Venus has an ‘electric wind’ strong enough to remove the components of water from its upper atmosphere, which may have played a significant role in stripping the planet of its oceans, according to a new study by NASA and UCL researchers. The study, published today in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, discovered that Venus’ electric field is so strong that it can accelerate the heavy electrically charged component of water — oxygen — to speeds fast enough to escape the planet’s gravity. When water molecules rise into the upper atmosphere, sunlight breaks the water into hydrogen ions which are fast and escape easily, and heavier oxygen ions which are carried away by the electric field.Venus is the planet most like Earth in terms of its size and gravity, and evidence suggests it once had oceans worth of water which boiled away to steam long ago with surfaces temperatures of around 860 degrees Fahrenheit (460 Centigrade). Yet Venus’ thick atmosphere, about 100 times the pressure of Earth’s, has 10,000 to 100,000 times less water than Earth’s atmosphere, suggesting something removed all the steam. Scientists thought it was the solar wind eroding the remainder of an ocean’s worth of oxygen and water slowly from Venus’ upper atmosphere, but the new findings suggest it was an aggressive electric wind instead.
https://scienceisland.org/strong-electric-wind-strips-planets-of-oceans-and-atmospheres/
