This gives me real "Inherit the Stars" vibes!
Venus could have been habitable for billions of years (2019)
151–160 of 236 posts
Re: Venus could have been habitable for billions of years (2019)
#152I 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?
We've had life for about 500 million years on earth. Maybe a billion as single celled life forms. I used to worry that in 5 billion years it'll all be over on account of the sun entering a new phase and engulfing Earth. But it appears in about 800 million years photosynthesis will no longer be possible [1], which puts an even closer limit on our time here. There's a good chance some will get off this rock, but many w…
If you’re worried all will be lost, perhaps focus on how we can make sure Information survives for a thousand years as a first step. It’s really not so trivial.
Re: Venus could have been habitable for billions of years (2019)
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.)
Earth's atmospheric hydrogen is oxidized
Re: Venus could have been habitable for billions of years (2019)
#154That’s enough time for a civilization to have been born, lived, and died. Unfortunately there’s probably no way to find evidence of their existence by now it seems? Some day they may say Earth could have been habitable for billions of years.
If there was a civilization on Venus anything like our current civilization on Earth, I expect there would still be evidence of it, even in that hostile environment. If nothing else, there'd probably be unnatural formations of ground from mines or freeway construction or whatever.
Lava seems to destroy everything. Tectonic plates shifting would eventually turn everything over.
If the Venusians ever became atomic, and then space faring, then the best way to find evidence of them is probably in their ancient technology in space. Maybe dead satellites floating around the sun in a stable orbit. Or floating around in a geosynchronous orbit around Venus itself.
Or maybe they even sent spacecrafts to other outer planets, like Earth or Mars. I would look there, to find ancient alien Venusian technology.
Re: Venus could have been habitable for billions of years (2019)
#155Re: Venus could have been habitable for billions of years (2019)
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
We've had life for about 500 million years on earth. Maybe a billion as single celled life forms. I used to worry that in 5 billion years it'll all be over on account of the sun entering a new phase and engulfing Earth. But it appears in about 800 million years photosynthesis will no longer be possible [1], which puts an even closer limit on our time here. There's a good chance some will get off this rock, but many w…
> We've had life for about 500 million years on earth. Somewhere from 3.5 to up to 4.5 billion years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earliest_known_life_forms You're right though; our time here is very short and if we want to ensure survival of Earth-based life then we need to start considering panspermia, first to other planets in our own planetary system (assuming they don't have native life already -- we're not ent…
4.5 billion years until by the laws of physics a state emerged, where macrobodies consisting of billions of cells, fueled by exploitation of energy from chemical reactions, are using movement devices that employ triggered explosions, and are constructing machines which assemble elements on atomic level in such way to make apparatuses which enable the harvest of information by the laws of logic.
I don’t know, people. Maybe I am turning pessimistic, but it took the universe in between a third and a half of its duration of existence to produce a system which yields mass produced RGB keyboards, failed SpaceX launches and climate destroying lifeforms. I would estimate the probability of another biogenesis happening in parallel to ours is very low.
Re: Venus could have been habitable for billions of years (2019)
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Sure, it may take a millenium, but the sooner we start, the sooner we finish. For technology with uncertain results and uncertain resource requirements, this does not follow. It may well be that any effort we spend today is entirely wasted 100 years from now.
But you won’t learn anything unless we try. And having some shared goal for the humanity could be life changing.
And thus the argument on which absurdly expensive shared goal to choose begins. You want to terraform Venus. I want to develop mind uploading and thus optional immortality. Another person wants to solve world hunger. Somebody else wants to cure cancer. Etc.
Re: Venus could have been habitable for billions of years (2019)
#158Earlier 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…
It's an interesting theory but I feel like it doesn't reflect the reality. If galaxy was indeed teeming with rocks containing some sort of microbes than where did they all come from? It'll take an enormous amount of effort to populate an enormous amount of rocks and scatter them across the galaxy. I wouldn't presume that Protozoa would appear on asteroids just by itself. For this mechanism to work there would have to…
Well I’m unfortunately digging even deeper into my unproven conjecture well but I do have a working hypothesis for the lack of intelligent life - it’s actually really hard to develop intelligence in the human sense. It looks like there are a lot of extremely intelligent creatures even here (parakeets dolphins elephants) which can’t do shit because they lack thumbs and a peoper larynx so it’s possible the real great filter is what Id like to call actionable intelligence where you are smart and are able to apply and communicate this.
Another possibility is that the window in which life following similar intelligence trajectory as us will actually broadcast in measurable frequencies for a short while (centuries) before rapidly moving on to the next phase of their evolution (who knows what it is? Star child? Transcendence? Warp dimension) so we only have thin shells of radio waves expanding from each planet that developed intelligence making it impossible to detect.
Re: Venus could have been habitable for billions of years (2019)
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would cooling it help to reduce the amount of pressure the atmosphere has? Isn't the pressure on the surface something like 95 times that of earth.
No, and the other comments about gas laws and volume are overthinking it a bit. Pressure at the surface is caused by the weight of the atmosphere. On earth, a column of air extending from sea level to space, with cross sectional area one square inch, weighs 15 pounds. Neither the temperature or volume of the atmosphere changes its weight. (Ok, I suppose a hotter atmosphere has more volume and extends higher into spac…
You forget things like condensation/solidification of things like CO2 in lower temperatures, so atmosphere composition would change dramatically, and so would overall 'weight' of the column to space you mention.
Anyway as other mention it doesn't change that much in survability, having 116 days long single Venus-day would mean temperature differences would be extreme, probably in hundreds of degrees.
Re: Venus could have been habitable for billions of years (2019)
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We've had life for about 500 million years on earth. Somewhere from 3.5 to up to 4.5 billion years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earliest_known_life_forms You're right though; our time here is very short and if we want to ensure survival of Earth-based life then we need to start considering panspermia, first to other planets in our own planetary system (assuming they don't have native life already -- we're not ent…
4.5 billion years until by the laws of physics a state emerged, where macrobodies consisting of billions of cells, fueled by exploitation of energy from chemical reactions, are using movement devices that employ triggered explosions, and are constructing machines which assemble elements on atomic level in such way to make apparatuses which enable the harvest of information by the laws of logic. I don’t know, people.…
On a single other planet? Very close to 0. But multiply this number by say 400 billion for our galaxy, and maybe additional 150-2000 billion for all the galaxies, and the chances are not that bad. Probably.
Plus the idea that life needs to look the same as here on Earth has no logical base - it could be from number of other elements, forms etc. Basic premise is just multiplication, where it goes from there is anybody's guess. Carbon with water is convenient but its not the only option.