From the University of British Columbia:
Compared to its celestial neighbors Venus and Mars, Earth is a pretty habitable place. So how did we get so lucky? A new study sheds light on the improbable evolutionary path that enabled Earth to sustain life.
The research, published this week in Nature Geoscience, suggests that Earth’s first crust, which was rich in radioactive heat-producing elements such as uranium and potassium, was torn from the planet and lost to space when asteroids bombarded the planet early in its history. This phenomenon, known as impact erosion, helps explain a landmark discovery made over a decade ago about the Earth’s composition.
Researchers with the University of British Columbia and University of California, Santa Barbara say that the early loss of these two elements ultimately determined the evolution of Earth’s plate tectonics, magnetic field and climate.
“The events that define the early formation and bulk composition of Earth govern, in part, the subsequent tectonic, magnetic and climatic histories of our planet, all of which have to work together to create the Earth in which we live,” said Mark Jellinek, a professor in the Department of Earth, Ocean & Atmospheric Sciences at UBC. “It’s these events that potentially differentiate Earth from other planets.”
On Earth, shifting tectonic plates cause regular overturning of Earth’s surface, which steadily cools the underlying mantle, maintains the planet’s strong magnetic field and stimulates volcanic activity. Erupting volcanoes release greenhouse gases from deep inside the planet and regular eruptions help to maintain the habitable climate that distinguishes Earth from all other rocky planets.
Venus is the most similar planet to Earth in terms of size, mass, density, gravity and composition. While Earth has had a stable and habitable climate over geological time, Venus is in a climate catastrophe with a thick carbon dioxide atmosphere and surface temperatures reaching about 470 C. In this study, Jellinek and Matt Jackson, an associate professor at the University of California, explain why the two planets could have evolved so differently.
“Earth could have easily ended up like present day Venus,” said Jellinek. “A key difference that can tip the balance, however, may be differing extents of impact erosion.”
With less impact erosion, Venus would cool episodically with catastrophic swings in the intensity of volcanic activity driving dramatic and billion-year-long swings in climate.
“We played out this impact erosion story forward in time and we were able to show that the effect of the conditions governing the initial composition of a planet can have profound consequences for its evolution. It’s a very special set of circumstances that make Earth.”
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What – no warning that we are on our way to become Venus II if we don’t park our cars right now? What incompetent communication office botched this press release?
Well the primary reason we live on “Earth” and not “Venus”, is because that’s what they named the place.
What idiot would call their home planet MW_OA 2/3_M 4392_3 as if it was just some entry in a star catalogue.
And in any case if we did happen to live on that planet I mentioned above, we would be a life form that could evolve compatibly with the conditions on that planet.
We are here, because if the conditions were considerably different like they are most other places; something else would be here instead of us.
g
+ rather a lot.
Auto
As Spike Milligan’s character in the Goons says “every ones got to be somewhere”.
James Bull
The Earth is roughly 93,000,000 miles from the sun, and Venus is roughly 67,200,000 miles. When the Earth drifts 25,000,000 miles closer to the sun, I’ll start to worry.
Does CO2 cause orbital decay?
/snark
Of course CO2 causes orbital decay. CO2 is the magic molecule. I am disturbed by you lack of faith.
Me too.
Terribly disturbed.
Somebody call Lew and Cook.
Let’s get this fixed, asap.
The biggest question is why Jupiter didn’t wander inward and eject the inner rocky planets out of the solar system, gobble them up, crush them like the asteroid belt, or put them into freezing cold highly elliptical orbits.
The answer to that likely has to do with Saturn Uranus Neptune gravitationally restraining the much larger Jovian planet.
I subcribe to the Rare Earth postulate, whereby all of a large assortment of unlikely events came together 4.5-4.0 Gya that made Earth a relatively stable platform for the evolution of highly complex biological machines. Whether their is any real intelligence here on Earth remains open to debate.
Yeah we can’t even get our spelling correct.
So what scientific evidence do you have that this large assortment of events isn’t the norm, so that similar life supportable planets are all over the place.
We currently have one single observation; we are here. You can’t do any sort of statistical analysis on a single observation, so you have no basis for claiming this is a rare circumstance.
