Venus' Stop/Start History Highlighted By Probe 69
An anonymous reader writes "Science Daily reports on scientific findings from the ESA's Venus Express probe. The device, which is even now orbiting Earth's sister planet, is feeding back data hinting at Venus' origins. Initially, the probe has found, the planet evolved far too quickly. As a result Venus' liquid oceans were boiled away. With those gone, the planet's development stalled and ceased. 'They may have started out looking very much the same,' said Professor Taylor, 'but increasingly we have evidence that Venus lost most of its water and Earth lost most of its atmospheric carbon dioxide ... The interesting thing is that the physics is the same in both cases. The great achievement of Venus Express is that it is putting the climatic behaviour of both planets into a common framework of understanding.'"
Spinning iron core (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Yeah, right. (Score:5, Interesting)
That was my first though, as well.
However, there is a qualification to make. Namely, it depends on the scope of the framework. If you make the scope large enough, _everything_ falls within it, but it will also make the framewore insanely complex and difficult to work with.
In practice, we use simplifications. And this is where the scope of the framework becomes important. Because the simplifications, while technically wrong, can still give useful results. For example, simply adding velocities works well, as long as the velocities are much smaller than the speed of light. Hydrogen is not always gaseous, but good results can be gotten under most circumstances by assuming that it is. Or even by assuming that it is an ideal gas. And so on. So, depending on the specific assumptions you make, your framework may be more or less widely applicable.
What is interesting about a common framework that correctly predicts events on both Earth and Venus is that it tests cases that may not have been tested before. Some conditions may be so common on Earth that the behavior they elicit is taken for granted by Earth-based scientists. On Venus, these circumstances may not be present. This will test our theories under circumstances we may never have thought of. This, in turn, may lead to better understanding.
Re:global warming comparison in 3,2,1.... (Score:2, Interesting)
The year 1998 was a statistical anomaly based off the strong El Nino currents that year. When looking at the temperature trends surrounding 1998, there is a nice best fit line to go through them. 1998 is quite far above that best fit line for the rest of the years. Thus the statement 'temps haven't risen in the last 10 years' is numerically true (1998 was hotter than this year), it does not change the fact that there is an underlying trend of temperatures upwards over the last 20 years.
That being said - he strongly believes in GW/CC. I am unsure as to the cause of the data points, but think that we should examine them as an interesting trend in our environment.