Physics Colloquium: Climate histories of Venus and connections to spacecraft data

How could a planet so close to Earth's orbit, with a likely similar composition, mass and density end up so different from Earth? How did Venus go from a post-accretion magma ocean world to its present day hell house state 4 billion years later? Did it also have a temperate period with surface liquid water in between? We will present historical and recent work on these evolutionary histories and see how they might be constrained with former (Pioneer Venus, Venus Express, Magellan) and upcoming mission data (EnVision, DAVINCI, VERITAS) to our sister world. These answers could have profound implications for our expectations of the climates of terrestrial planets orbiting nearby stars.