'If Venus Had As Much Water As Earth': Water Map Of Venus Hints At Possibility Of Life On It

The possibility of another habitable planet has fascinated scientists for long. Missions to Mars are attempts by various space agencies to see if the planet can support life form. Scientists have also tried to see if there is a possibility of conditions necessary for life forms on Earth¡¯s other neighbouring planet - Venus.

A Reddit user named Dragonite-2 shared the map of the Venus, in a public post in MapPorn subreddit on August 21. The caption of the post was ¡®Map of Venus if it has as much water as Earth¡¯.

Reddit

Inverse points out that the map that shows how Venus would appear with water is similar to the water-filled map of Mars Aaditya Raj Bhattarai shared on Reddit earlier in August.

It is one of many proposals which focuses on transforming the Red Planet. SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk¡¯s idea is to colonise Mars. Simply put, his plan is to build a city on Mars and create an atmosphere that enables humans to walk around only if they have their breathing apparatus.

While the possibility of finding living conditions on Mars might seem high as NASA plans a manned mission to the Red Planet soon, it might be more difficult to live on the surface of Venus where the temperature can reach 465 degrees Celsius.

Map of Venus if it has as much water as Earth. from r/MapPorn

The Reddit post started an online discussion with people speculating if Venus can be an alternative for Mars. The user explained the digital transformation process for the planet, ¡®Get the DEM file (downloadable from NASA), then run through the various calculation processes and such in either ArcGIS or QGIS to generate river courses from the terrain map, then convert those from raster to shapefile¡¯. The user then suggests fixing the errors manually and generating a stream order sequence.

Also Read: Venus Has A Giant Cloud Stretching Thousands Of Km, Moving At Over 300 Kmph

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But how close to reality is the map?

Talking to Inverse, Paul Byrne, associate professor of planetary sciences at North Carolina State University, said "The map is fairly accurate, in that someone has taken the real-world digital elevation model for Venus and added a 'sea level' to it.¡±

He further said, "I don't know how realistic the 'if Venus had as much water as Earth' part is, but I'm guessing that whoever made this map picked an average ocean depth for Earth and 'flooded' the Venus topography to that same depth." But that is pretty much it.

In reality, it's not very realistic according to Byrne but that does not mean that the map holds no value.