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Space Science

Venusian Climate May Have Been Habitable 60

Posted by michael from the goggles-do-nothing dept.
tqft writes "Venus - life signs maybe - 'The hellish climate of Venus may have arisen far more recently than previously supposed, suggests new research. If so, pleasant Earth-like conditions probably persisted for two billion years after the planet's birth - plenty of time for life to have developed.' Mars is for wimps afraid of a real hot acid drenched challenge."
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Venusian Climate May Have Been Habitable More

Venusian Climate May Have Been Habitable

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  • After all, isn't that where women originated from?

    -psy

  • Republicans are responsible for this. (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Of COURSE Venus was inhabitable, until the Republicans and their Big Business Allies destroyed the environment. They're doing to the same to Earth: beware!

    • Venus would still be inhabitable except the feel good Democrats and their big labor allies destroyed the enviorment. They are doing the same to Earth: beware!

      I know it is all the rage the pick on republicans for destroying the environment, but the democrats only say they are better. Look at their actions, and you will find (just like the rebpulicans) that they don't match their words. Often the desire to fight with the repblicans (who in turn desire to fight back) means that if the other wants to do som

  • Mmmmm... Mars (Score:3, Funny)

    by InsaneCreator ( 209742 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @09:57AM (#6942514)
    Mars is for wimps

    It's still better than having peanuts stuck between you teeth after eating a Snickers bar!

  • the greenhouse effect (Score:5, Funny)

    by falsification ( 644190 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @10:02AM (#6942563) Journal
    The hellish climate of Venus may have arisen far more recently than previously supposed

    It was fine until an oil magnate became their President.

  • From the article (Score:5, Funny)

    by passthecrackpipe ( 598773 ) * <.passthecrackpipe. .at. .hotmail.com.> on Friday September 12, 2003 @10:07AM (#6942624)
    From the article:

    Venus is virtually the same size as Earth and, on average, is our nearest neighbour. Today, its atmospheric temperatures are hot enough to melt lead and concentrated sulfuric acid continuously drizzles down from thick sulphurous clouds that completely block out the Sun.

    Sounds like human life originated on Venus, we totally fucked it up, and sent a "try again" genetic seeding material package to Earth. Seems we didn't learn much.....

    • Re:From the article (Score:3, Interesting)

      by sab39 ( 10510 )
      "thick sulphurous clouds that completely block out the Sun" - the article

      "We don't know who struck first. But we do know that it was humans who darkened the sky." - Morpheus

      Venus is the real world, Earth is the Matrix?

      (yeah, I probably screwed up the Matrix quote. I'll surrender my geek credentials on my way out...)

      • Re:From the article (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        But of course *we* know who struck first, because we've all seen Second Genesis.
        • we do? I thought it was deliberately vague on that point...

          after all, the Second Genesis was from Zion's archives, so if it recorded who struck first, it would follow that the "we" Morpheus refers to would also know.
        • Was it not called "The Second Renaissance"? Also. Morphius said in part one that they, Zion, did not know exactly what happend, only some bits and pieces.

          "Renaissance" was a projection of events as understood by the people of Zion. Take the scene where the robots slave like the ancient egyptians? Clearly this is an error; but it's very likely that the survivers are not the people in the developed world, are not the people who dwel in megacities. Maybe no survivor knew about cranes, catapilars, etc. Maybe t
          • ""Renaissance" was a projection of events as understood by the people of Zion. Take the scene where the robots slave like the ancient egyptians? Clearly this is an error; but it's very likely that the survivers are not the people in the developed world, are not the people who dwel in megacities. Maybe no survivor knew about cranes, catapilars, etc."

            What about people who were unplugged from the matrix? They would know about cranes and other such things.

            The Second Rennaissance is very symbolic, maybe too sy

            • What about people who were unplugged from the matrix? They would know about cranes and other such things.

              Fair. However; they would most likely be very few in number. Also, most of them will be very young when they are unpluged.

              Also: would you trust the matrix simulation to depict reality as it really was? Would you trust the enemy's version of the past?

              However. Your right of cause, it could all be symbolic and I think we, as the human race, are indeed this evil and intollerant -- we care too much about

    • Re:From the article (Score:5, Interesting)

      by GreenHell ( 209242 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @11:18AM (#6943410)
      There's actually a Philip K. Dick story like that.
      Earth has been overmined, etc, and the environment is in a state of ruin. Humans send astronauts to Mars in the hopes of finding it habitable so that they can move their entire civilisation there.

      Once there it's discovered that an ancient race destroyed Mars and moved their entire civilisation to a new planet they had found, a veritable Eden, where the technology failed and they reverted back to a Stone Age civilisation.
      Unfortunately the astronauts can't find where this planet is, as all the equipment seems to have malfunctioned and is locked on Earth. (Well, all except one, who realises the significance of this fact, thereby giving the story its point.)

      Can't remember the name of it or which collection it's in. Anyone?
      • Isn't that the plot to that lamo movie Mission to Mars? But didn't Philip Dick have a lot to contribute to Hollywood -- didn't he have a connection to Blade Runner?

        This idea that Earth is "seeded" from afar is a neat science fiction concept, but there are a lot of ham-fisted realizations such as the insufferable Battlestar Galactica among others.

        • I've never seen Mission to Mars, so I can't comment. (I'm also happy to say that I've only ever seen one Battlestar Galactica episode, and that was enough.)

          Philip K. Dick was a popular choice for Hollywood films though, Total Recall was very loosely based around a short story called "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" and he also provided the inspiration for Blade Runner (among others).

