Question about Venus

[Fallingstar1971]

If Venus had the same rotational speed as Earth, would it then cool and be more hospitable to life?

I only ask because Venus has such a slow rotation that sunlight would be more concentrated on the same areas for much longer of a time.

If Earth rotated once a year, would our oceans boil away?

Star

 

[MeteorWayne]

Probably not. The reason Venus is so hot is that it's atmosphere is mostly CO2, so it is a supor greenhouse. Varying the rotation speed wouldn't change that. And a slower rotation speed for the earth would not cause the oceans to boil away, the water would evaporate into the atmosphere, then rain out as soon as it cooled again. Interesting question though!

 

[3488]

It is a very interesting question indeed.

If Earth rotated like Venus, the day - night variation would be more intense, particularly over land, but as Wayne say's the water from the oceans would evaporated from the day side & would just precipitate out as rain & snow over the colder areas.

The Earth's global thermal inertia would not change, only that it would be distributed differently.

Also Venus's night time surface temoperatures are only 5 C cooler than the dayside. As Wayne also said, that huge chocking, dense CO2 atmosphere is acting as a green house & also the dense cloud layer acts as a stabiliser, preventing a large diurnal difference on Venus.

To cool Venus would involve:

1). Putting a gigantic sun shield in front of the day side of Venus.

& / or,

2). Blasting a huge hole in the clouds over the night hemisphere to radiate excess heat into space.

& / or,

3). Move Venus further from the Sun.

& / or,

4). Somehow bleed some of that atmosphere into space.

& / or,

5). Convert most of that remaining CO2 into Oxygen, using microbes initially.

All five are well beyond today's technical means.

Andrew Brown.