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Venus could have been habitable for billions of years (2019)

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: Venus could have been habitable for billions of years (2019)

#111

Post by hoseja »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #86
rtx wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or send some microbes which convert it into oxygen. You are right Mars doesn't have enough resources to support anything.

Also Venus is closer (minimum 38.2 million kilometer for Venus vs minimum distance of 55.7 million for Mars). However I don't know about the microbes, i fear that they might get killed at an average temperature of 737 K (464 C). https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/marsfact.htm... https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/venusfact.ht...

You cant really use distances for orbiting bodies like that. But it is true it's easier to get there.

Re: Venus could have been habitable for billions of years (2019)

#112

Post by howlin »

01100011 wrote: post #55

And it could be again... I wish we would plan ahead and try a solar shield at L1. If we cooled the planet sufficiently, the CO2 would solidify and we could get to work processing it. Venus is far more interesting than the dusty little rock we keep probing. Sure, it may take a millenium, but the sooner we start, the sooner we finish.

Venus has lost almost all of its atmospheric hydrogen. Teraforming a planet like this to sustain life would be quite a challenge.

Here's an excerpt from the wikipedia page ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Venus )

Difficulties include the fact that the production of organic molecules from carbon dioxide requires hydrogen, which is very rare on Venus. Because Venus lacks a protective magnetosphere, the upper atmosphere is exposed to direct erosion by the solar wind and has lost most of its original hydrogen to space.

Re: Venus could have been habitable for billions of years (2019)

#113

Post by swagasaurus-rex »

ReaLNero wrote: post #105
ramraj07 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My working hypothesis is that the galaxy (if not at least the solar system) is teeming with rocks containing Protozoa that are ready to colonise any planet with the right conditions (in a matter of thousands of years after the conditions are right) the moment they are ready. Perfectly explains everything we see and honestly would not be surprising at all. We need to start developing meaningful working hypotheses and…

Wow, that's... actually pretty sensical. The science part of me rejects it for having no evidence. But the pragmatic part of me would put its money underneath the theory. The reason The bigger question is: how did the first Protozoa form? The usual primordial soup theory of random chance? One good thing about this theory is that if there are 10^7 habitable planets at any given moment, each of them are "trying to prod…

So evidence pointing towards a common ancestor for all life here on Earth, or at least very similar common ancestors, might imply that of a seeding event, there wasn't much variety.

However, if we assume a seeding event happened, what's to say it couldn't happen on a lot of planets around the same area at the same time? The Fermi paradox is too speculative to say we aren't the only ones.

One thing that's missing is a seeding mechanism. Can an asteroid eject enough debris for some of it to reach escape velocity on a planet like ours? Did these protozoa come from a very different (but chemically compatible) environment?

Re: Venus could have been habitable for billions of years (2019)

#114

Post by HPsquared »

Chris2048 wrote: post #97
tomerico wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that Venus is missing important ingredients for life. Most notably is the lack of hydrogen. If you are interested in learning more on hypothetical approached of terraforming Venus, I suggest reading this Wiki article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Venus#Biologic...

But the outer planets have excesses of hydrogen, so round trips could help there? The upside is, of water aka H2O that we need, the 2 H atoms are the lighter component, specifically: 2H = 2 * 1.67 * 10(-24) grams 1O = 1 * 2.65 * 10(-23) grams So hydrogen is 11% of water, and oxygen is 88%; meaning every kg hydrogen can combine with 8kg oxygen to give 9L water. So all the Oxygen already being there (in CO2) is good.

If we were capable of planetary-scale transportation of materials, we wouldn't really need to live on planets anyway - it'd be a rather moot point.

Re: Venus could have been habitable for billions of years (2019)

#115

Post by thaumasiotes »

howlin wrote: post #112
01100011 wrote: post #55

And it could be again... I wish we would plan ahead and try a solar shield at L1. If we cooled the planet sufficiently, the CO2 would solidify and we could get to work processing it. Venus is far more interesting than the dusty little rock we keep probing. Sure, it may take a millenium, but the sooner we start, the sooner we finish.

Venus has lost almost all of its atmospheric hydrogen. Teraforming a planet like this to sustain life would be quite a challenge. Here's an excerpt from the wikipedia page ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Venus ) Difficulties include the fact that the production of organic molecules from carbon dioxide requires hydrogen, which is very rare on Venus. Because Venus lacks a protective magnetosphere, the u…

Something's missing. Earth isn't able to retain atmospheric hydrogen either. (And, obviously, therefore doesn't have any.)

Re: Venus could have been habitable for billions of years (2019)

#116

Post by JumpCrisscross »

selcuka wrote: post #21
samatman wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's practically guaranteed. Eventually, the Sun will expand so much that Earth's atmosphere will boil clean off. A mega-civilization with enormous power could move Earth, buy some time, but nothing lasts forever.

> buy some time, but nothing lasts forever That reminded me of The Last Question by Isaac Asimov. Quite enjoyable if you haven't read it already: https://www.multivax.com/last_question.html

I remember, when I first read this story, thinking how quaint this notion was:

"In his father's youth, the only computers had been tremendous machines taking up a hundred square miles of land. There was only one to a planet. Planetary ACs they were called."

Yet here we are, consolidating our planet's computing power to a handful of cloud computing providers.

Re: Venus could have been habitable for billions of years (2019)

#117

Post by protoman3000 »

I recently learned about the estimated age of the universe. It’s only 13.8 billion years.

So when it says Venus was hospitable for billions of years, let’s say 2 billion years, that amounts already to 14% of all there was and will ever be.

What marvel did happen in this time?

Re: Venus could have been habitable for billions of years (2019)

#118

Post by nkingsy »

Chris2048 wrote: post #98
01100011 wrote: post #55

And it could be again... I wish we would plan ahead and try a solar shield at L1. If we cooled the planet sufficiently, the CO2 would solidify and we could get to work processing it. Venus is far more interesting than the dusty little rock we keep probing. Sure, it may take a millenium, but the sooner we start, the sooner we finish.

A solar shield would be a serious space structure. A mega-structure even. We (any/all nations of humanity) don't really have much of a space presence, let alone industry. If we did, I think we'd first build solar array, around earth, to help our energy shortage; I'm not sure we have a space shortage, so Venus doesn't really solve any current problems. Maybe we can find a light gas that could form a thin layer in the…

That would be a very long extension cord

Re: Venus could have been habitable for billions of years (2019)

#119

Post by flawi »

tsimionescu wrote: post #106
k3liutZu wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since we're trying to move _away_ from "terra", should we call the current state maybe "marsforming"?

Terraforming refers to 'turning another planet into a second terra'. Marsforming would be 'turning the planet into a second Mars', which wouldn't be particularly useful, since we can't live on Mars anyway.

The joke they're making is that since we are in the process of turning the Earth into a second Mars, we should be calling what we are doing now marsforming.

Re: Venus could have been habitable for billions of years (2019)

#120

Post by thaumasiotes »

k3liutZu wrote: post #100
chii wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we are terraforming the earth - see how much co2 is being pumped out!

Since we're trying to move _away_ from "terra", should we call the current state maybe "marsforming"?

The combining form would be marti-. (Compare "Martian".)
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