Scientists Discover What Turned Venus Into Hell, And Why Earth Survived
Ever wonder why Venus became inhospitable and Earth didn’t? That question that’s been bugging scientists for a very long time, especially when it comes to the evolution of planets like Venus and Earth.
As many know, both planets sort of started out billions of years ago, and at some point, Venus probably looked much like Earth.
Over time it changed dramatically, turning into something inhospitable to any kind of life with ridiculously high temperatures and very high pressures on the surface. Yet Earth didn’t.
Earth didn’t just remain hospitable but actually improved its conditions over time leading to the evolution of complex life.
So what exactly happened between these two planets and why did one turn into something like Venus yet one remained very hospitable?
Watch:
h/t Joe O.
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Tom
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It’s more than obvious proximity to the sun was a major factor…the same as any planet in relation to its sun.
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Robert Beatty
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Hi Tom,
The other obvious factor is no satellite stirring up the atmosphere.
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Peter F Gill
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If one notionally places Venus in the same orbit as Earth making an inverse square law correction a S-B correction, the calculated mean temperature in the atmosphere of Venus at the one bar level is very close to that of Earth. at its surface. The isolation at the top of the atmosphere and the pressure at the surface are key. It is wholly unnecessary to introduce a “runaway greenhouse effect” on top of the very reasonable hypothesis about the effects of many mega volcanoes erupting in close temporal proximity..
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Tom Anderson
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Venus is about 67 million miles from the sun compared to Earth’s 93 million miles. This would suggest a temperature relative to distance of 290°C on Venus, but it is 739°C. Alarmists attribute the temperature to high CO2 content, but a planetary variant of the “Ideal Gas Law” shows with extreme accuracy that the temperature is from gravitational compression of an atmosphere 92 times denser than Earth’s.
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Rosco
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You can take the data From NASA’ “Planetary Fact Sheets” and find the temperature according to the “Ideal Gas Laws” for all planets and they agree yet the Black body results differ.
And just how does a “greenhouse effect” work if the input solar radiation can’t heat the surface above minus whatever ?
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Herb Rose
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Hi Rosco,
Why doesn’t the “greenhouse” effect heat Mars? How do 700km/hr winds going in the same direction as the rotation slow the rotation? With no magnetic field, less gravity, and exposed to stronger solar winds how does Venus maintain an atmosphere 92 times the atmosphere on Earth? A lot of speculation based on unsupported assumptions.
Herb
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Lit
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So, you say that gravitational compression increases the power of surface emission by about 16000W/m^2?
You can´t add power with gravity. Gravity is what causes pressure and you´re saying gravity creates an extra 16000W/m^2. That´s energy creation and a violation of the first law, unless you include a power source for gravity.
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Herb Rose
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Hi Lit,
No Lit, that is not what Tom said.
You maintain that the surface is heating the atmosphere but the laws of thermodynamics says that all matter absorbs radiated energy. The O2 and N2 in the Earth’s atmosphere do not absorb visible and IR but they do absorb UV and convert that into IR. On Venus where there is no O2, N2, or H2O) the CO2 and SO are absorbing IR radiation from the sun and being heated by the sun. These gases are then adding heat to the surface just as the O2 and N2 are adding heat to the Earth’s surface (which is why it gets cold during solar minimums when there are fewer flares producing UV.)
Temperature is measured by a thermometer and a thermometer is inaccurate in a gas because as the kinetic energy of molecules increases the gas becomes less dense. Energy is transferred to the instrument by collisions and momentum. When the gas is less dense there are fewer collisions and less momentum resulting in less energy transfer. The decrease in temperature in Earth’s atmosphere is not due to the molecules having less energy but from less mass transferring energy. A gas will expand with an increase in the energy of the molecules. This is why the density of the atmosphere decreases with increasing altitude. The bottom of the Grand Canyons is always ten degrees hotter than the top of the canyon. If this were due to hotter gas molecules those molecules would rise to the top and be replaced by colder molecules. The reason it is hotter is because there are more molecules, with less energy, transferring energy to the thermometer.
To see how a lower temperature can heat a hotter object see my article in PSI “How Cold Heats Hot”
Herb
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Howdy
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Want a different view? Venus is the planet of love, and beauty, yet It reflects on the state of the Earth, thus what it represents is burned up, just like here. Similarly, the transformative Pluto was disowned, and the Earth is in a devolution triggered fall to the bottom of the barrel.
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Rosco
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Even under the “faint young sun” hypothesis it is unlikely Venus ever had temperatures allowing liquid water to exist at its surface.
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Koen Vogel
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While fun to speculate on the cause of why Venus is so hot, any proposed solution should take into account the energies involved. Ever since the Pioneer Venus Multiprobes it has been known (Suomi, 1979; Tomasko & Doose, 1979, etc) that only 1-6% of the solar irradiation reaches the surface, and that less than 1% is directly radiated back to space, confirming a small greenhouse effect.. However, quoting Suomi “the IR losses from the deep layers are too large to be supplied from sunlight reaching the surface”. In other words, sunlight and greenhouse gasses alone aren’t enough. Some candidates that should be considered are atmospheric circulation (Suomi’s suggestion), original heat from Venus’ formation (unlikely as Venus’ Mantle is demonstrably suffering convective heat loss, as something is feeding its volcanoes, or – my favourite – the solar wind. As Venus has no magnetic field to speak of, the solar wind protons and electrons are not being deflected by a magnetosphere, and can directly strike Venus and impart their kinetic energy. The direct-incident solar wind energy is on the order of 1 TW, which is the energetic equivalent of a daily 20 megaton nuclear warhead going off. This whih still may not be enough to explain a 450 C surface temperature, but it’s a start. Anyway, LIP’s and greenhouse gasses are not enough: something is supplying extra energy, and it’s coming from within Venus.
