Did Venus mess up its atmosphere?

www.physorg.com...

"Venus is blanketed in sulphuric acid clouds that block our view of the surface. The clouds form at altitudes of 50󈞲 km when sulphur dioxide from volcanoes combines with water vapour to make sulphuric acid droplets. Any remaining sulphur dioxide should be destroyed rapidly by the intense solar radiation above 70 km.
So the detection of a sulphur dioxide layer at 90-110 km by ESA's Venus Express orbiter in 2008 posed a complete mystery. Where did that sulphur dioxide come from?"

Is it possible that Venus was once habited by people with similar technology as us? Did they try to mitigate climate change using sulphur(some argue we are today with chem trails)?

I believe it may have been a possibility that a civilization existed on Venus and tried to mitigate climate change. Unfortunately, it backfired.

Hopefully we dont make the same mistake.

Originally posted by demonseed
Where did that sulphur dioxide come from?

..It came from the volcanoes? I think it's just a natural process.

reply to post by demonseed


I think that Venus may very well be a aquatic planet. This would leave one to believe that the unseen waters of Venus may hold volcanic undersea seismic activities. This would explain the the sulfuric dilemma and also give credence to the density of it's atmosphere.
As for "Living" humanoids or life that was intelligent enough to figure out global warming or atmospheric enigmas such as Acid rains and possible continental melt downs of the polar region's to put it in it's present state of being, "I am not sure about that."
Venus is relatively a young planet by astrological standards, some guess's are around 3-600 B years old. You posed a very interesting question, but I don't believe this rabbit hole goes that deep, not for acceptable theories anyway.

Venus is classified as a terrestrial planet and it is sometimes called Earth's "sister planet" due to the similar size, gravity, and bulk composition. Venus is covered with an opaque layer of highly reflective clouds of sulfuric acid, preventing its surface from being seen from space in visible light. Venus has the densest atmosphere of all the terrestrial planets in our solar system, consisting mostly of carbon dioxide. Venus has no carbon cycle to lock carbon back into rocks and surface features, nor does it seem to have any organic life to absorb it in biomass. A younger Venus is believed to have possessed Earth-like oceans,[11] but these evaporated as the temperature rose. Venus's surface is a dusty dry desertscape with many slab-like rocks, periodically refreshed by vulcanism. The water has most likely dissociated, and, because of the lack of a planetary magnetic field, the hydrogen has been swept into interplanetary space by the solar wind.[12] The atmospheric pressure at the planet's surface is 92 times that of the Earth.

Venus's Chemistry

Originally posted by SpearMint

Originally posted by demonseed
Where did that sulphur dioxide come from?

..It came from the volcanoes? I think it's just a natural process.

If you read the article it explains that the sulfuric acid was found very high in the atmosphere. At that point volcanic eruption would condense and the remaining sulfur dioxide would evaporate from the atmosphere and/or get taken care of by solar radiation. But it looks as if the Sulpher Dioxide is being recycled through acid rain.

Im not a scientist, but the scientists use this to point out a potential future of our Earth if we use Sulphur Dioxide to mitigate climate change. I just found it to be an interesting correlation.

reply to post by demonseed

In effect, nature is doing the experiment for us and Venus Express allows us to learn the lessons before experimenting with our own world.

The scientists are essentially saying that the atmosphere of Venus is being produced by it's own mechanics of chemistry and evolution. They also believe it is an insight to what we here on Earth "Should not" attempt.
The intelligent intervention you had mentioned in the thread creation has no credible or tangible scenario abilities, (As far as we know) so the theory you have proposed has many holes in it's feasibility of being factual.
I like out of the box thinking, but this is too too over thought.
Thanks for posting the info on Venus though, it is always nice to have a roll model in these eventual and possible cause and effect scenarios.

reply to post by demonseed

I think it is ridiculous to assume that the temperature of Venus has to do with a "runaway greenhouse effect" and a mistake to compare this with Earth's atmosphere. The temperatures measured on Venus are around 800-900° F, hot enough to melt lead, and yet the speculation is that this is some kind of greenhouse effect?

Let's take a look at what we do know about Venus.

Venus' surface temperature is around 800-900° F and has an atmospheric pressure 90 times greater than Earth's, that's over 1300 psi. The problem with this is that Venus has no magnetic field. If Venus was created at near the same time as Earth, @ 4.5 BYA, then this atmosphere should have been dissipated by the Sun's solar wind long ago without the protection of a magnetic field. Instead of a much thinner atmosphere than Earth's it is 90 times more dense.

Radar mapping of Venus has revealed that at some time in the recent past this planet has undergone a global resurfacing. It is as though the whole planet had one huge global volcanic eruption. The problem here is that there is no evidence that Venus is volcanically active today, it is as though something major happened to Venus and it has been cooling off ever since.

