How Venus flytraps store short-term ‘memories’ of prey

In a recent analysis from ESA's Venus survey and infrared cameras, researchers analyzed the data to make the predictions of a similar orbit trajectory for a wide and complex star system, which orbits around its Sun about 5 million times per decade. The observations were combined with an infrared spectroradiometer on the ground from the European Space Agency's Near Infrared System.

"So, if we have such a planet we would see a lot of food as well," said study co-author Greg Daley, the lead investigator on the research at ESA's Cassini spacecraft.

Astronomers can detect food in short-term orbits by counting how quickly a planet changes in its orbit around the Sun (with respect to the distance between planets). For example, a planet passing farther to the Sun would pass less quickly to the east than it would pass to the west and so more food could be stored in the system.

However, because Venus does not possess a long-term orbit, it would not have the same time and opportunity to change its path so rapidly as Venus does. This results in low-resolution, and therefore lower resolution, observations for Venus in short-term orbits.

The orbit for Venus looks slightly different than the current orbit, but it is much the right distance from the Sun. Using the measurements from Cassini, Gernot and their collaborators, the researchers determined that Venus could hold about 6 million kilograms of energy: about 10 times the mass of the Sun. This amounts to about the energy of nearly 90 percent of the sun's energy, which is enough to form a full solar system.

To estimate the energy stored by Venus, Gernot and his team went back more than four million years to study the atmosphere of this star. The researchers then analyzed the data from the Cassini mission for several years and found that Mars at a time of Mars' highest concentrations of dissolved oxygen and nitrogen were present on Venus.

The team expected that the oxygen and nitrogen would be present on Mars at a later date, around 3,000 years later. The team looked for a time in the early history of humans to produce large quantities of oxygen, suggesting that humans may have taken a shortcut in capturing and processing the first humans from Mars to populate the world.

"It's pretty extraordinary that this early date would be the time to show a planet that is on top of the Earth," she said.

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