By the way; just in case you misread me, I don’t think there is anything at all special about this place; but I also do believe it is the only such inhabited place in the entire universe; not that it matters a jot, if it isn’t. And no I also don’t believe that it didn’t just happen all by itself.
g
george, the observational evidence is all the other planetary systems found to date.
They all have Jupiter or larger planets very close to their sun.
Consistent spelling is indicative of a lack of imagination.
Pretty sure Jupiter (and the other gas giants) developed closer to the Sun, then have slowly drifted out to their current positions.
“And no I also don’t believe that it didn’t just happen all by itself.” – crystal clear, got it, thanks George.
And as for it not mattering a jot if Earth is or isn’t he only inhabited place in the entire universe? Seriously? In terms of science and humanity as a whole,what could possibly matter more than that? Other than reducing CO2 emissions of course…
I’m more and more in favour of the Rare Earth theory combined with the Great Filter (being behind us, thank goodness); it is incredibly unlikely for a planet to end up with conditions we have that allow it to be suitable for life, and it is incredibly unlikely for life to begin, and incredibly unlikely for life to make the jump from prokaryote to eukaryote, and the odds of all three things happening in the same place, well, that’s a once in a universe event. Even if there is multicellular life out there, somewhere, the odds of it being intelligent – tool making, communicating, space-faring intelligent, are virtually nil, and the odds of it being close enough to us for us to actually encounter them in any way are absolutely nil. We are alone.
I think life is inevitable, as it drifts among the planets and stars. But that is a purely speculative thought, based on the odds, and the age of the Earth relative to the age of the Universe, and considering the likelihood or spores some such surviving a trip on a space faring rock, as opposed to the odds of life arising spontaneously on a planetary surface in a relatively short span that it would have needed to have done.
It may be that more stable conditions exist in nebulae or some other non-gravitationally bound environment.
The existence of extremophiles here on Earth in everyplace we have looked, including inside of solid rock miles beneath the surface, along with the numerous observations that simple meteor impacts can and regularly do blast rocks from one planet into space which eventually land on other planets and moons, and the knowledge that other sorts of catastrophic events in long ago and far away star systems gave rise to the nucleogenesis which created the atoms in our bodies which subsequently disbursed, the re-agglomerated to be here when needed, makes me think that rocks with life spores of some sort could be free floating or imbedded in dust grains, or riding on larger rocks or in ice and making similar journeys. It need not be likely or quick to have plenty of chances and time to occur in a large galaxy over 14 billion years.
The large planetismal which impacted the Earth and led to the formation of the moon was highly influential on how the Earth turned out. It may well be the case that without this impact and all the unique changes it has brought about, both in chemical composition of the crust and atmosphere, and other more subtle ways, we would not be here.
As for the late heavy bombardment being responsible for changes on Earth which somehow did not affect our neighboring worlds, how is that logical? The bolides all hit one planet with a heavy bombardment, but missed the other ones nearby?
I doubt that is how it went down, although in the case of Mars, it was likely just random chance it survived, as the body which created the moon is thought to have been roughly Mars sized. If so, this would imply that multiple Mars sized bodies existed late in the formation process of the Solar System. Since this idea of the origin of the moon implies that they were in orbits with insufficient stability to prevent crossings of two such planet sized bodies, it may be the case that other bodies of similar size were ejected from the Solar System altogether.
Of course, any ideas I or anyone else has about speculative matters such as the origins of life, the universe, the solar system or, for that matter, complex multicellular life, or even consciousness itself, stands a high chance of being completely wrong.
Any ideas which wind up being a correct description, which were dreamed up using thin evidence, are correct only by random chance, IMO.
How many of the ideas that people had a few thousand years ago have stood the test of time? Sure, the Greeks speculated that there were atoms, but how many other ideas of the structure of matter came and went and held sway since then?
How likely was it that anyone could have guessed that fire was what it was, or than there were things all around us that we could not see but nonetheless held the power of life or death over us all?
The more things change, the more they stay the same, and people have always thought they had everything pretty much all figured out.
Of course most discovered planets around other stars are huge and close to their star. Those are the planets which are easiest to detect.
Well Mark W, I don’t believe I said there weren’t any other planets. Every star could have nine of them just like Sol does.
