Did oceans on Venus harbour life?
ANCIENT oceans on Venus may have lasted long enough for life to have emerged. To find out if they did, we should look out for a hardy silicate mineral called tremolite. Tremolite, which forms in the presence of water, can be used as a kind of chemical clock, says David Grinspoon of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science in Colorado. Because we know how long it takes to decompose into other minerals in the extreme temperatures on Venus, the mineral’s abundance could reveal how recently water was present there. “For half of its lifetime, Venus could have been a habitable planet with liquid water oceans,” says Grinspoon, who presented his ideas at the Division for Planetary Sciences meeting in Orlando, Florida, last week.
