Article Posted on : - Oct 07, 2011

A file photo.

WASHINGTON (BNS): Europe's Venus Express spacecraft has discovered an ozone layer in the atmosphere of Venus, a media report said.

According to New Scientist, Venus Express found ozone's spectral signature in a layer 100 kilometres up in the planet's atmosphere, at concentrations of no more than 1 per cent those found in Earth's atmosphere.

"The key chemical reactions operating in Earth's upper stratosphere may also operate on Venus," the website mentioned Franck Montmessin of the LATMOS atmospheric research centre in France and his colleagues in a paper describing the results.

However the new results are not enough to prove the existence of life in the planet, as earlier an ozone layer in Mars was also found which was 0.3 per cent that of Earth.

Instead, it bolsters the idea that a planet must have at least 20 per cent as much ozone as Earth to suggest life, it said.