New publication from UCLouvain in Nature Geoscience

L4SPACE

Led by Cedric Gillmann, the ULB and UCLouvain members of ET-Home have published a Nature Geoscience paper on “Dry late accretion inferred from Venus’s coupled atmosphere and internal evolution”

Using numerical simulations of impacts of different types of asteroids containing various amount of water, the team has discovered that water-rich asteroids colliding with Venus and releasing their water as vapor cannot explain the composition of Venus’ atmosphere as measured today. This means that the asteroid material that came to Venus, and thus to Earth, after the giant impact, must have been dry, therefore preventing the replenishment in water. Because water can obviously be found today on the Earth, it has been there since its formation, likely buried deep in the Earth so it could survive the giant impact.

The Nature Geoscience paper can be found here and here in pdf.

Published on April 10, 2020