Note that the change in temperature is with the reciprocal of the square root of the distance, not the recip. of the square of the distance. Using an albedo of .9 and an orbital radius of 1.08×10^11m and a solar temperature of 5778, I’m getting a blackbody equilibrium temp of 184K. Interestingly, NASA estimates the same blackbody temp:
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/venusfact.html

Given Venus’s albedo, even though it’s closer to the sun, it should be far cooler than Earth!

I didn’t expect that. Crap on a cracker!

Venus’s temperature (730K, far above the 184K calculated for a blackbody) has nothing to do with the adiabatic compression. It’s in equilibrium, and so the much greater temperature is due to the “greenhouse” gases in Venus’ atmosphere.

When Venus started out, it very likely was like Earth and very likely did have plate tectonics. On Earth, when surface gets subducted, the volatiles are recycled as gases to the atmosphere by volcanoes that surround the subduction zones.

In silicate melts, water acts as a diluent and lowers the viscosity. Water also acts to increase the density of a silicate melt. I think this increase in density is what drove all of the water on Venus into the mantle. As sediments are subducted, silicate melt with the highest density will move down. If that silicate melt has water in it, the water is moved to the mantle and lost.

On Earth, there was life early on, so the subducted sediments also contained free carbon. At high temperatures, water and carbon form methane, which is a gas and which will phase separate from silicate melts and move up as bubbles. I think it is the presence of carbon in Earth sediments which prevented the loss of hydrogen to the mantle.

The conventional thinking is that Earth’s atmosphere became oxic due to the loss of hydrogen into space. I think that is not correct. I suspect that as photosynthesis generated O2, it also generated carbon and also formed the large banded iron formations of Fe2O3 as soluble ferrous iron was oxidized to insoluble ferric iron. I suspect that when the carbon and Fe2O3 were subducted, the Fe2O3 was reduced to liquid metallic iron. Liquid metallic iron would separate out as a separate phase from silicate melts, and being much denser would migrate down. The gas generated (carbon monoxide) would migrate up, recycling the C and O to the atmosphere while the reducing equivalents of that carbon were carried down by the liquid iron.

If this idea is correct, then a possible way to terraform Venus would be to take surface iron oxides, make metallic iron, releasing O2, dissolve carbon in that metallic iron and inject that metallic iron at hot spots like this volcano. As the liquid iron moved down, and encountered water containing silicates, methane would form and move the hydrogen up to the surface. Once there is enough water in the atmosphere, CO2 starts coming out as carbonates.

You would probably want to specifically start up plate tectonics by injecting water (or carbon containing iron) at specific places. Water in the magma would greatly reduce viscosity and facilitate convective flow.

“29th Contact, July 7, 1975″
Ever heard about post-dating?

11 april 2010 I can wrote on computer about crash in Smolensk, date it “8 april 2010″, publish it today and bask in glory of clairvoyancy. So only proof is date of publication.

But all of it is moot, because Venus was explored significantly earlier.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus#Exploration
“Mariner 2 mission… on December 14, 1962… passing 34,833 km above the surface of Venus. Its microwave and infrared radiometers revealed that while Venus’s cloud tops were cool, the surface was extremely hot—at least 425 °C”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observations_and_explorations_of_Venus#Flybys
“# In 1967, Venera 4 became the first probe to send data from within Venus’s atmosphere. At about the same time, Mariner 5 measured the strength of Venus’s magnetic field.
# In 1974, Mariner 10 swung by Venus on its way to Mercury and took ultraviolet photographs of the clouds, revealing the extraordinarily high wind speed in the Venusian atmosphere.”

Last but not least: some of things that you cited was NOT corroborated. For example point 117 (“But completely other forms (of life) do exist”? Yeah, riiight).

So, Michael Horn, you wrote entirely BS.

I’m very open to being completely wrong on that.

Not just atmospheric makeup, but also density. Venus’ atmosphere is ~100 times thicker than Earth’s.

We really need Piers Anthonys MacroScope.

Gary 7

The pressure at the surface of Venus is about 90 times that at the Earth’s surface. Venus has enormous winds that cause gas to rise and fall in altitude. As the gas changes height, the pressure changes, and the gas expands or is compressed. When a gas is compressed, its temperature increases. This creates a massive temperature difference between the top of the atmosphere and the surface.

Venus is closer to the sun, but reflects more light, so absorbs slightly less energy than the Earth. The visible surface is the top of the clouds, which approach radiative balance between the incoming solar radiation and the outgoing longwave radiation to space, are relatively cool. The temperature at an altitude where pressure is about 1 Earth atmosphere is actually remarkably Earth-like. But the clouds are about 50-80km above the surface, and compression warms the gas at about 8C/km of altitude (the ‘adiabatic lapse rate’) so the surface is about 400-640C hotter.

The references to a “runaway greenhouse effect” are actually to Venus’s ancient history. It is believed that several billion years ago Venus was like Earth, with a thin atmosphere and oceans on the surface. But somehow all the water disappeared, the carbon locked up in water-related carbonates was released again, and turned Venus into what we see now. This process is thought to be the “runaway greenhouse” – basically, the oceans boiled.

The present day temperature on Venus is easy to explain, and has relatively little to do with CO2 being a greenhouse gas. It’s simply that Venus has a much thicker atmosphere, and high level near-opaque clouds.

Gary 7