Atmospheres In The Solar System Essay

Within our Solar System lies an abundance of planets, each with their own unique characteristics, including the Terrestrial planets of Venus, Earth, and Mars who vary in many aspects but, most importantly, their atmosphere. Firstly, Venus’s atmosphere is heavily laden with carbon dioxide (CO2), which makes up 96 percent of its atmosphere, 3.5 percent is made of nitrogen, and the remaining 0.5 percent is a combination of water vapor, sulfuric acid (which produce Venus’s thick, stable clouds), hydrochloric acid, and hydrofluoric acid. Venus’s upper atmosphere is cool, which the lower atmosphere is extremely hot and causes the surface temperature to rise to 470C (880F). Venus’ present atmosphere is very dry, but shows signs that it may have once contained water. An abundance of deuterium—the heavy isotope of hydrogen—developed, but was broken down into hydrogen and oxygen atoms by ultraviolet radiation that could not be absorbed by Venus’s lack of an ozone layer (Seeds). Earth’s atmosphere originally outgassed the same amount of CO2 as Venus. This CO2 was later dissolved and converted into limestone by Earth’s oceans. Because of this, Earth’s atmosphere is now

From Venus’s atmosphere, we can see that a stronger greenhouse effect would create a barren, volcanic wasteland unable to sustain life. Such a greenhouse effect could even be man-made through the human production of CO2 and Earth has already noticed a greenhouse effect forming, though it is much less damaging than Venus’. Similarly, Mars’ lack of an ozone layer shows us what our own thinning ozone layer could mean for hydrogen atoms within Earth’s atmosphere and water, and also demonstrates how a planet’s size and distance from the sun could have affected Earth and made life on it impossible. Through the thinning of our atmosphere, Earth could suffer from the same effects plaguing its neighbor, Mars