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NASA study reveals Venus crust surprise

science.nasa.gov

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Re: NASA study reveals Venus crust surprise

#101

Post by kjkjadksj »

kaashif wrote: post #93
monkeyfun wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're interested in human habitation of Venus overall, you may find it interesting to learn Venus is probably preferable kept at about its current temperature or only made a little colder. See, the atmosphere at ~50 altitude... happens to be about 1 bar (which happens to be Earth's atmospheric pressure ASL)... and happens to have temperatures that can support human and plant life! And better still, the atmosphere…

It actually is hard for me to imagine that. I wouldn't want to live in a floating habitat held aloft by balloons. Maybe if I were a bird I'd be comfortable with it, but it's just disturbing. No solid ground...

You won’t, but some people work for months on oil rigs in the middle of nowhere.

Re: NASA study reveals Venus crust surprise

#102

Post by kjkjadksj »

lisper wrote: post #18
netsharc wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how a system with 2 planets with intelligent lifeforms would've developed culturally and politically... if both civilizations grew at the same rate, 2 Galileos would've looked at the other planet and figured out "we have neighbors!", but it'd be several hundred more years before communication could be done. Even know we don't have manned missions to Mars or Venus...

> a system with 2 planets with intelligent lifeforms That is an extremely unlikely scenario because both intelligent life forms would have had to evolve before either of them developed space flight. It took homo sapiens 4 Gyr to evolve in the first place but only 100 kyr to develop space flight after that. So the odds are slim to none.

Spaceflight is not some law of the universe. Neither are ideas of human intelligence. Whales have bigger brains, they communicate, they have culture, they have traditions. Yet we write them off and relegate them with the rest of the animals below them and make no effort towards communication, pretending its impossible as we communicate with our dogs without thinking about it as such. We wouldn’t recognize intelligent life in the universe because we set the goalposts of intelligent life to be that of a science fiction readers expectation of what intelligent life ought to look like.

Re: NASA study reveals Venus crust surprise

#103

Post by kjkjadksj »

joemi wrote: post #24
netsharc wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how a system with 2 planets with intelligent lifeforms would've developed culturally and politically... if both civilizations grew at the same rate, 2 Galileos would've looked at the other planet and figured out "we have neighbors!", but it'd be several hundred more years before communication could be done. Even know we don't have manned missions to Mars or Venus...

I don't know why you'd think it'd be several hundred more years before communication could be done. If they can both observe each other, then all that's left is to devise a way to signal back visually. Seeing proof of one's neighbors would definitely drive people to develop ways to communicate, though I guess both planets would need to be similarly driven in order to establish communication.

One might ask how often they have a deer or a crow attempt to make contact with them. That is the expectation for other life out there, not that they’d be exactly like ourselves but perhaps more like most other life we have observed thus far.

Re: NASA study reveals Venus crust surprise

#104

Post by jodrellblank »

pastage wrote: post #69
monkeyfun wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're interested in human habitation of Venus overall, you may find it interesting to learn Venus is probably preferable kept at about its current temperature or only made a little colder. See, the atmosphere at ~50 altitude... happens to be about 1 bar (which happens to be Earth's atmospheric pressure ASL)... and happens to have temperatures that can support human and plant life! And better still, the atmosphere…

You need to give us more. I feel that just the heat is a tricky problem, even at 50km altitude. Anything todo with Venus is very much scifi at the moment. It might be easier than a moon base but we can not know.

Isaac Arthur on YouTube makes videos on sci-fi ideas that we might be able to do within the laws of physics, albeit not with today's technology. He did a video on Colonizing Venus some years ago, and an updated one a few months ago, and some others around colonisation and teraforming of the planets in the Solar System:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=isaac+arthur+ve...

Re: NASA study reveals Venus crust surprise

#105

Post by jodrellblank »

joemi wrote: post #24
netsharc wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how a system with 2 planets with intelligent lifeforms would've developed culturally and politically... if both civilizations grew at the same rate, 2 Galileos would've looked at the other planet and figured out "we have neighbors!", but it'd be several hundred more years before communication could be done. Even know we don't have manned missions to Mars or Venus...

I don't know why you'd think it'd be several hundred more years before communication could be done. If they can both observe each other, then all that's left is to devise a way to signal back visually. Seeing proof of one's neighbors would definitely drive people to develop ways to communicate, though I guess both planets would need to be similarly driven in order to establish communication.

Galileo was observing Venus in 1610; his telescope was enough to see the phases of Venus but probably not high resolution or quality enough to see someone waving Semaphore flags or lighting a bonfire. Astronauts in Low Earth Orbit can't see the Great Wall of China with the naked eye.

What scale of 'device a way to signal back visually' could done with 1600's era manufacturing and technology?

