Acid cloud wall discovered on Venus that has existed for more than three decades

Recently, a super speedy acid cloud has been discovered in the atmosphere of Venus. Researchers say that though it has been newly discovered, it might have been there for three decades. The newly discovered acid cloud is 50KM below the thick cloud tops of Venus and sometimes stretches as far as 7,500 KM across the equator and mid-latitudes of Venus.

Acid cloud on Venus

The cloud that exists in the atmosphere of Venus is super speedy and is like an acid cloud. The wall of acid clouds lurks just below the atmosphere of Venus. It whips around the planet at speeds close to that of a commercial air jet on Earth.

Even though spacecrafts have visited Venus sporadically since 1962, the huge feature went undiscovered for so long. According to Space.com, the first hint that something strange was happening came from the Japanese Akatsuki spacecraft that has been orbiting Venus since the year 2015. Reportedly, study co-author Pedro Machado, a researcher with Portugal's Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences, said in a statement that they needed access to a large growing and scattered collection of images of Venus gathered in recent decades with different telescopes.

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Researchers believe that the cloud wall was there due to the fast rotation in Venus’ upper atmosphere. They believe that the cloud wall could potentially dump enough momentum and energy to fuel the fast winds higher up. Lead author Javier Peralta, an astrophysicist at the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA, which runs the Akatsuki mission), said in the same statement in Divulgacao.iastro.pt, that cloud wall zooms above the surface at jet-like speeds of 328 km an hour.

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However, it is still unknown what causes the cloud wall and further research is required to understand the feature better. Researchers added in their statement that the feature could be an atmospheric “Kelvin” wave. It is a class of atmospheric gravity waves that has already been seen at planet Venus. A planet’s atmosphere’s gravity waves happen when winds move at high speed over static geological features like a  crater wall or a mountain. The updraft rises up and sinks down in a layer of stable air just above the acid cloud feature.

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