Venus has a retrograde rotation compared to all the other major bodies in our solar system, excluding Uranus which rolls on its equator, but then again Venus is actually upside down.
Wiki has a nice description of Obliquity (axial tilt) that helps explain what I mean.

To measure obliquity, use the right hand grip rule for both the rotation and the orbital motion, i.e.: the line from the vertex at the object's centre to its north pole (above which the object appears to rotate counter-clockwise); and the line drawn from the vertex in the direction of the normal to its orbital plane, (above which the object moves counter-clockwise in its orbit)
...
The north pole of Venus is pointed 'downward' (our southward).

From this perspective Venus is upside down which would make its axial tilt only 2.7° (or -177.3°). The conservation of angular momentum should be the same for all of the planets that formed in our early solar system yet for some reason Venus is spinning backwards.

Venus' extremely high temperatures, thick atmosphere, no magnetic field, recent global resurfacing, retrograde rotation and inverted axis tells me that something traumatic has happened to this planet recently and I don't think it is from global warming. I think that this contradicts much of the currently accepted theory on how the solar system was formed.

a billion years younger than earth atmospheric psi 90 times greater different tilt problem solved venus is a captured rogue planet

reply to post by proteus33

This seems to be what the evidence is showing. Venus was a rogue planet that displaced the orbits of the other terrestrial planets and maybe was involved in a little disruption of some of the gas giants. However I don't think astronomers and physicists alike are ready to look at the evidence in this manner yet.

reply to post by proteus33


This would seem unlikely. The orbit of Venus is very similar in all respects to other planets. A 'rogue' planet that was captured would have a rather extreme and oblique orbit - similar to the orbit of comets that have been hurled by various forces across the sun's trajectory.

It would take a series of very unlikely events to give Venus its current orbit - and would be on the scale that the planet would not have suffered "tragedy" and instead suffered obliteration.

I will agree that Venus has some very interesting characteristics that do not seem to stack up well in comparison to current models and theories... but it also doesn't fit too well with the rogue planet idea, either.

It also doesn't work too well with the present understanding of galactic formation. The Sun, Earth, and all of our little neighborhood are not native to the Milky Way. We are, instead, members of a dwarf galaxy that is in the process of being consumed and sits about 60 degrees off of the galaxy's orbital plane (why the Milky Way appears as a diagonal slit across the sky as opposed to sitting just on the horizon). The It would seem incredibly unlikely for Venus to be a captured planet - as there aren't too many places we could get one from and produce that kind of orbit.

It is possible Venus had a magnetic field at one point in time - the collapse of this magnetic field (perhaps linked to the 'planet-go-boom-and-spin-backwards' phenomena) has been rather recent and has lead to the depletion of hydrogen. Exactly what could have caused such a catastrophe is anyone's guess. Some crazy meteor impact, or perhaps her previous inhabitants crossed the streams.

Another possibility comes from the electrical storms on Venus - which are incredibly intense. It has been postulated that these provide a weak, but relatively stable electromagnetic field capable of providing enough protection for microbes to develop and thrive in the cloud layers. Perhaps they also prevent the dissolution of the atmosphere as a whole.

Or, perhaps Venus' atmosphere is somehow a direct result of a unique interaction with the solar winds. It seems rather odd that a terrestrial planet have such a massive atmosphere (not that we are the galactic experts of planetary metrics) - Prior to having the hydrogen leached out of its grasp, it must have truly been impressive. Not that we could have breathed the air - oxygen in any significant quantity at that pressure is hyper-corrosive and a poison - but Venus is a planet certainly worth more investigation that Mars, in my opinion. Though I must admit, we are more capable of exploring Mars than Venus - and we can all take a lesson from Old-School RPGs... if things keep killing you, you're probably not supposed to go that way, yet.

I think its positioned right, think about it, Neptune and Uranus, Saturn and Jupiter, Earth and Venus, those planets are all pretty much paired off when it comes to size and what not, i know there is still a lot of difference between the pairs, but Mercury, Mars and Pluto (I still think of the li'l one as part of the great 9 :p ) are the oddballs. I think there is an unseen force orbiting the sun (probably just gravitational effects, lol) that depicts a planets size, in other words during the formation of the solar system more debris was attracted to certain areas than others.

We are in the Earth sized section, along with Venus, however, we are in the habital zone, Venus is not, any usuable atmosphere would have been stripped away a long time ago, with any oceans it may have had. Combine that with major volcanic and seismic activity, the chances of life never really existed.

venus' surface temperature is higher than mercury's... its period of rotation is extremely long yet the unlit side is just as hot and surface winds at least travel at a snail's pace.


considering the heavy volcanic activity of Venus, its relative lack of craters (indicating high turnover rates or young age since solidification) is it so inconceivable that the heat is generated within?

reply to post by Aim64C

The orbit of Venus is very similar in all respects to other planets. A 'rogue' planet that was captured would have a rather extreme and oblique orbit - similar to the orbit of comets that have been hurled by various forces across the sun's trajectory.

