Venus

[PB666]

Theoretical paleoclimatology of venus. WATCH the CLICK BAIT.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hellish-venus-might-have-been-habitable-for-billions-of-years/?WT.mc_id=SA_DD_20160810

[Green Baron]

Here's the original for those who need a primary source. The paper is accepted but not yet reviewed or published. arxiv has it of course ...

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016GL069790/full

Earth did find a way to keep it's surface temp. +/- 15degrees C through the whole history by feedback circles/regulators. Plate-tectonics play a role, all those spheres (bio/hydro/atmo/cryo/litho) offered sinks and valves for different elements/purposes.

One of the things why i think that microbes are no big deal compared to the following evolution, but that's a different thread :-)

Edit: much speculation in it, few facts. The idea of a habitable venus is old, the method of applying a numeric model is new. Much of the data is guessed.

 

Edited August 11, 2016 by Green Baron

[Findthepin1]

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/nasa-climate-modeling-suggests-venus-may-have-been-habitable

There's the NASA publication.

[wumpus]

55 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

Here's the original for those who need a primary source. The paper is accepted but not yet reviewed or published. arxiv has it of course ...

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016GL069790/full

Earth did find a way to keep it's surface temp. +/- 15degrees C through the whole history by feedback circles/regulators. Plate-tectonics play a role, all those spheres (bio/hydro/atmo/cryo/litho) offered sinks and valves for different elements/purposes.

One of the things why i think that microbes are no big deal compared to the following evolution, but that's a different thread :-)

Edit: much speculation in it, few facts. The idea of a habitable venus is old, the method of applying a numeric model is new. Much of the data is guessed.

 

One implied followup would be "how hard would it be to get it into a habitable state (for the next several million years at least)"?

[Green Baron]

Venus ? I have no idea. Can't cool a planet from 750K down to 300K. Can't even cool my flat from 38°C outside to let's say 22° inside ... :-)

Edit: seriously, it's relatively easy to describe a state of a complex system by observation, we don't have to consider all the details cause they are included in what we observe. Thinking that one can control such a system (climate) migth prove ... premature cause then all the details would matter, even the unknown.

 

Edited August 11, 2016 by Green Baron

[Green Baron]

34 minutes ago, Findthepin1 said:

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/nasa-climate-modeling-suggests-venus-may-have-been-habitable

There's the NASA publication.

That's only a summary. Check arxiv ... it's a 13 page pdf with a lot of text and figures.

:-)

For the lazy: you look here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.00706

PDF upper right corner

 

Edited August 11, 2016 by Green Baron

[James Kerman]

Some scientist speculate there may be life in the clouds of Venus now due to Carbonyl Sulphide detected and particles which are non spherical like microbes and the right size for them.

http://www.astrobio.net/news-exclusive/venusian-cloud-colonies/

Edited August 12, 2016 by James Kerman
Edited dead link

[Findthepin1]

42 minutes ago, James Kerman said:

Some scientist speculate there may be life in the clouds of Venus now due to Carbonyl Sulphide detected and particles which are non spherical like microbes and the right size for them.

http://www.astrobio.net/news-exclusive/venusian-cloud-colonies/

Wasn't this mentioned in an article a few years ago?

EDIT: Found the article, it's from 2013. http://www.seeker.com/does-alien-life-thrive-in-venus-mysterious-clouds-1767520286.html

SECOND EDIT: Wait, the page you posted is from 2002. 

Edited August 12, 2016 by Findthepin1

[kerbiloid]

Quote

Venus is—without a doubt—Earth’s toxic sibling.

It just has a close mass and probably general chemical composition. Not so sibling and exactly not a twin.

Quote

winds that whip around it some 60 times faster than the planet itself rotates

Technically, these "winds" are blowing only in the stratosphere and not they are so fast, but the rotation is so slow.
Near the surface there is a still (1-3 m/s) bog of carbon dioxide as a supercritical fluid.

Quote

Such an ancient date required the researchers to make a few educated guesses about the early planet, such as assuming it had a shallow ocean just 10 percent the volume of that on Earth today.
...
clouds played a key role. They likely piled up on the dayside of the planet, acting as a bright shield that reflects incoming sunlight, and never formed on the nightside, letting heat radiate off into space.

I.e. they mean: few pools instead of ocean, but a cloud layer so thick to make an eternal twilight over the dayside?
Water doesn't condense and rain down, but accumulates in the upper atmosphere. Somebody could call this a crouch start of greenhouse warming.
And all current carbon dioxide hell is still there because it's thrown out from the same volcanos.

Venusian tesseras: afaik, rather than the Earth continental platforms floating above the oceanic crust, tesseras are traces of a "dry" contraction of a cooling planetary crust.
So, indeed no great ocean in past. But a great amount of volcanic fluids (its CO2 atmosphere).
So, as the fluids didn't form a hydrosphere, they form an atmosphere. A dense and hot and self-heating atmosphere, not something friendly for billion years long 11°C twilight paradise.

Quote

There's a real difference between a back-of-the-envelope calculation and actually plugging it into a more sophisticated model

Maybe because a calculation is based on facultative assumptions? Because sometimes they call "back-of-the-envelope calculation" - "elementary physical principles".

Edited August 12, 2016 by kerbiloid

[James Kerman]

2 hours ago, Findthepin1 said:

Wasn't this mentioned in an article a few years ago?

I read about it in a science magazine last year - I found newer articles but they were behind a paywall