The Surface Of Venus As Seen From Soviet Venera Probes In 1981

originally posted by: intrptr
a reply to: JadeStar

Further:

Would the earth become Venus like if it moved into Venus' orbit?

Yes and no.

Current theory holds that at one time in the distant past, Venus was a lot more like Earth with liquid water on it's surface. Slowly, over time, that water evaporated into the air due to much higher temps from being closer to the sun. Water vapor acts like a green house gas, helping trap heat. They believe the process took about 600 million years or so.
Due to the heating, the water vapor is able to rise much higher in the atmosphere, allowing ultraviolet light to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen escapes the planet, while the oxygen recombines, with carbon, producing carbon dioxide. This in turn only helped with the green house runaway.

Again, this process took over half a billion years, so if you could magically move Earth to the same distance as the sun as Venus is, it would not happen over night.

What would happen is global temps would increase significantly, at least 20 C or more. Last time that happened here on Earth was about 250 million years ago, that's when the Permian-Triassic extinction even happened, killing off around 96% of life here on the Earth. It didn't happen all at once, and is a complex series of events, but many refer to it as "The day the Earth almost died.".

So, at least for most existing life here on Earth, moving us that close to the sun would not be a good thing.

Interesting to note: in about a billion years, the sun's brightness (which is getting brighter as it ages) will have increased by 10%, which in turn will heat the Earth up dramatically (something like 45 deg C or more), so we'll end up a lot like Venus anyways. This will certainly kill off most life here on Earth as it exists now, especially if all the water evaporates and ends up escaping out into space.

So you don't need to move the Earth. You just have to wait for almost a billion years.

Good find, the clarity of the images are amazing.

I imagine that the images will become precious over time considering the hellish conditions that the probe had to endure-it's amazing that were able to take those pics to start-The conditions on Venus would be like trying to piggyback the Hulk in an oven.

a reply to: eriktheawful

Thanks for that rundown, it sounded totally plausible to expect a venus type environment where Venus is because of its proximity to the sun.

Definitely outside the Goldilocks Zone. In fact I would hold that for all the plants; Mercury a baked cinder, Venus a steamy hotbox, Mars a cold, barren world. The gas giants are too far from the sun to resolve their elements into solid form and holdout form the beginning of the solar system in their original form, beyond them, just snowballs.

Between the gas giants and the refined inner objects is the 'not sure if I am a planet or a gas ball', asteroid belt.

The sun is predominant in forming the coagulants of matter we call the planets.

a reply to: WHWIV

I desperately want some actual video from probes and rovers. Photos are one thing, but to see the landscape move makes it more visceral somehow.

Me too. Love that stuff… the idea I am looking from the POV of a person on the surface of a foreign world makes me well…

speechless

a reply to: JadeStar

I'm not going get into it with a climate change denier. Sorry. If you want to talk planetary science I'm here but otherwise I have no interest.

Sorry, me too. I heard too much of "venus runaway greenhouse effect compared to earth". My question was answered by Erik and I agree, its Venus proximity to the Sun that makes its atmosphere like it is.

a reply to: intrptr

Well, keep in mind that we've found life here on Earth in places where we thought it would be impossible: deep caves with no oxygen, deep oceans that are very cold, yet life thrives around thermal vents.

It's quite possible that we may yet find life on other places in our solar system alone that we simply have not seen yet.

Venus: There's speculation that at a certain altitude in it's atmosphere, conditions would be much better for airborne microscopic life..

Mars: There is water on Mars, locked up mostly down inside it. It's quite possible that deep in the martian surface, some sort of life might exist still, on a microscopic level.

The icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn: we know that that tidal forces from their parent planet allow water in liquid form to exist, it maybe that deep below the icy surface life might exist, just like the thermal vents in our deep oceans, or like under the Antarctic ice.

We know that life here on Earth is tenacious. It may be that way in the rest of the universe too.

I think we're going to know soon, as we get better at exploring and observing our universe.

a reply to: eriktheawful

Well, keep in mind that we've found life here on Earth in places where we thought it would be impossible: deep caves with no oxygen, deep oceans that are very cold, yet life thrives around thermal vents.

But no life elsewhere in the solar system, yet. Its too hostile for life to develop in these places. its easier for life to adapt once it takes hold if conditions are well, earth like in the beginning.

As life will be very fragile in the beginning. Like a seedling, an embryo or egg. There are microbes inside rock in the deep desert, but the desert is a poor place to start a vegetable garden or raise some live stock.

That would be a waste of time. We need plenty of fertile soil, liquid water and sunshine for that. The only place all three are proven to exist is here.

a reply to: intrptr

Actually, fertile soil is not required. Soil comes from decaying life.

The earliest life here on Earth that we know of, was somewhere between 3.5 to 3.7 billion years ago.

Earth's atmosphere, surface and climate was a LOT different then. The atmosphere was mostly nitrogen and carbon dioxide then. We have fossils of biogenetic graphite and microbial mat fossils from then.

We don't know for sure how it came about (that's one actual fact, hehehehe, we don't know) but there are a lot of theories of course.

As we know, as the Earth changed, life changed with it (and of course some life effected the change). It maybe that in the early solar system, simple biological life that we had here on Earth, may have existed else where (Venus and Mars), and like on the Earth, adapted to changes.

