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

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

#201

Post by mannerheim »

junippor wrote: post #200
mannerheim wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that a habitable zone does not necessarily mean there's any life actually there. You are probably thinking of the reports last year of phosphine in the upper atmosphere where the quantity turned out to be overstated by a significant amount. On the other hand, there is a sweet spot in the Venusian atmosphere where the temperature is low enough and the atmosphere provides enough protection from solar radiation tha…

Except, there's no hydrogen in Venus.

There is hydrogen on Venus. Very little. Some hydrogen chloride and hydrogen fluoride.

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

#202

Post by spacemark »

dredmorbius wrote: post #82
duxup wrote: post #7

Growing up I absorbed all the space stuff I could find. But it wasn't until recently that I realized that the solar system didn't just form into some static natural state where it largely didn't change until say the sun was finished with it's lifespan. Rather it evolves, changes, planets are habitable, then not, moons are formed and break up, even frozen planets are geologically active and are changing, Saturn's ring…

I'm not sure how old you are, but a lot has changed , recently, in our knowledge of Earth, its evolution, the solar system, and astronomy. One of the books I had growing up was a Patrick Moore juvenile book on astronomy, probably Seeing Stars (1970). That had a ... pretty good ... description of the state of knowledge at the time, but it was published only about five years after the 4.5 billion year figure for the ag…

Absolutely, very well said. Our understanding of the cosmos has changed dramatically in the past 100 years. People forget that we were still debating whether galaxies beyond our own existed (!!!!!!!) just 100 years ago.

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

With such knowledge ready at hand for such a thorough comment on HackerNews, I am curious what your learning lifestyle is (books mostly? What kind? How many hrs a week? How much other media do you consume? Youtube? Netflix docos?). As I get older I'm realizing that life is too damn short to learn all the stuff I want to learn and so am constantly thinking about how best to spend my time.

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

#203

Post by spacemark »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #14
duxup wrote: post #7

Growing up I absorbed all the space stuff I could find. But it wasn't until recently that I realized that the solar system didn't just form into some static natural state where it largely didn't change until say the sun was finished with it's lifespan. Rather it evolves, changes, planets are habitable, then not, moons are formed and break up, even frozen planets are geologically active and are changing, Saturn's ring…

Not sure how I didn't pick up on that. The sheer scale of it makes it hard to perceive, so probably you aren't the only one and probably a lot of the literature has similar blind spots which implicitly signals "this isn't happening" and we pick up on that and it gets implicitly repeated until it's hard to give any kind of push back in our own minds.

For sure. You'll find that our notions of our own world and societies are also very outdated on average due to how rapidly they're changing (and by and large improving).

A wonderful, easy to read book on this that I recommend is Factfulness.

https://www.ted.com/playlists/474/the_best_hans_rosling_talk...

https://www.amazon.com/Factfulness-Reasons-World-Things-Bett...

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

#204

Post by bernulli »

meepmorp wrote: post #27
stx wrote: post #22

Earlier 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.

PV=nRT, so yes, reducing the temperature would reduce the atmospheric pressure. Edit: wasn't thinking at all about the volume

It's not, though, the Venus atmosphere does not behave like an ideal gas all around, it transitions into a supercritical dense liquid towards the ground.

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

#205

Post by ausbah »

xvector wrote: post #157
f6v wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

the cost, feasibility, and moral imperative of each of those things is vastly different. "curing cancer" has been happening and world hunger has been dropping for decades now, mind uploading is still far on the horizon, and thinking of terraforming at this stage seems silly

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

#206

Post by paulz_ »

gverrilla wrote: post #196
duxup wrote: post #7

Growing up I absorbed all the space stuff I could find. But it wasn't until recently that I realized that the solar system didn't just form into some static natural state where it largely didn't change until say the sun was finished with it's lifespan. Rather it evolves, changes, planets are habitable, then not, moons are formed and break up, even frozen planets are geologically active and are changing, Saturn's ring…

There was a very interesting thinker in the 18th who wrote that eventually the Earth would gain a planetary ring. He talked about how everything changes, even though our lifespan is so short we don't see it. And he was particularly speaking about society: afterall, he was a very progressive member of the generation that indeed abolished slavery, even though a lot of people said before: "Slavery's been going on for 80…

Any books or writings of his you would reccomend in paticular?

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

#207

Post by tim333 »

duxup wrote: post #7

Growing up I absorbed all the space stuff I could find. But it wasn't until recently that I realized that the solar system didn't just form into some static natural state where it largely didn't change until say the sun was finished with it's lifespan. Rather it evolves, changes, planets are habitable, then not, moons are formed and break up, even frozen planets are geologically active and are changing, Saturn's ring…

I sort of got the impression it was static as a kid as that's how all the books were written. I think its changing nature is a relatively recent discovery. I remember a lot of debate as to whether a meteor could have done for the dinosaurs because people were skeptical that sort of stuff happened but it turns out chunks of rock smashing into planets is quite common and basically how they got here. I also got the impression Earth was more unchanging than it is. It was a surprise to find you could walk from England to France 10,000 years ago or so.

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

#208

Post by junippor »

mannerheim wrote: post #201
junippor wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except, there's no hydrogen in Venus.

There is hydrogen on Venus. Very little. Some hydrogen chloride and hydrogen fluoride.

I'm just gonna leave this here.

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

Hydrogen chloride 0.1–0.6 ppm

Hydrogen fluoride 0.001–0.005 ppm

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

#210

Post by Raaasmus »

gverrilla wrote: post #196
duxup wrote: post #7

Growing up I absorbed all the space stuff I could find. But it wasn't until recently that I realized that the solar system didn't just form into some static natural state where it largely didn't change until say the sun was finished with it's lifespan. Rather it evolves, changes, planets are habitable, then not, moons are formed and break up, even frozen planets are geologically active and are changing, Saturn's ring…

There was a very interesting thinker in the 18th who wrote that eventually the Earth would gain a planetary ring. He talked about how everything changes, even though our lifespan is so short we don't see it. And he was particularly speaking about society: afterall, he was a very progressive member of the generation that indeed abolished slavery, even though a lot of people said before: "Slavery's been going on for 80…

My limited understanding says that his prediction is spot on as we seem to be building a planetary ring of space junk.
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