From the NY Times: "Other than the hellish heat, a crushing
carbon dioxide atmosphere and corrosive clouds of sulfuric acid,
Venus is a lot like Earth, scientists said yesterday. In a news
conference at the Paris headquarters of the European Space
Agency, the scientists, working on the agency’s Venus Express
mission, played up the Venus-as-Earth’s-twin angle in presenting
their newest findings, including signs of lightning, surprising
swings of temperature and additional evidence that Venus could
have once had oceans the size of Earth’s. “They’re really twins
which are just separated at birth,” said Dmitri Titov, the
mission’s science coordinator. “The key question is why those
twins are so different.” Understanding the dynamics and history
of Venus’s turbulent atmosphere could lead to a better
understanding of the role that heat-trapping gases like carbon
dioxide play in shaping the climate of planets including Earth.
Eight scientific articles describing the observations of Venus
Express, the first spacecraf