Alternative Venusian Temperature Explanation

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Isn't that Gor? (earth's evil twin)

 

What? Al Gore is Earth's evil twin? I knew it!

Sorry, but I think this thread is lost.

 

Well, if it is lost, let me postulate another reason for Venus' high temperature:

God made it that way.
Good enough for me at this stage of my life. IMHO scientists should focus more on developing tech that will insure that Earth does not achieve such temperatures.

Yes, I know that studying other planets might help us to understand our own and help us to avoid a global warming disaster, but still, I'd rather they focus on gathering data from here and using it to make the world a better place for my little ones. Seriously.

 

How about an even simpler explanation: It's closer to the Sun.

 

Aldeth, the problem with that idea is that Venus is even hotter than Mercury's sunward side; by a good margin, too.

 

There's reasons for that too - like Venus actually has an atmosphere high in greenhouse gases that magnify and trap heat.

But given that the discussion that was just broached by the comment of "Earth's Evil Twin" (which if you saw the National Georgraphic Channel show was comparing Earth to Venus), I was assuming that LKD's comment was referring to the high temperature of Venus as compared to Earth.

 

The greenhouse theory is good, but I'm just offering an alternative that also explains some curious details about Venus' surface.

More than that, though, my problem with the runaway greenhouse theory is simple: it can't get infinitely hot. No matter how much greenhouse gasses there are in the atmosphere, there's only a limited amount of energy coming in and the energy going out is a function of temperature. The hotter the planet gets, the more energy goes out, even with a blanket of CO2 and sulfuric acid. Now I haven't done the math, so I won't say anyone's wrong, but it could easily be that the energy leaving Venus is more than the energy entering Venus (even as closer to the Sun as it is, that isn't that much).

If that's the case, the only possible explanation is that Venus is cooling from some sort of super-heating experience. Something like a major impact.

 

Venus is cooling from a major heating experience, as a I stated earlier, Venus has no plate tectonics, meaning that pressure builds up beneath the crust with little or no release until it gets to much and then 'bang' the entire surface of venus erupts and resurfaces, its been cooling for 500mil years since that last event, though scientists have found rock on the surface which they believe dates back to the time when venus had water, leaving them to believe that some areas have been uneffected by that event.

Being that venus has no magnetic field the only protection from the sun is its atmosphere, if earth didnt have its field it would look similar to venus, though cooler because it is further from the sun, venus heats like an aga stove, quick to heat, slow to cool.

 

You'll have to back that one up. As far as I know, the only landers to actually sample anything were Venera 13&14, and I haven't found anything from them about finding rocks that show evidence of water.

Actually, considering it's current composition, Earth's atmospheric loss if our magnetisphere disappeared would probably look more like Mars than Venus. Venus's atmosphere is increadibly thick, and very dense (comparatively) even at the higher altitudes. This allows it to withstand the solar winds without substantial loss. Our's doesn't have that advantage.

 

While searching the internet for rocks from venus, I found your theory incidently:

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080228-venus-collision.html

National Geographic doesnt appear to have the program on their website, so Ive had to look for other information relating to it.

ok....
Venus Express in 2006 was the most comprehensive mission to reach Venus

From David H. Grinspoon

"Although 80 percent of Venus seems to have been resurfaced sometime in the last billion years, the other 15 percent or so was not. There are these highland areas, called tesserae, which are clearly the oldest areas on Venus. They're very rugged terrain, and have what looks like a long history of intense tectonic deformation.

When Venus had surface water, let's say you also had plate tectonics. Once you lose surface water, then subduction is no longer returning hydrated silicates to the mantle, as it does on Earth, so the mantle of Venus starts to dry out. You're no longer getting recharged with water through global tectonic cycling. It takes a while, because interior convective cycles typically have time scales of hundreds of millions of years. But after a few of those cycles, the mantle of Venus starts to become desiccated.

So as the mantle becomes desiccated, at some point that shuts off plate tectonics. Plate tectonics on Earth depends on a wet interior in several ways, largely because you have this zone of low viscosity at the base of the lithosphere on which the plates are sliding around. Water lubricates plate tectonics. You remove the hydrated minerals from the interior, and that's going to stop. Things block up and you can no longer have plate tectonics. So if the water on Venus really went away a couple of billion years ago or less, then the drying of the interior that results from that eventually shuts down plate tectonics. The last gasp of this shutting down may have been this global resurfacing that we see evidence for in the Magellan images. "

so for the tesserae rocks to show signs of tectonic deformation, suggests that they have been around to feel water.

In time, the volcanics would have to be dead first, scientists believe that when earth and venus lose their volcanicity and become "dead planets" they will become as like mars.

 

Wow, thanks for that Shoshino.