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Venus's Surface May Be 1 Billion Years Old
dptalia writes, "For a while scientists have believed that Venus's surface is fairly young, having recently been covered by lava 1 to 3 kilometers deep. However, more study into photos sent back by Magellan seems to show that the cataclysmic volcano theory is wrong. Now scientists are postulating that Venus's surface may be a billion years old and could be probed to determine the history of the planet."
Interesting... I and anxious to find out how they plan on hardening the lander to withstand the heat and atmospheric pressure on the surface.
Not impossible, but it'll be a lot to consider.
God made Venus 10,000 years ago, along with Adam and Eve and the fake dinosaur bones. And my grandaddy wasn't no monkey!
If this is true that means also that if anything else crashed onto Venus millions of years ago we could still look at it, imagine if we found a meteorite that is a billion years old and came from a remote section of space.
The article says that the planet was believed to have been 500 million to 1 billion years old, but based on new data may be much older.
The thread title is misleading!
Magellan did not have a sungle camera onboard - it used microwave pulses (a Synthetic Aperture Radar) to map the surface of Venus.
Okay, so the previously-held theory was that Venus's surface is ~500 million years old.
But wait!
So according to this new evidence, the planet's surface could be...~500 million years old.
Bwuh?
The problem is keeping the electronics cool. Regardless of what they are made of, they must be able to get rid of heat. And unless you intend for the electronics to run at an even higher temperature than ambient (which would be absurd on Venus), you must provide a forced cooling system of some kind. No refrigerator has ever been invented for that kind of environment although I have heard that one may be possible by using liquid sand as a refrigerant (in what I would presume would be a multiple step heat-transfer system).
Made me chuckle.
picpix image polls. create - share - vote. fun!
The title of this story reminds me of Moses May Have Been an Apache and Other Actual Facts
Have you read my journal today?
if they ever read any real science papers...
According to Immanuel Velikovsky ( Wikipedia article on I.V and his theories. ) ...) but in former times Earth was a moon of Saturn
the Solar system has not always been in the configuration we observe it today
(Mercury - Venus - Earth - Mars - Dunno - Jupiter - Saturn
and Venus a comet from outside the Solar system. According to Velikovsky the current configuration was arrived
at through a series of planetary cataclysms which expelled Earth from the Saturn system and locked Venus into
today's orbit around the sun.
The thick atmosphere will be great for running a cooler. Obviously that would require nuclear power.
To walk on the surface:
Use a phase-change material, possibly plain water ice, to keep people cool while they walk about.
The pressure is rough, but doable. It's 94 atmospheres worth. In terms of water depth, it's about 1000 meters or 3000 feet. You need to use a mixture of oxygen, hydrogen, and either helium or neon. (to avoid explosion, you don't add the hydrogen until your total pressure is such that the partial pressure of the oxygen is far below that of the helium or neon -- only then may you replace the inert gas with hydrogen and then continue to increase the pressure)
I've read Velikovsky, and I believe very, very little of what he writes. At the same time, you gotta give him props for his conceptual chutzpah, in thinking that the Solar System is essentially the result of a god-size game of cosmic 8-ball. ("Mars, in the side pocket, off the Earth...")
"The plural of anecdote is not data" -- Bruce Schneier
I noticed a few things about that post:
1) You note merely that Velikovsky made these tall claims. That's factual reporting disguised as sensational claims.
2) You misreport detail within his actual claims. He claimed that Venus was ejected from Jupiter, and did not claim that a captured extrasolar planet). He didn't develop his claim about Earth's relationship with Saturn (at least not in published material).
3) You don't state that Velikovsky's claims are fact, nor that they are fiction. Wise, and perhaps clever (see below).
4) Velikovsky's science (rather, lack thereof) was and thus remains dubious, and has been soundly and widely refuted. You probably knew this, especially in light of the above points.
You could be trolling, but more likely you're making a joke which will fly over the heads of some readers but otherwise deserve some +1 funny action. Velikovsky time again indeed. Someone gets it...
Good show.
I'm so glad this happened! This is the final and conclusive proof that we right wing supporters of Intelligent Design need to finally show up the scientific community! Here's how this works:
1. Scientists (the people who are always wrong) had this theory ("just a theory") about the age of the planet's surface. It was wrong, as science usually is.
2. They did some more REAL research into the problem and found that they were wrong and that the planet turns out to possibly be 1 billion years old which is really just their way of saving face since they know that's wrong too. Everything in the entire universe is only 4000 years old. Look it up!
3. The two items above prove that the concept of theories is invalid and what you really need is strong faith and god backing you up. This is why I.D. is the right answer!
Again, the main point here is that since theories can be wrong, they should never be trusted. Instead it's wiser to trust in a religion that's been around for the entire whole of existence (4000 years) as we I.D. folks do. So remember to vote against anything this Tuesday that supports science because the only reason science exists is to try and take down religion. Glad I could help out!
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Asimov's debunking of Velikovsky was hilarious. I don't know if there are copies around. I read it in the college library about 15 years ago. It was a typical Asimov written-in-one-day job. He knew his stuff, that guy.
http://michaelsmith.id.au