At first this does seem to be good evidence against Venus being a new comer to our solar system. However after a closer look at the nature of Venus' orbital motions we find several more very odd facts.

By doing the math of Venus' orbital motions (i.e. retrograde rotation @243 days and synodic period (close approach with Earth) @584 days) we find that the same side of Venus faces Earth at each close approach. This is called a tidal lock. Venus has a tidal lock with Earth similar to that of our Moon yet Venus does this while spinning backwards. This is evidence that there was a gravitational connection between these two worlds, Venus and Earth, at one time in the recent past.

Venus also has an orbital resonance with Earth of 8:13. In other words during an 8 year period on Earth, Venus making 13 orbits, there are 5 synodic periods (close approaches) between these two planets and they realign back to near the same place. There is actually a discrepancy of 2.44 days of exact alignment which play into other orbital alignments.
Here is an illustration of the Venus/Earth synodic pentagram.
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/86b75318359f.png[/atsimg]
Notice the start date of June 8, 2004 and end date of June 6, 2012. Both of these dates are significant because this is when the planet Venus makes transits in front of the Sun. Keep in mind that Venus has a tail like a comet and during solar transit times this ion tail touches Earth.

I did quite a lot of research on the orbital mechanics of Venus and after some time it got to be too much. The synodic pentagram Venus makes with Earth actually moves slowly clockwise which change the solar transit times. Even this motion seems to show a resonance with Earth but again it got too complicated for me. During this time I also noticed orbital alignments with that of Mercury and I suspect one could find similar alignments with the planet Mars. I think the only way to see this in a good perspective is by using a computer animation. Could it be possible that Mercury, Earth, our Moon and Mars all contributed to stabilizing the orbit of Venus?

We are, instead, members of a dwarf galaxy that is in the process of being consumed and sits about 60 degrees off of the galaxy's orbital plane

The dwarf galaxy that we are 'Theoretically' from is called Sagittarius. Mainstream astronomy does not accept this theory but never-the-less I happen to like it.

reply to post by Devino

At first this does seem to be good evidence against Venus being a new comer to our solar system. However after a closer look at the nature of Venus' orbital motions we find several more very odd facts.

To be honest and blunt - we only have our own solar system to look at, so determining what may or may not be "odd" about different phenomena within it is rather difficult. As much as I am saying this to you - I'm also reminding myself, as we all have a tendency to consider things outside of our initial expectations as "odd" - even though the phenomena of interest may be the statistical norm once we start looking into it.

By doing the math of Venus' orbital motions (i.e. retrograde rotation @243 days and synodic period (close approach with Earth) @584 days) we find that the same side of Venus faces Earth at each close approach. This is called a tidal lock. Venus has a tidal lock with Earth similar to that of our Moon yet Venus does this while spinning backwards. This is evidence that there was a gravitational connection between these two worlds, Venus and Earth, at one time in the recent past.

I'm not sure how this would be evidence that Venus is somehow -alien- to our system. It would make more sense for something originating within our own solar system to exhibit tidal locking and other such traits with other native members of the solar system. Such phenomena tend to be attributed to having been closely related in terms of origin. It would not be expected, at all, for a planet originating within another system to exhibit these properties. Although we don't really have much of a precedent - we cannot necessarily prove all of the planets in this system are native to it, nor can we prove any planet as being non-native without direct observation of its capture. This means most of this discussion is predicated on presumptions relating to the formation of the solar system and the resulting behavior of planetary bodies.

During this time I also noticed orbital alignments with that of Mercury and I suspect one could find similar alignments with the planet Mars. I think the only way to see this in a good perspective is by using a computer animation. Could it be possible that Mercury, Earth, our Moon and Mars all contributed to stabilizing the orbit of Venus?

It would be far more likely that the relative orbits and rotations of the planets and any mathematical/spatial relationships between them all stem from them being developed from the same system.

It would take some truly exceptional circumstances for a rogue planet to be captured by our system and for it to assume such a spherical orbit that form 'locked' relationships to nearby planets. I wouldn't even know where to begin drawing up a simulation for that (or how to address the inherent logical fallacy of taking the present state of a system and working backwards to illustrate a possible course of events leading to that state).

I will say that there are a lot of weird things out there that don't fit too well with the present model, or require it to account for much more than it currently does. That said - I'm not really seeing where Venus has to be an alien planet. Granted - I don't really have much to offer in a line of answers about why Venus is the way it is; but sometimes we are so eager to have an answer to our questions that we are willing to forgo critical analysis of an idea.

