Venus Offers Earth Climate Clues

Observations of the planet Venus might assist efforts to tackle the threat of climate change here on Earth. Data from a European probe orbiting Venus paints a picture of a planet that may once have been like Earth, but later evolved in a very different way. Venus has undergone runaway greenhouse warming, where trapped solar radiation has heated the surface to an average temperature of 872F. New results from Venus express mission appear in Nature journal. In size, mass and composition. Earth and Venus are remarkably similar, Venus is closer to the Sun, but this alone does not explain the differences with Earth. Venue lacks the Earth's magnetic shield, which means that its atmosphere feels the full onslaught of the solar wind - a stream of charged particles from our star - and cosmic radiation, and has done so for billions of years.