flights of the Apollo program, a total of 12 American astronauts visited the moon. To save space in the spacecraft on the way back, they left a lot of debris on the Earth’s satellite. Including:
- more than 70 spaceships and their parts;
- 5 US flags;
- 2 golf balls;
- 12 pairs of shoes;
- television cameras;
- tools;
- towels and napkins;
- food packaging;
- a photograph of the family of one of the astronauts;
- medal in honor of Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Komarov.
In addition, the astronauts left 96 bags of excrement and vomit on the moon. Nearly 50 years have passed since the last mission, so astrobiologists are worried about the question: do they still have living microorganisms that are teeming with human waste? If they were able to survive for such an amount of time in harsh space conditions, then this makes the hypothesis that life on Earth could come from outside, for example, on an asteroid, more realistic.
Did life exist on Mars?
Scientists believe that now the Red Planet does not have signs of the presence of any organisms. However, things could have been different in the past. NASA astrobiologist Lindsey Hayes says: “Mars today is very different from what it was 4 billion years ago, and this evidence from the past is visible. For example, the remains of a large river delta suggest that water could flow here, and this happened for quite a long time, since sediments remained. Life is always associated with water, so the question of the past of Mars remains open. Perhaps future missions to the planet will find the final answer to it.