14 DAY TRIAL // Despite the fact that Venus and Earth both began with about the same amount of water when they were first formed, our planet is currently home to 100,000 times more water than there was on our neighbor. And while it's understandable that the super-heated surface of Venus cannot sustain water (with temperatures averaging 870 degrees Fahrenheit (465 degrees Celsius), the same shouldn't hold true for the atmosphere. In reality, the gas mix above the planet is also very dry, leaving astronomers with a mystery on their hands – where did all the water on Venus go?
Magda Delva, of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, alongside her colleagues, believes that she may have found a possible explanation for the fact that not even H2O molecules exist in the atmosphere around Venus. The team hypothesized that the reason why this happens is because the planet's core is incapable of generating a magnetic field like Earth does. This shield protects the planet from the influence of the super-charge particles carried throughout the solar system by the solar winds.
While these particles cannot reach Earth in large concentrations, they bombard Venus' day side – the part of the planet that is exposed to sunlight directly – with extreme power, and simply rip off the hydrogen atoms from it. It's known that water comprises two H atoms and an oxygen one, and, if the water evaporated from the surface due to extreme temperatures, it would make sense that it was simply stripped away by the winds, which have the capacity to remove hydrogen atoms from nearly everywhere.
"I keep looking at the magnetometer data but so far I can't see the signature of oxygen escaping on the day side. These results show that there could be at least twice as much hydrogen in the upper atmosphere of Venus than we thought," says Delva, arguing that more missions are required on Venus, in order for astronomers to be able to properly distinguish between the hydrogen/oxygen loss on the bright side and that on the dark side of the planet.