Was Venus Alive? ''The Signs are Probably There"

[kai_25]

The planet Venus is like Earth in many ways. It has a similar size and mass, it is closer to us than any other planet, and it probably formed from the same sort of materials that formed Earth. For years scientists and science fiction writers dreamed of the exotic jungles and life forms that must inhabit Earth's twin sister. <br /><br />David Grinspoon, a research scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, writes in his book, "Venus Revealed," that, through the Mariner 2 and other Venus missions, "we found our 'sister planet' to be chemically alien, as well as hot and dry to quite unearthly extremes. With these revelations, the twin-sister imagery quickly disappeared, and the notion that 'Venus is hell' took hold." <br /><br />Only 20 percent of the sunlight that hits Venus makes it through the cloud cover, while the other 80 percent is reflected back into space. This reduced sunlight doesn't make Venus a cold world, however, because the thick carbon dioxide atmosphere traps the planet's heat. This greenhouse effect on Venus is often cited as a nightmare example of what could happen to Earth if we don't get our pollution under control. <br /><br />In an interview, Grinspoon explains how Venus evolved from a wet planet similar to Earth to the scorching hot, dried-out furnace of today. Then he discusses the possibility that Venus was once an inhabited world.<br /><br />Astrobiology Magazine (AM): Just how hot is Venus today? <br /><br /><br />David Grinspoon <br />David Grinspoon (DG): It's 735 Kelvin on the surface. So that's pushing 900 Fahrenheit. It's not exactly temperate.<br /><br />AM: You've said there were two separate major geologic transitions on Venus that led to its present-day state. <br /><br />DG: Well, the conventional view has been that there were two separate transitions, but we're suggesting it's one overall sequence.<br /><br />The first great transition in the history of Venus was the loss of the oceans. We don't know that Venus had oceans,

 

[newtonian]

kai_25 - that is a looooong post!<br /><br />Where to start?<br /><br />First, it is likely that earth and Venus were much more similar in the distant past.<br /><br />The amount of carbonates in earth's crust is evidence that earth once had about as much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as Venus does now. <br /><br />And the evidence indicates these carbonates were deposited by the geologic carbon cycle, which involves early earth's oceans (Genesis 1:2).<br /><br />I agree it is also likely that Venus had a similar amount of water to the earth in the distant past.<br /><br />However, Venus and earth went in opposited directions from there.<br /><br />While earth's early hot state cooled and earth had water condensation catastrophes; Venus in contrast heated up and had its oceans evaporate.<br /><br />BTW - Venus still has water vapor in its atmosphere (according to 1990ish observations) - but it is dwarfed in percentage due to the vast CO2 atmosphere.<br /><br />And water vapor added to Venus' greenhouse effect, in a chain reaction or process which kept making it hotter.<br /><br />BTW - at Venus' temperatures, carbonate in rocks would be liberated as additional CO2. This is similar to why CO2 is a constituent of earth's volcanic outgassing.<br /><br />OK, please summarize what signs of alleged early Venus life are you referring to.