Yep we just discovered the other day that Sol has a ninth planet called Pluto. It’s not a rock; now that we’ve had a look at it.
g
PS The “Drake equation” that proves there’s an infinity of intelligent life containing planets out there; simply forgot to include the improbability of the likely (and necessary) sequence of chemical syntheses, (that so far we have NOT been able to duplicate), that had to happen in the correct order, in the correct environmental circumstances, to get to ANY life form on Earth, let alone any intelligent form. And to date, there has been no evidence, that ” intelligence ” conveys any greater likelihood of survival, than just being big and mean and ugly like the dinosaurs.
And no, that does not lead to any conclusion of ” intelligent design ” which to me is even more improbable, than it all just happening by itself.
IMO microbes are probably common in the universe, multicellular life less so and complex macroscopic organisms even less, requiring relatively stable environments for long ages. The central region of galaxies is however unlikely to be hospitable to living things.
Life may well have developed independently on earth or could have arrived here via meteorites, which in any case are loaded with organic chemical precursors of life, as indeed is the universe at large.
Advances in understanding the origin of life have recently been made, although science may never know for sure how it occurred with high certainty at every step. The overall picture is now pretty clear, however. Further development from the earliest archaea and bacteria is however better understood, ie, the evolution of eukaryotes and multicellular organisms.
I agree Paul. Proximity to the sun is the reason Venus is much hotter than Earth and why life evolved here.
Isn’t Venus hotter than Mercury, even though Mercury is closer to the sun than Venus?
Amazing how they studiously ignore that very very obvious difference.
Venus’ atmosphere is 92 bars of pressure (Earth Sea level = ~1 bar) at the surface and the overall composition is 96% CO2 and 3% Nitrogen. Mercury has an exospheric atmosphere at 10^-15 bars, which is 42% oxygen, 29% sodium, and 22% hydrogen.
It misleading to ask the question “Isn’t Venus hotter than Mercury, even though Mercury is closer to the sun than Venus?” because you are comparing a all-but barren rock to an atmospheric rocky world.
It’s also misleading to say that any one factor (CO2 or solar radiation) is the reason that Venus is so hot because pressure and density of the atmosphere are why Venus is so hot compared to other atmospheric rocky worlds. If our atmosphere was stripped of all CO2 and then densified to the extent that Venus’ is it would exhibit similar thermal properties. The precise temperature would also be far more dependent upon the incoming solar radiation in this state than our current temperature differences – Venus would still be hotter (it needs the spot light. What can I say?)
Let’s See, Mercury effectively has no atmosphere to insulate it. Could be something there to explain why Venus is hotter than Mercury.
Holding spectrum as seen from the sun constant , the temperature of a planet is inversely proportional to the square root of its distance from the sun :
http://cosy.com/Science/AGWpptSBplanetTemps.jpg
This is basic physics which should be part of every highschool physics curriculum .
We are about 3% warmer than a gray ( flat spectrum ) body in our orbit . Venus’s surface temperature is about 225% the gray body temperature in its orbit .
There is no material spectrum which will produce a solar heat gain within an order of magnitude of that given Venus’s ~ 0.9 albedo wrt to the solar spectrum .
It’s surface temperature must be due to internal heat held in by that very radiantly insulative atmosphere .
James Hansen’s howler that Venus is an example of a “runaway greenhouse” would have caused him to be ridiculed into obscurity rather make him a climate scare millionaire if “climate science” were the functioning branch of applied physics which it ought to be .
Bob Armstrong is correct, temperature on Venus is determined by internal heat and vulcanic activity.
What? The inverse square law is still a thing? I thought they abolished that a while ago.
Along with the rest of the science I learned at school.
An increase of a few one hundredths of one percent of a trace gas will boil the oceans, broil us all alive in our potato skins, and end human civilization within a few tens to hundreds of years, based on some almost surely trivial alteration of a few watts per square meter in energy balance. But being 1/3 closer to the sun and the inverse square relationship of energy input to the planet…
Krikey!
If one looks at the ionization constants, and the effect of the solar wind in the absence of a magnetic field, and somewhat lower gravity, and other such factors…one may see that lighter elements are far more likely to be scrubbed clean out of the atmosphere on Venus. Goodbye hydrogen, so goodbye water, and the moderating influence of it.
