Our Sister Planet

What did you learn about Venus - sometimes called our sister planet - when you were in school? Unless you are still in school, chances are that at least some of those ‘facts’ have changed.

Venus has been called Earth’s twin, because it is similar to Earth in size and mass. Venus’ diameter is 7,520.8 miles, only 396.7 miles smaller than Earth’s. Its mass is 81.5 % of Earth’s. But in other ways, they are not very alike at all.

Venus is still the second planet from the Sun, it is still named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty. It orbits the sun in 224.7 Earth days. A Venus day is 243 Earth days, so its day is longer than its year. It also rotates in the opposite direction as Earth, so on Venus, the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. It still does not have any moons.

Venus has the densest atmosphere of the 4 inner planets, which consists of more than 96% carbon dioxide. At Venus’ surface, the atmospheric pressure is 92 times that of Earth, or roughly the pressure found at 3,000 ft underwater on Earth.

Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system, with a mean surface temperature of 863°F. Mercury is closer to the sun, but Venus is hotter. It is shrouded by an opaque layer of clouds of sulfuric acid. It may have had water oceans at some point in the past, but they would have vaporized due to a runaway greenhouse effect. That water vapor would have photodissociated, and the resulting free hydrogen swept into interplanetary space by the solar wind because Venus doesn’t have a planetary magnetic field. It is postulated that the surface of Venus is a desertscape interspersed with slab-like rocks and is periodically resurfaced by volcanism.

In my youth, I remember reading books and short stories that postulated that Venus weather included perpetual rain, and that Venus was a water planet. In both cases, humans from Earth had colonized Venus. But given the updated information on Venus’ atmosphere and surface, colonization may have to wait until some type of reclamation can happen. Perhaps remove some (a lot!) of carbon from the atmosphere, and set up some type of artificial field around the planet to keep the solar wind from removing any more of the lighter elements from that atmosphere. If we can lessen the green-house effect, then maybe the volcanism will also settle down a bit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus

The Sky is Falling

If you follow me on facebook, you may have noticed that I have shared many articles on climate change and that I have started using the comment, “The Sky is Falling.”

It seemed more appropriate than saying, “The Boy Cried Wolf.” In that story, the boy is lying, only looking to introduce some excitement into his own life, without regard for the consequences.

Chicken Little, on the other hand, was telling the truth, as best he knew it. Something (a raindrop) had come down from the sky and hit him. He had never experienced anything like that before, so the logical conclusion was that something terrible was happening, the sky was falling! Chicken Little ran around the farmyard squawking his terrible news, trying to warn all the other farm critters.

Even that doesn’t exactly fit the problem of climate change. Chicken Little was very young and inexperienced. But it’s scientists who have been trying to warn the world’s population that the climate was changing far quicker than it should. They have lots of experience at studying climate and how it has changed in the past, and they have a pretty darn good idea where it’s headed.

In the past week, I have read several articles concerning the number and severity of heatwaves that have been happening around the world. Not only has the world been having more of them, not only have they broken records for daytime high temperatures, they’ve broken records for the highest low temperatures as well. That means that after a sweltering day, you don’t get much relief during the night, because the heat that has accumulated all day doesn’t dissipate fast enough.

I think Europe has already broken several summer records during a heatwave in June of this year. There’s no guarantee they won’t have another later this summer. Or this fall, or... whenever. A heatwave can happen at any time on the calendar, because it is a comparison between the present and what has been ‘normal’ previously.

The scientists don’t ‘think’ any particular place will start having a heatwave every year. But it could happen. After all, they wanted us to keep the warming of the Earth to 2°C or less. What are they saying now, that it’s officially reached a warming of 1.8°C? But in Europe, the temperatures reached +4 to +8°C over ‘normal’.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t get much done when the temperature gets to 95°F. I sure don’t want it to consistently reach 123°F. Or higher.

Maybe Chicken Little isn’t the best story for me to quote to try to get my point across, but it’s the one I can remember as the summer heat settles in. So I’ll keep squawking my warning and hope somebody is listening, because...

The sky is falling.

Bubble Colony

Now that we’ve visited the moon a few times, nobody is talking about setting up a moonbase. Everybody seems to want to move on to colonizing Mars. But you know what? Venus is a lot closer.

Earth’s orbit is 93,000,000 miles from the sun. Mars’ orbit is 141,600,000 miles from the sun. The closest Mars and Earth can get is about 48,600,000 miles, while the furthest away they get is 234,600,000. Venus is 67,000,000 miles from the sun, so the closest Earth gets to it is 26,000,000, and the furthest away Venus gets is 160,000,000. So yes, it’s about half the distance to get to Venus as it is to get to Mars.

Why is nobody clamoring to colonize Venus?

At first glance, Venus does not seem very welcoming. Oh, sure, it has about the same amount of gravity as Earth, but that’s the only thing that might be called ‘welcoming’. Its atmosphere is carbon dioxide and nitrogen, with clouds of sulfuric acid droplets. There may be trace amounts of H₂O and HO in the atmosphere, but don’t expect to go outside without a space suit. The corrosive atmosphere is so dense, no probe that landed on Venus lasted longer than a couple hours. If the acid doesn’t get you, the pressure will. That pressure is the same as being 1.5 miles deep in the ocean. And that’s assuming you don’t land in a volcano, because the surface is highly volcanic.

The atmosphere is the cause of runaway greenhouse effect, and the surface of Venus is about 900°F. Venus rotates backwards, so the sun rises in the west and sets in the east, but it rotates so slowly, a ‘day’ (single rotation) on Venus is 243 Earth days, while it only takes 225 Earth days to complete a circuit around the sun. That would take some getting used to. And despite Venus’ slow rotation, the top lay of clouds whip around it in about 4 Earth days, at speeds of 225 (or more) miles an hour.

Ready to make it your home yet?

There are people considering how it could be done. They don’t see a colony on Venus’ surface, however; they envision an enclosed ‘station’ that floats 30 miles above Venus’ surface, where the pressure is about the same as sea level on Earth. The temperature would be about 160°F, but that would be relatively easy to deal with. And being below that top layer of clouds, it might be pushed around the globe, but not at hurricane speeds.

That doesn’t sound so bad. Maybe they could devise a way to grow plants on the outside walls to change some of the carbon dioxide into oxygen. If enough of that happened, the greenhouse effect could start to calm down, the temperature might lower, and those racing high-level winds would slow down. Who knows, maybe it would be possible to establish a base on Venus’ surface... in a few millennia.

Ready to ship out yet? Or are you waiting for the ship to Europa?