Obviously we do not see any obvious signs of life as we know it on the surface of Venus or Mars. That still doesn't negate the possibility that it exists in other ways (IE the upper atmosphere of Venus, down deep in the crust of Mars).

One theory for the origin of life is that all the materials were here (the solar system). If that's true, then even the icy moons would of had that material, and it just may be possible that some sort of life was able to form in the deeps of their oceans.

I won't say that there is NO life other than Earth here in the solar system, as we still don't know for sure. Not until we go there and look, and by looking I mean much more than just pictures of the surface, or only sampling a few centimeters into the soil. We need to scoop the atmospheres, dig down in the ice to the liquid water, dig much further down into the crust.

Only then, if we find nothing, do I think we could absolutely declare that Earth has the only life in our solar system.

Just my humble opinion of course.

originally posted by: intrptr
Forgive me, so Venus is slower rotation than Earth? Because of the Suns gravity? Maybe earth would be pulled into slowing down some if it were closer.

That's not the way it works. Rotation is not affected by gravity that way.

originally posted by: WHWIV
The problem there is what I think the same problem would be if were were to try that on Mars; a negligible magnetosphere as compared to earth. Any atmospheric chemicals we did create would be quickly swept away by solar wind.

Sure, eventually, after a few million years. Maybe in that time we'll figure out a way to get the planet spinning faster. Or we'll be long gone, anyway, so no worries.

originally posted by: intrptr
If earth were moved to the same distance from the sun as venus the surface would look like that, too. All water vaporized to clouds the ground baked to higher than earth oven temperatures.

Does Venus have a molten core, and therefore enough of a magnetic field to protect its gaseous atmosphere?

Instead of it being blasted away by the suns radiation like on Mars?

This is most likely true, Venus though is just inside the goldilocks zone but the sun has warmed up and is getting slowly hotter, in perhaps as short as 1 to 2 billion years the earth could be another venus and that is still 2 to 3 billion years before it turn's into a red giant and consume's the inner planets.

I think venus slow rotation play's a part but remember the sun was cool enough for the earth to be in a period of super ice age's we call the snow ball earth period from about 2.2 billion to 750 million years ago during which the sun was cool enough and condition's right on the earth that it is though glaciation may have reached as far as the equator and the whole earth froze for possibly several distinct epoch's during this time period with likely periods of interglacial warming.

If this can be proven as it is still a theory then it would indicate a condition of the solar irradiation and lower sun output far more recently in which venus may have been cooler and even harboured liquid water.

But Snow Ball earth theory is still not a proven accepted fact though it is gaining credence.

Is it possible then that in another 1-2 billion years, as the sun gets hotter, that the ice on the Moons of Saturn and Jupiter starts melting and they become a habitable life planets as Earth.

This...is the meaning of life!

originally posted by: Blue Shift

originally posted by: intrptr
Forgive me, so Venus is slower rotation than Earth? Because of the Suns gravity? Maybe earth would be pulled into slowing down some if it were closer.

That's not the way it works. Rotation is not affected by gravity that way.

It actually is, when the the orbit is a very close one. The differences in gravitational pull between the side facing the Sun and the side facing away from it create tidal forces, which gradually slow the rotation down. This results in tidal locking, with one side of the orbiting body always facing the body it's orbiting. The Moon is a good example of that, but also all other major moons in the Solar System, they are all tidally locked.

Granted, Venus and Merecury aren't precisely tidally locked, but the Sun's gravitational influence does play a big role. Consider the orbit and rotation of Mercury with respect to the Sun: en.wikipedia.org... In its very elongated orbit, Mercury seems to be tidally locked when nearest to the Sun, but the Sun "lets it go" when Mercury is the furthest away, allowing it to make half a turn.

www.youtube.com...

I messed with some filters on both the black & white & colored images. Both show ALIEN cities in the "empty" background! Also I see swastika banner on one!

a reply to: wildespace

That makes the most sense. The side of the planet rotating away from the sun should be pulled harder, the closer in.

What do you think of the plane of the ecliptic being like a large symbol with the sun crashing at the center?

Like vibrations of equator gravity forming the 'eddies' that became planets?

a reply to: LABTECH767

But Snow Ball earth theory is still not a proven accepted fact though it is gaining credence.

I would agree if supposing that the impact from large comets or asteroids would vaporize so much H20, the cloud layers from that cooling the earth so much, that a "nuclear winter" scenario would set in. Like Venus runaway heat , the earth would be wrapped in a blanket of cloud, snow and building ice. Probably happened several times in the eons of earth history.

Maybe Titan is undergoing one such epoch from an impactor. Maybe Enceladus, too?

image

originally posted by: Arrestme
I messed with some filters on both the black & white & colored images. Both show ALIEN cities in the "empty" background! Also I see swastika banner on one!

Hey, cool! I was wondering what sort of mirages could be seen on Venus. After all, when you look across a desert or even a hot parking lot here on Earth you get wierd effects. The techinical term for what you found is a Fata Morgana. I've seen a few of them over the ocean. They're pretty trippy. Do a Google image search.

Good find!

As a good coincidence, Phil Plait has just posted his "Crash Course Astronomy" episode about Venus: www.slate.com...

www.youtube.com...

a reply to: Kapusta

wow. if pictures from 1981 looks bettter then pics from 2015-2014 from mars by nasa... it means it all stinks by BS to high haven... all we know is lie... hmmm