Schulze-Makuch Dirk, Irwin Louis N
Department of Geological Sciences, University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX, USA.
Astrobiology. 2002 Summer;2(2):197-202. doi: 10.1089/15311070260192264.
With their similar size, chemical composition, and distance from the Sun, Venus and Earth may have shared a similar early history. Though surface conditions on Venus are now too extreme for life as we know it, it likely had abundant water and favorable conditions for life when the Sun was fainter early in the Solar System. Given the persistence of life under stabilizing selection in static environments, it is possible that life could exist in restricted environmental niches, where it may have retreated after conditions on the surface became untenable. High-pressure subsurface habitats with water in the supercritical liquid state could be a potential refugium, as could be the zone of dense cloud cover where thermoacidophilic life might have retreated. Technology based on the Stardust Mission to collect comet particles could readily be adapted for a pass through the appropriate cloud layer for sample collection and return to Earth.
金星和地球大小相近、化学成分相似且与太阳距离相当，它们可能有着相似的早期历史。尽管就我们所知，金星目前的表面条件对生命来说过于极端，但在太阳系早期太阳较暗时，金星可能拥有丰富的水和适宜生命存在的条件。鉴于在稳定选择下生命能在静态环境中存续，生命有可能存在于受限的环境生态位中，在金星表面条件变得不适宜后，生命可能退居于此。处于超临界液态水状态的高压地下栖息地可能是一个潜在的避难所，浓密云层区域也可能是避难所，嗜热嗜酸生命可能已退居到那里。基于星尘号任务收集彗星颗粒的技术可以很容易地进行调整，用于穿越合适的云层进行样本采集并返回地球。
