(music throughout) How does planetary habitability evolve over time?
Our mysterious sister planet Venus may have once had oceans of water.
Yet the Venus of today presents a different “face”
with an incomparably hot and inhospitable environment.
Lurking in its massive atmosphere are the clues to how a planet
went from an oceanic state to the inhospitable state of today.
And within that atmosphere, particularly beneath the clouds,
is a chemical laboratory awaiting discovery.
Connections to oceans, perhaps to volcanoes that erupted more recently,
or even to the history of the last billion years of a planet that started life like Earth.
And those volcanoes and those rock scapes are hidden from our views –
and yet are waiting for us to return as we put Venus into its context.
Understanding Venus’ extraordinary chemistry is the first step to deciphering how the
evolution of habitability may play out on billions of planets beyond our solar system.
Venus here we come!