Venus' mysterious haze is actually cosmic dust
A physical model show that iron dust and sulfuric acid create the right properties.
A physical model show that iron dust and sulfuric acid create the right properties.
The short version
- Venus is shrouded in a veil of mystery.
- The yellowish “lower haze” at the bottom of its atmosphere was discovered by the Venera and Pioneer Venus probes in the 1970s.
- These spacecraft were some of the first to successfully send images of the planet back to Earth, but the haze they saw went unexplained for decades.
What happened
Now the mystery Venus was keeping has been unveiled. “The continuous influx of cosmic dust is sufficient to sustain this lower haze layer with the particle size distribution observed by the entry probes,” Karyu said in a study published in Nature Astronomy.
Why it matters
“These haze particles of cosmic origin act as efficient condensation nuclei, promoting cloud formation in the main cloud deck even far from their initial source.” Previous speculation suggested the haze formed from volcanic ash.
Summary by Nerd News Network. Read the full article at Ars Technica via the links above and below.