          Although the only major connection between the movie and the book (called "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?") is t
    • We can still send our DNA to Mars. But after the third try we might run out of Class-M Planets in our Solarsystem. Jupiter as next shot might be waaay too heavy for us.

      But, hey, we could still build underwater cities (Man! Afaik we were promised them anyway by 2000) on Europas Oceans and try again (the Jupiter moon, folks, the continental jokes are exhausted!).

      There MUST be a climate cold enough to stand greenhousegases.

      cu,
      Lispy
      • could still build underwater cities (Man! Afaik we were promised them anyway by 2000) on Europas Oceans

        I dunno - the black obelisks told us that all the planets except Europa was ours. I wouldn't want to piss off the obelisks.

  • I was recently reading Ben Bova's "Venus" and was thinking about the ability of humanity to live in the upper reaches of Venus's atmosphere. Anyone seen anything on this?

    I think a health spa would do very well their.
    • There's a Ray Bradbury story (I think it's Bradbury's, don't know the name either) in which Venus is terraformed using bacteria. The clouds in Venus' upper atmosphere is seeded with bacteria that thrive on Carbon Dioxide and Sulphuric Acid. As they spread through the upper atmosphere, they generate Oxygen and water in huge quatities and also greatly reduce atmospheric pressure. This allows liquid water to form in the lower atmosphere and fall as rain.

      Over a period of months (or years?), the planet's surfac

  • Focusing on Earth-like... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by feidaykin ( 158035 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @11:01AM (#6943221) Journal
    We've found that microbes can survive inside devices that have been sitting on the freaking moon for an extended period of time, organisms can survive in the depths of Earths oceans at temperatures of 250F, yet we still believe that all life needs an Earth-like environment?

    We have no real evidence of this... I don't think it is fair to rule out any chance of finding life in extreme places.

    Venus may be our hell, but isn't it possible that somewhere in the universe, organisims exist that would thrive there?

    • I think that "Earth-like" principally means that water can exist in a liquid form and probably that oxygen (or maybe something else?) is available for something like respiration. Water is practically unique in its properties, so it's difficult to think of any other substance that might take its place. Note that those microbes on the moon would be in a dormant form (spores?), not actively exchanging energy with their environment.

      • Re:Focusing on Earth-like... (Score:5, Informative)

        by yasth ( 203461 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @11:51AM (#6943764) Homepage Journal
        Oxygen is a dangerous poison. Most early life (and lots still extant) not only do not need oxygen but are harmed by oxygen. Early life was probably based on hot methane plumes in the Earth's oceans, which is not dependent upon the sun, nor on oxygen.
        • Good point re: oxygen. Where would hot methane plumes have come from, though?
        • Yes ... we know that at the time of early life development on earth the environment was dramatically different in terms of chemical composition, and probably temperature distribution (although water is a terrific temperature buffer). This changed gradually over 2.5 billion years in tandem with evolving life forms. So the rate at which environmental shifts occurred is at least as important as what the shifts actually were. If the change in environment was recent (i.e. "dramatic") that is worse news for ex
        • You're way off. Oxygen is dangerous at high concentrations, but it is essential to nearly all life on Earth. Besides a lot of things are dangerous at high concentrations... All Eukaryotes, cells with mitochondria, require it for the Citric Acid Cycle (aerobic metabolism). That would include all animals, plants, algae, fungi and protist. Most bacteria, eubacteria and archaebacteria, also prefer to use aerobic metabolism though they're capable of various other, very interesting, forms of metabolism. The o
        • You're way off.

          Oxygen is dangerous at high concentrations, but it is essential to nearly all life on Earth. Besides a lot of things are dangerous at high concentrations...

          All Eukaryotes, cells with mitochondria, require it for the Citric Acid Cycle (aerobic metabolism). That would include all animals, plants, algae, fungi and protist.

          Most bacteria, eubacteria and archaebacteria, also prefer to use aerobic metabolism though they're capable of various other, very interesting, forms of metabolism.

          The only
    • The temperature limit for life on earth was only recently extended... to a whole 113 C, if memory serves. This is a long way from Venusian levels, and hardly offers hope for anything living on the surface. (How life could get minerals and other essentials high in the atmosphere, where temperatures are quite habitable, is a question that advocates of airborne life need to answer.)
    • I think that if there is already life, it will adapt to many of these harsh conditions, but I just don't think the RNA soup theory we currently have took place in extremely harsh conditions.

  • Question about plate tectonics (Score:4, Interesting)

    by clintp ( 5169 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @11:22AM (#6943462)
    Once the water was lost, Grinspoon says, plate tectonics would have stopped completely,
    Why is water a prerequisite for plate tectonics?

  • Life might still be there (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Henry V .009 ( 518000 ) on Friday September 12, 2003 @11:25AM (#6943502) Journal
    If life ever arose on Venus, it is still going to be there. Simply raising the temperature 100K until it is hot enough to melt lead and bathing the entire planet in acid isn't enough to wipe out all life. There are going to be extremophiles all over. And the best thing is that we probably don't have to worry much about about contamination when we're studying it.

  • Habstar Database, anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kalidasa ( 577403 ) * on Friday September 12, 2003 @11:39AM (#6943641) Journal

    More generally, if this analysis is right, it means that the "habitable zone" for planets around other stars may be much wider than has been assumed, since Venus had been thought to be far outside it.

    Damn, if this is right, I guess they'll have to expand the HABSTAR database some. Isn't that terrible? :-)

  • No, this doesn't have anything to do with "global warming". The Sun's output is slowly increasing as it ages. Eventually this will tip the Earth into thermal runaway. The good news is that homo sapiens will be long gone by the time it happens.

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