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Lit
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Here´s a quote from Max Planck´s “the theory of heat radiation”, page 6:
“But the empirical law that the emission of any volumeelement depends entirely on what takes place inside of this ele ment holds true in all cases (Prevost s principle).”
https://ia804508.us.archive.org/26/items/theheatradiation00planrich/theheatradiation00planrich.pdf
Prevost principle:
“Prevost also showed that the emission from a body is logically determined solely by its own internal state. ”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-body_radiation
The emission from a body depends only on the internal state. No exceptions. It doesn´t depend on the atmosphere or the pressure of the atmosphere, the atmosphere depends on the emission from the surface.
If we trust Planck and Prevost, which we should, then the surface emission can only depend on internal heat generation or be original heat from formation. The same applies to Earth, Mercury and Venus.
Emission depends only on the internal state, absorption and emission of heat are relative to each other through the internal state, they´re not cause and effect.
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Lit
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*The same applies to Earth, Mercury and Venus.
And Mars
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Squidly
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So, can someone please explain to me when it was when Venus was “cool” ?? .. and, if Venus had water that magically evaporated away because of a “runaway greenhouse effect”, then how do that water magically attain escape velocity to leave Venus’ gravity?
The whole thing is 100%, unadulterated bullshit. Venus was never cool, Venus never had water.
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Tom Anderson
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Squidly has the clearest grasp of this issue. Since first encountering this hoary old wheeze almost a decade ago nothing in the alarmist camp has changed. It certainly hasn’t improved or been dignified by fact.
“The best hint is in at some point, Venus probably looked much like Earth.”
PROBABLY? After all these years hasn’t anybody gained any knowledge based on EVIDENCE? Who witness or dug the surface to trace that evolution? There’s a fair amount of research discrediting the “hot Venus” narrative.
A fairly active site that reviews recent and archived papers on a number of alarmists’ favorite screams surveyed the litt on this one, presented six (6) papers, and concluded, “Scientists have for decades agreed it is ‘well recognized’ that CO2 molecules radiatively cool the atmospheres of planets like Earth, Mars, and Venus [citations omitted] in the 15μm band starting from12 km above the surface. For rocky planets like Venus ‘adding CO2 obviously cools the whole atmosphere ’.” Wang, Shuang, and Jun Yang, “Atmospheric Overturning Circulation on Dry,Tidally Locked Rocky Planets Is Mainly Driven by Radiative Cooling,” The Planetary Science Journal, 3:171 (15pp), 2022 July.
As for radiative cooling in the 15μm band, brush up on spectral band absorption and emission, in your Einstein and Planck. No molecule – not one! – radiates over the entire solar spectrum. It is another IPCC homage to ignorance.
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Herb Rose
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What commenters don’t seem to understand that is this article based untruth it would never be published. If you want to continue to get funding and be published you must link anything and everything to the climate crisis.
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Koen Vogel
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I don’t think you critics are giving the author enough credit for presenting a case and data, and putting ideas out there for people to shoot at. The author’s hypothesis is plausible, but evidence argues against it. The pieces of the puzzle are on the table and how you assemble them is often a matter of preference. The similarities are that compositionally Earth and Venus are very alike: the LPI’s are one factor of many. The assumption that Venus may have been the first inhabitable planet is speculative, but reasons are given and if you don’t like them then provide counterarguments. This is not an Earth climate change debate. There are significant differences between the two planets, and the main difference (boiling vs inhabitable) should be looked for in the planetary processes that distribute energy. Heat is never a problem: all processes generate waste heat. I prefer (and do) look to the main planetary processes that separate V&E: Venus has no magnetic field, slower rotation, closer to the Sun. Its heat anomalies are like Earth’s hot spots: there are no curvilinear heat features like the mid-Atlantic ridge, but more hotspots like Hawaii. And Venus does not have continental drift. So now we have: a) no magnetic field and no heat from its generation; b) an internal heat source that is heating up Venus; c) no continental drift, despite being a clone for Earth. The 1979 data suggest a small greenhouse effect and an internal Venus heat source. Think about something which ticks more boxes than LPI’s.
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Kevin Doyle
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Dear Anton Petrov,
While you were speculating over volcanoes on Venus, I ran a few basic numbers.
According to the NASA Planetary Fact Sheet, Venus gets a daily dose of sunshine of about 2,600 Watts/Sq-M.
If one employs the Stefan-Boltzmann Equation for a ‘Blackbody’ lit up with 2,600 W/Sq-M, at 100% Emissivity, then the result is 190 degrees C.
In the atmosphere of Venus, this temperature is what is found at about 34 kilometers above the surface. At this altitude the atmospheric pressure is about 7 Bar.
The surface pressure of Venus is about 92 Bar.
Assuming the sunlight penetrates only a limited portion of the total atmospheric depth, then it is reasonable to believe the gases have been warmed in the upper atmosphere, then compressed as they get lower in altitude. Venus has high winds and temperature mixing in its atmosphere.
A diesel engine works by compressing air by 15 times to yield an explosively high temperature when mixed with fuel.
Compressing a gas from 7 Bar to 92 Bar would certainly yield a very high temperature.
Something to think about…
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Kevin Doyle
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Oh, by the way, this discussion of the atmosphere of Venus demonstrates the fact CO2 absorbs incoming radiation from the Sun.
Has anyone heard of a reference that CO2 ‘absorbs’ incoming solar radiation?
Answer: No.
It is obvious to any thinking person, CO2 absorbs/transfers energy both incoming and outgoing, thus a completely irrelevant factor. We could place cups of tea in the atmosphere, then they would absorb incoming sunlight energy, then re-emit that energy. No net change.
My dog understands basic thermodynamics better than any ‘environmental scientist’.
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