s carbon dioxide trapped in Earth's tectonic plates.
There are some additional questions that come up with these proposed theories of Venus' evolution. For instance, if there was so much water on Venus, where did all the oxygen go when it was stripped from the water molecules? Dr. Kane is also on a scientific team that hopes to answer that question by sending a lander to Venus in the near future to test whether oxides are present on the surface that the free radical oxygen could have been bonded to.
There are also other potential reasons for the dampening of Venus' orbital eccentricities other than water. One potential influence is Earth itself. To test whether this is the case, researchers hope to understand more about what are known as Milankovitch cycles, which are a model of the periodic changes of the Earth's orbital parameters. If Earth had a dampening effect on Venus, the kinetic energy that would have been removed from Venus' orbital pattern would have been absorbed by the Earth. This dramatic change in the energy of Earth's orbit would have shown itself in completely skewed Milankovitch cycles around the epoch when this transfer of momentum happened. While there hasn't been any data to support this theory so far, future paleoclimate studies could shed light on whether Earth itself took away some of its closest neighbor's eccentricity.
But the best estimation for the original cause of that eccentricity is still the migration of Jupiter. And if the gas giant's migration happened to push Venus into the runaway greenhouse state that it suffered from, that has significant implications for any Venus analogs that we might find orbiting other stars. As our instruments for detection of those exoplanets become even more accurate, we are likely to find many more planets like Venus. Understanding what, exactly, happened to the only model for that type of planet in our solar system becomes much more important to understanding the habitable zones of stars. With all the renewed interest, Venus might even draw the attention of Hollywood in the not too distant future.
Provided by Universe Today