Personally, I see Venus as a better candidate for colonization than Mars. I probably sound crazy - but both planets will take a hundred years or more to really attempt to colonize - Mars has virtually no atmosphere and would take massive amounts of work to prospectively colonize. Venus, however, has a chemical cycle (albeit, with a startling lack of water) that could potentially be manipulated via bacteria and synchronized with extra-terrestrial supplements (water). Potentially, a geosynch satellite array might have to provide temporary or permanent shielding from solar winds. Plasma shielding would work very nicely for this - but would also be very difficult to employ on a planetary scale.

In either case - we need to do more research on both planets. Venus, in my opinion, holds far more value in terms of sampling and exploring another environment. Mars is rather dry and dead unless we come across something really crazy - it's a wasteland. Venus also may prove interesting from a geological standpoint in the theory that it lacks tectonics.

It could also be that whatever caused Venus to flip upside down or spin backwards (same difference, I suppose) interrupted the formation of a system similar to the one that Earth uses to generate its magnetic field. It may eventually develop such a system - perhaps thousands or millions of years in the future. Or, it could also be that the tidal effects of our moon played a huge role in establishing that system and Venus has never had the opportunity to develop such a system.

It is also possible that the same impact that created our moon could have also created Venus. A better analysis of minerals and element distribution would have to be done regarding both planets - but it may be that both ended up spawning from the same mass. Perhaps, very early on, another planet collided with the early "super earth" and ended up separating the two masses. Later, the Earth met what was left of this death-planet and resulted in the formation of the Moon.

This is especially the case if you figure that Venus "spins backward" and a collision at relatively high velocities would see the planets behave more like a fluid than solid masses - the two would have spun together and thrown off debris spinning various directions relative to the plane of collision - giving an explanation for our reverse-spinning and 'locked' properties of Venus, as well as giving us a potential explanation for the Asteroid belt. Presuming these masses were large enough - debris cast inward would most likely have been absorbed by the sun and debris flung outward would have congregated into a belt of asteroids or have been taken on as moons around the gas giants (if not absorbed by them).

Material analysis of the asteroids, rings, and moons of other planets in our system could potentially yield some interesting results regarding the origins of the inner planets.

I am simplifying what I am envisioning in my head - and could only properly illustrate it with a simulated fluid-physics model - but I'm lacking in that department at the moment. And - again - there's the problem of working backwards from the present state of things. It would be interesting to see how such a sequence of events would model out, though. Wouldn't prove or disprove anything - but it would be speculatively interesting.

reply to post by Aim64C

I agree with your points made and I don't think these "odd" orbital characteristics are proof that Venus is either new nor old to our solar system. I think proof may be found in the physical characteristics of Venus (retrograde rotation, thick atmosphere yet no magnetic field, extremely hot and a new surface with no evidence of plate tectonics nor current volcanic activity). I was attempting to address the problem of how a rogue object entering our solar system could have come up with a near perfect circular orbit in such a short period of time.

I would like to add that I don't think that Venus' atmosphere is due to a runaway greenhouse effect. Earth's atmosphere could not ever achieve this no matter how hard anyone tries. The atmosphere of Venus came from somewhere else and is not a product of the Sun's heat. The heat from Venus comes from within and not solely from the Sun.

Our Moon has a tidal lock with Earth and I think this is because the Moon was once a part of Earth. This would follow the conservation of angular motion very nicely. Before the Moon was created the Earth rotated as one, after the theoretical impact the material that was ejected out would still hold its original angular momentum. Its axis of rotation would still be the center of the Earth and its rate of rotation would be inversely square to the distance from Earth. As the Moon formed it would conserve all of this angular motion into one body, the Moon, and we would see a tidal lock. In other words the Moon's axis of rotation would still be the center of the Earth as it is today. Of coarse the near side of the Moon is said to be more dense which is also evidence that the Moon was created in an orbit around a more massive object like the Earth.

Other moons in our solar system have a tidal lock with their parent planet and I think that this is evidence that it originated from that planet. Tidal locking is evidence of a gravitational connection between two bodies. Venus is too far away to have such a gravitational connection with Earth so the question is whether or not Venus has a true tidal lock with Earth. If it does than I think this shows that at one time Venus was much closer to Earth than it is today, perhaps a close fly by. To be honest there are some discrepancies here but I think they fall within the margin of error to the measured motions.

All of these measurements don't add up to proof one way nor another. What is needed is to have observations that date back far enough and yet this is where it gets really odd. We now call these ancient astronomical observations myths and they are not considered to be of any real scientific value especially considering the context of these myths. All around the world from cultures that are said to have been independent of each other had similar stories of the motions of the planets in our solar system and particularly Venus. There is a huge amount of material that covers this and the premise seems to be that Venus was once a comet that nearly destroyed the Earth, battled with Mars and possible Mercury and thus is a new addition to our solar system. Of coarse it is far more complicated than this and I could be very wrong on this premise.