Venus may have had a climate suitable for life billions of years ago

NASA/JPL

By Leah Crane

Nowadays, Venus is a sweltering hellscape with no liquid water on its surface, where temperatures exceed 450°C – hot enough to melt lead. But it may have had an ocean billions of years ago, and its tides could have slowed the planet’s rotation to make its climate relatively temperate.

Venus is an extremely slow rotator. It makes a full turn just once every 243 Earth days, which is slower than any other planet in the solar system. In the deep past, it may have spun faster.

Observations …