Venus has lengthy been depicted as having a hellish surroundings. In spite of that recognition, proof increasingly more means that our neighbor’s cloudy shroud isn’t riddled with lightning.
Final month, planetary scientists proposed that the majority if no longer all the shiny flashes noticed in Venus’ surroundings might be defined by way of meteors (SN: 9/11/23). Now, a separate staff means that whistling electromagnetic waves incessantly created by way of lightning on Earth and different planets don’t seem to be sparked by way of lightning on Venus.
In 2021, the Parker Sun Probe swung previous the midnight facet of Venus on its means towards the solar (SN: 12/15/21). Because it did, its tools picked up radio waves that scientists have dubbed whistler waves. Such disturbances were given their identify as a result of their frequency temporarily adjustments from top to low prior to they disappear, says Harriet George, an area physicist on the College of Colorado Boulder.
Oddly, Venus’ whistler waves had been touring downward towards the planet, no longer up and clear of it, as they might had been in the event that they’d been led to by way of lightning, George and her staff file within the Oct. 16 Geophysical Analysis Letters.
An alternative supply of power for those whistler waves might be disturbances in Venus’ vulnerable magnetic fields, the researchers recommend. As magnetic box traces shift and reconnect, they are able to liberate prodigious quantities of power, George says. In different milieus, magnetic reconnections boost up the sun wind, assist warmth the solar’s outer surroundings and assist cause Earth’s auroras (SN: 6/7/23; SN: 11/14/19; SN: 7/24/08). They’ve were given the precise traits to create whistler waves on Venus too.