New Map Hints At Venus' Wet, Volcanic Past

Matt_dk writes with this excerpt from Space Fellowship: "Venus Express has charted the first map of Venus' southern hemisphere at infrared wavelengths. The new map hints that our neighbouring world may once have been more Earth-like, with a plate tectonics system and an ocean of water. The map comprises over a thousand individual images, recorded between May 2006 and December 2007. Because Venus is covered in clouds, normal cameras cannot see the surface, but Venus Express used a particular infrared wavelength that can see through them."

Comments

crap...

[Anonymous Coward]

That title would have been so much better if it was:

"Infrared Scan Of Venus' Southern Regions Hints At Wet, Hot Past"

we always focus on mars

[circletimessquare]

but i always thought venus was a better target for terraforming

its easier to subtract out of venus' atmosphere than put in mars' atmosphere what isn't there. i didn't say EASY, i said EASIER

some sort of genetically engineered bug that sequesters all of the CO2 and H2SO4, and permanently precipitates it out, preferably leaving O2 and H2O. something that could live on top of the clouds and in them. there's a lot of energy in that atmosphere, and you're closer to the sun... which is actually good: something to work with. rather than being far from the sun and feeble with resources, like mars

again, this is in no way easy, but if we ever reach the technological acumen and sustained effort needed to terraform one of our neighbors, i really think venus is a much better target than mars. more available energy to work with, almost identical gravity profile, and the need to subtract something out of the atmosphere, rather than to somehow create what isn't there, which is a lot easier to do, logically

mars has a long and sustained following and fan base, in science fiction as well as real science, but venus is the real future of mankind's first off-world colonization (besides the moon), if we ever get to that level of sophistication to even consider the possibility

Re:we always focus on mars

[Sparklepony]

but i always thought venus was a better target for terraforming. its easier to subtract out of venus' atmosphere than put in mars' atmosphere what isn't there. i didn't say EASY, i said EASIER. some sort of genetically engineered bug that sequesters all of the CO2 and H2SO4, and permanently precipitates it out, preferably leaving O2 and H2O. something that could live on top of the clouds and in them.

Actually, no, it's way harder to terraform Venus than it is to terraform Mars. The "just introduce algae" idea was proposed in 1961 by Carl Sagan, before the full extent of just how awful Venus' atmosphere was was fully appreciated. Venus has 90 atmospheres worth of carbon dioxide, and pretty much no available hydrogen. If you want to convert carbon into organic molecules, you need to have hydrogen - carbon alone is not sufficient. But if by some chance you did somehow convert 90 atmospheres worth of carbon dioxide into carbon and oxygen, what you'd wind up with is a furnace-hot planet with 60 atmospheres of pure oxygen and a layer of flammable carbon several hundred feet thick. This is not a stable situation, it'll go right back to the way it is now very quickly and spectacularly (though since the carbon would have been burning as fast as it's produced you'd never get such an extreme disequilibrium in real life). The permanent sequestration of all that carbon dioxide will require the addition of more material to the planet's atmosphere from the outside than would be required to give Mars a whole new atmosphere from scratch.

Furthermore, once you've given Venus an Earthlike atmosphere, there's another issue to consider; Venus has a rotation that's 243 Earth days long. Night lasts for 122 days on Venus. Without its ultra-dense atmosphere to convey heat around it's going to get extremely cold in the dark. We'll have to come up with a whole new ecology to endure those conditions and it doesn't sound all that fun for human inhabitants.

Re:Greenhouse cataclysm

[jameskojiro]

No, I blame the people who didn't want to burn greenhouse gases who pushed everyone to use renewable sources like "Geo-thermal" or "Venu-Thermal" energy that caused plate tectonics to grind to a halt and the outer crust to solidify and thicken which was all well and good until a few hundred million years later all of that internal Venusian heat had to go somewhere and lo and behold instant planet wide resurfacing and extreme out gassing.

The Eco-nuts of Venus were all proud of their renewable energy plan for geothermal until the fateful day the surface of the planet melted and they were all screwed. Thanks eco-nuts!!! Now there is one less habitable planet in the solar system! Too bad all of the amazon Venusian Women melted in the great planetary resurfacing 500 million years ago.

Re:Interesting, but was already assumed

[oodaloop]

Venus is actually quite terra-formable. It does have an atmosphere, an extremely thick one at that, which has caused its high temperature. It also has gravity closer to ours than the moon or Mars. If we could turn the CO2 into O2 and usable carbon (like for soil), we could eventually live on it. Wouldn't be easy, but probably more feasible than terra-forming Mars.

Just because you are wrong and I called you out on it doesn't mean I am a Troll.

Re:Interesting, but was already assumed

[oodaloop]

How about bio-engineering some extremophiles to due some conversions for us? Then, when we land, we just release some extremophile-eating microbes to clean up. Then winter comes, and they all freeze to death.

Re:Define "quite terra-formable"

[Sparklepony]

There's no need to add nitrogen. Nitrogen is only 3.5% of Venus' atmosphere, but thanks to the sheer mass of Venus' atmosphere this is still more than three times as much nitrogen as is present in Earth's atmosphere.