Our galaxy may be full of planets identical to Earth at formation that turned into uninhabitable hellscapes — and the one sitting next door to us has been so thoroughly ignored that a leading research
Space Daily • • science
Key Points:
- Preliminary research presented at the European Geosciences Union suggests Venus-like planets with dense CO₂ atmospheres may be about twice as common as Earth-like planets with liquid water oceans, though the work is still unpeer-reviewed and based on modeling.
- The study argues that rocky planets tend to develop thick CO₂ atmospheres during their cooling phase, making Earth’s oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere with oceans a less common outcome in planetary evolution.
- Detecting Venus-like atmospheres on exoplanets remains challenging due to observational limits, atmospheric stripping by host stars, and the bias toward discovering planets in short-period orbits where atmospheric stability is uncertain.
- Venus itself is underexplored despite being the closest example of this planetary type; modern atmospheric data is limited mostly to legacy Soviet missions, with current and planned missions facing budgetary threats.
- Confirming the prevalence of Venus-like exoplanets will likely take decades and depends on future space missions and telescope capabilities, highlighting that Earth may be an unusual planetary outcome rather than the norm.