Re: NASA study reveals Venus crust surprise

#106

Post by saalweachter »

wahern wrote: post #76
andrewflnr wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From your link: > Lighter gases, including water vapour, are continuously blown away by the solar wind through the induced magnetotail. There used to be a lot of water on Venus.

Moreover, I think Venus has lost most of its hydrogen to space, so you can't even make water anymore. Hydrogen escapes the atmosphere relatively easily for Earth- and Venus-sized planets[1], and the vaporization of all the water and subsequent disassociation[2] of H2O allowed the hydrogen to escape into space. [1] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere#/media/File:Solar_s... [2] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wik…

Earth's oxygen rich atmosphere is really important here-- any free hydrogen can readily combine with the free hydrogen, decreasing the chance of any being loss.

Re: NASA study reveals Venus crust surprise

#107

Post by kaashif »

monkeyfun wrote: post #97
kaashif wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It actually is hard for me to imagine that. I wouldn't want to live in a floating habitat held aloft by balloons. Maybe if I were a bird I'd be comfortable with it, but it's just disturbing. No solid ground...

Haha, i totally feel that. Maybe people will have little personal balloons for emergencies like that :p At the same time, do consider how you already count on conventionally supported structures like bridges, buildings, tunnels, etc. not to have any defects or design flaws. Or once-in-100-years storms or earthquakes. This magnifies further if you've ever flown on a plane or sailed on a ship. It only takes the right s…

All I know is if I sail on a ship and something goes wrong, I don't fall dozens of kilometers through clouds of sulphuric acid to my death.

Not on the ships I've been going on, anyway.

Re: NASA study reveals Venus crust surprise

#108

Post by andrewflnr »

saalweachter wrote: post #106
wahern wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moreover, I think Venus has lost most of its hydrogen to space, so you can't even make water anymore. Hydrogen escapes the atmosphere relatively easily for Earth- and Venus-sized planets[1], and the vaporization of all the water and subsequent disassociation[2] of H2O allowed the hydrogen to escape into space. [1] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere#/media/File:Solar_s... [2] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wik…

Earth's oxygen rich atmosphere is really important here-- any free hydrogen can readily combine with the free hydrogen, decreasing the chance of any being loss.

According to that wiki article, the hydrogen was mostly lost in the form of water vapor. The hydrogen and oxygen in the magnetotail are in almost a perfect 2:1 ratio. At least,

> Currently the main ion types being lost are O+, H+ and He+. The ratio of hydrogen to oxygen losses is around 2 (i.e. almost stoichiometric for water) indicating the ongoing loss of water.

Also Earth didn't have an oxygenated atmosphere until relatively late, a couple billion years in, so I didn't know if that could be the thing that saved it.

Re: NASA study reveals Venus crust surprise

#109

Post by saalweachter »

andrewflnr wrote: post #108
saalweachter wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earth's oxygen rich atmosphere is really important here-- any free hydrogen can readily combine with the free hydrogen, decreasing the chance of any being loss.

According to that wiki article, the hydrogen was mostly lost in the form of water vapor . The hydrogen and oxygen in the magnetotail are in almost a perfect 2:1 ratio. At least, > Currently the main ion types being lost are O+, H+ and He+. The ratio of hydrogen to oxygen losses is around 2 (i.e. almost stoichiometric for water) indicating the ongoing loss of water. Also Earth didn't have an oxygenated atmosphere unti…

I don't have primary sources, unfortunately -- I'm recalling something I read in _Oxygen_, which I found reassuring. It said that, one of the benefits of our oxygen-rich atmosphere was that we would lose an insignificant amount of hydrogen/water over the next billion years. It's one of those things that doesn't actually matter to me in my daily life, but I still find comforting, so it's stuck with me.

Re: NASA study reveals Venus crust surprise

#110

Post by joemi »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #103
joemi wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why you'd think it'd be several hundred more years before communication could be done. If they can both observe each other, then all that's left is to devise a way to signal back visually. Seeing proof of one's neighbors would definitely drive people to develop ways to communicate, though I guess both planets would need to be similarly driven in order to establish communication.

One might ask how often they have a deer or a crow attempt to make contact with them. That is the expectation for other life out there, not that they’d be exactly like ourselves but perhaps more like most other life we have observed thus far.

I based my comment on the one that said "2 planets with intelligent lifeforms would've developed culturally and politically... if both civilizations grew at the same rate, 2 Galileos would've looked at the other planet and figured out "we have neighbors!"" I think that's quite a different situation than a deer or a crow attempting to make contact. It seems likely that if scientist in the 1600s were to figure out that there's life on the other planet, they're realize that the best way they could communicate would be visually. Then it would just be a matter of devising a large enough way to signal visually.
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