Escaping hydrogen (IMAGE)

University of Colorado at Boulder

Escaping hydrogen

Caption

Venus today is dry thanks to water loss to space as atomic hydrogen. In the dominant loss process, an HCO+ ion recombines with an electron, producing speedy H atoms (orange) that use CO molecules (blue) as a launchpad to escape.

Credit

Aurore Simonnet / Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics / University of Colorado Boulder

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