How Venus Saved Earth’s Ozone Layer

Hello, friends!

Fun fact about me: Venus is my favorite planet.  I just feel like, out of all the planets in the Solar System, Venus has the most personality.  Granted, it’s the personality of a mad scientist, or maybe a serial killer.  But still… so much personality!  Anyway, today I want to share one of my favorite stories about my favorite planet.  It’s the story of how Venus (the mad scientist/serial killer planet) accidentally saved all life on Earth.

In 1962, NASA’s Mariner 2 space probe became the first spacecraft to send data back from Venus (the Soviet Union’s Venera 1 probe visited Venus a year before, but due to communications issues, it couldn’t transmit any data back to Earth).  In the decade that followed, more missions to Venus sent back even more data, and we learned that Venus spends all her time brewing this super deadly mix of chemicals in her atmosphere.  As I said, Venus has the personality of a mad scientist/serial killer.  If future astronauts ever try to land on the surface of Venus, she will straight up murder them.

As scientists in the 1960’s and 70’s catalogued all the absolutely terrifying stuff in Venus’s atmosphere, they realized something was missing: ozone.  I won’t go into all the chemistry details here, but given the kinds of chemical reactions happening on Venus, Venus should have produced something similar to Earth’s ozone layer.  And yet little to no ozone was detected.  So what gives?

Well, among all the other horrifying chemicals in Venus’s atmosphere, there are some chlorine-based molecules.  Turns out those chlorine-based molecules were interfering with ozone production.  Mystery solved!  But then somebody said, “Wait, what about chlorofluorocarbons?  Those are chlorine-based molecules, and we’ve been releasing them into Earth’s atmosphere for decades.”  More research followed, comparing and contrasting Earth and Venus.  It turned out that, yes, chlorofluorocarbons (better known as C.F.C.s) were interfering with Earth’s ozone layer just as similar chlorine-based molecules interfered with ozone production on Venus.

By the mid-1970’s, scientists were calling for action.  By the end of the 1980’s, politicians were listening, and they actually did something about the problem.  The Montreal Protocol is an international agreement restricting the production and use of C.F.C.s and other ozone-depleting chemicals.  As a direct result, today Earth’s ozone layer is healing, and there’s hope that the ozone layer will fully recover by the end of the 21st Century.  Would scientists have figured out what C.F.C.s were doing to Earth’s ozone layer without Venus’s help?  Probably.  But they might have figured it out too late.

A couple months ago, I did a post about solar storms and the danger they pose to our modern technological world.  In that post, I cited solar storms as one of the reasons why space exploration is worthwhile, despite the notoriously high price tag.  This story about Venus and the ozone layer?  This is another example of why space exploration is worth the money.  Comparing and contrasting Earth with another planet helped save us from disaster once before.  Who knows what other valuable lessons Venus (or Mars, or any of the other planets) still have to teach us?

WANT TO LEARN MORE?

Click here for a video from Sci-Show entitled “How Studying Venus Saved Earth.”

Or click here for an article from The Conversation entitled “What Venus has taught us about protecting the ozone layer.”

If you’re wondering why the ozone layer’s so important, click here for an article from How Stuff Works entitled “What If the Ozone Layer Disappeared?”

And lastly, some of you may be thinking, “Hey, didn’t they discover an ozone layer on Venus just a few years ago?”  You’re right, they did!  It’s at a much higher altitude than Earth’s ozone layer, and it’s much thinner and more tenuous, too.  But Venus does have just a little bit of ozone after all.  Click here to learn more.

The art used in today’s post is my own original work.  If you like my art, please consider visiting the I-Love-Space store on RedBubble.  Shopping on RedBubble is a great way to support artists (like me) so that we can keep doing what we do.  Thank you!