Venus Express press conference November 28th, Venus: a more Earth-like planetary neighbour |
Venus Express press conference November 28th, Venus: a more Earth-like planetary neighbour |
Nov 20 2007, 12:27 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 813 Joined: 29-December 05 From: NE Oh, USA Member No.: 627 |
All..
Venus Express press conference set for November 28th. http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMX1C63R8F_index_0.html ‘Venus: a more Earth-like planetary neighbour’ Latest results from Venus Express 28 November 2007, 15:00, room 137 ESA Headquarters, 8-10 rue Mario-Nikis, Paris 15:00 Introduction, by Håkan Svedhem, ESA Venus Express Project Scientist 15:07 Venus: What we knew before, by Fred Taylor, Venus Express Interdisciplinary Scientist 15:15 Temperatures in the atmosphere of Venus, by Jean-Loup Bertaux, SPICAV Principal Investigator 15:25 The dynamic atmosphere of Venus, by Giuseppe Piccioni, VIRTIS Principal Investigator 15:40 Venus’s atmosphere and the solar wind, by Stas Barabash, ASPERA Principal Investigator 15:50 Climate and evolution, by David Grinspoon, Venus Express Interdisciplinary Scientist 16:00 Conclusion, by Dmitri Titov, Venus Express Science Coordinator and VMC scientist 16:05 Questions and Answers 16:25 Individual interviews 17:30 End of event Craig |
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Nov 30 2007, 07:44 PM
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Director of Galilean Photography Group: Members Posts: 896 Joined: 15-July 04 From: Austin, TX Member No.: 93 |
Maybe Venus is what Earth should look like if it hadn't been for a lucky strike or two? I don't think it's the lucky strike syndrome, but more "location location location". Once a terrestrial planet gets warm enough that it's H2O starts significantly evaporating, the endgame looks like Venus. In a billion years or so, once the Sun's output increases enough, Earth will rapidly evolve into a Venus near-twin. The hardest part of this scenario to explain, for me, is why the massive cloud cover generated by an ocean starting to evaporate wouldn't block enough sunlight to keep it in equilibrium. I recall reading somewhere that the actual solar heat input at the surface of Venus is less than Earth due to the clouds, but the percentage kept is of course much higher. Seriously, though, to me this seems as if Venus had a very slow rotation period from the outset, and the fact that it comes fairly close to Earth (25 million miles) might have been just enough to brake its rotation into the current resonance. Maybe all that went wrong is that it didn't get smacked in the right way to get it spinning right (in fact, it probably got smacked the wrong way to slow it down in the first place.) I think the big player in Venus rotational evolution has got to be the Sun. Any effect from Earth would have to be very very small. That said, it's possible, and the fact that there is a very close synchronicity is interesting. But given that the other reasonably large objects in the inner solar system (excluding Mercury, but including Earth, Mars, Ceres and Vesta) have fast rotations, I'd lean towards Venus starting at a similar rate. Here's a wild hypothesis. What if Venus was just like Earth, but never got hit by that last Mars-sized object to strip away it's outer crust & volatiles? Perhaps this left Venus with a <b>larger</b> amount of water than Earth, setting it up for a massive runaway greenhouse at the right time in the Sun's evolution? To be a worthwhile theory though, it needs to make a prediction...Umm, on the one piece of Venusian ground at the top of Maxwell Montes is a giant titanium sign written in Venusian that says "Don't burn carbon based fuels Earthlings". All that atmosphere is just a pesky obstruction to Venus' cool geology. Pesky obstruction? That atmosphere caused much of that cool geology, if present theories are accurate. -------------------- Space Enthusiast Richard Hendricks
-- "The engineers, as usual, made a tremendous fuss. Again as usual, they did the job in half the time they had dismissed as being absolutely impossible." --Rescue Party, Arthur C Clarke Mother Nature is the final inspector of all quality. |
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Dec 1 2007, 02:00 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 593 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 279 |
...at the top of Maxwell Montes is a giant titanium sign written in Venusian that says "Don't burn carbon based fuels Earthlings". Wouldn't those metal snows on the tops of these mountains make lightning strikes probable, at the very least? Andy (edit for spelling) |
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Dec 1 2007, 04:30 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2530 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 321 |
Wouldn't those metal snows on the tops of these mountains make lightning strikes probable, at the very least? Andy (edit for spelling) I would guess that they would contribute almost zero. A cloud-ground discharge will take place if the resistance is overcome. Adding a thin layer of conductor doesn't reduce the total resistance (from air, mainly). By analogy, it's like wondering if your money would go farther if an expense of zero were added to your budget. That neither hurts nor helps. If it REPLACED some other positive expense, then it would help. So a tall tower of copper might increase the probability of a lightning strike, but a thin flat layer shouldn't. In any event, the best chance for lightning on Venus is cloud-cloud, with the resistance being a lot less than in the huge vertical groundtrack. There are no cumulus clouds on Earth ever nearly as high as all of the clouds are on Venus. Even on Earth, I'm not sure that metal towers really increase the number of lightning strikes in a given locale significantly. Only to the extent that the height of the tower was a significant fraction of the cloud height (like the Empire State Building). Otherwise, they mainly just determine where it hits. (Eg, the tower instead of 20 meters north of the tower.) |
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