But really, that thirty million miles makes a huge difference, as perhaps does not having an oversized moon.
How many reasons do we need?
Bob Armstrong says:
Bob, I don’t think that’s right — if it were, the IR emission from Venus would be greater than the absorbed input. I think the observed IR emission of Venus equals the calculated net solar input (solar exposure minus albedo reflection).
Can you provide any references ? Those are essential observations .
Given Venus’s half-year long night , and the assertion that it’s pre-dawn surface temperature is nearly the same as its evening temperature , I continue to be skeptical of any cause other than geothermal heating .
Unfortunately , as with many of us , to paraphrase SpiderMan , with no funding , comes no time .
Funny! …maybe as the mass of the sun decays over time, the solar wind and orbital velocity of the earth will gradually cause the earth to migrate further from the sun. In that scenario, earth would need a thicker atmosphere to slow heat loss. … and a sign that says “ice not welcome here” 🙂
I don’t see the point of the research other than it’s a pay day.
Sadly, as the mass of the sun decays over time, it will also expand in size. I think (although I have no empirical evidence to back it up, thus it remains speculation) that the suns expansion will more than overcome any orbital drift of the earth, eventually leaving us closer to the sun’s surface than we are today. Not a scenario that a thicker atmosphere will help I’m afraid. But, baring successful immortality research, none of us (nor the next million generations or so) have to worry about it. 🙂
I presume they knew every component to put into their puter model (preuming how they “played out” their story) with nothing assumed, presumed, or guest?
Alan, you presume too much. My guess is that 80% of the variables in their model were pure guesses.
There’s a 90% chance you’re correct.
There is one other key difference between Earth and Venus. On Venus there is pure science to conduct and on Earth there are political science wars and purges against fact checkers.
Yes, and one can see these science wars e.g. by no longer mentioning some very basic facts like in this quote from above:
“On Earth, shifting tectonic plates cause regular overturning of Earth’s surface, which steadily cools the underlying mantle, maintains the planet’s strong magnetic field and stimulates volcanic activity. Erupting volcanoes release greenhouse gases from deep inside the planet and regular eruptions help to maintain the habitable climate that distinguishes Earth from all other rocky planets.”
Well, and what very basic fact is missing here? Volcanoes on Earth don’t only maintain the habitable climate by releasing “greenhause gases” (primarily CO2) but maintain – first and foremost – Life itself!
Without volcanic degassing our atmosphere would lose all of its CO2 because of limestone sedimentation and other similar biological/geological processes after some 1.5 Million years. And with no CO2 in the atmosphere there would be no more photosynthesis and consequently no more Life on Earth! Never forget:
CO2 is the GAS OF LIFE !!!
You are not going to have water on and in the crust of Venus-sized planet at Venus distance from the Sun, when the rotation rate has the length of day being 116 Earth days long. The Sun is up for 2700 hours straight. Joules accumulate at the surface for 2000 hours straight. At the rate Earth’s surface accumulates joules during the day, Venus’ surface gets to 400C in the daytime. All water is baked out in the very first day.
No water in the crust, no plate tectonics, thick atmosphere, crust melts out every few 100 million years with no plate tectonics, elements capable of being released as a gas are then released, even thicker atmosphere. Energy is shared across the darkside with such a thick atmosphere. Hot Venus.
I agree with Bill. No water, no plate tectonics.
Barring some other substance that can provide viscosity in that environment, i.e. hydrocarbons on Titan.
I reckon the Moon has more to do with plate tektonics than the oceans. The crust being heaved up and down twice a day must have a hellavan impact on crustal cohesion.
R
Question – ! Okay, you know how the moon’s orbit has slowed over the eons (moon slowly farther from earth) due to tidal drag. Has the earth also moved farther from the sun? Would this explain the faint young sun paradox? Have all the planets slowly moved farther out over the millions of years? Any astronomers out there?
Technically, the tidal effects of the Moon on the Earth accelerates the Moon, thus increasing the distance between the two. Additionally the spinning of the Earth decelerates to insure an energy balance.
..
http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEcat5/secular.html
Thank you Joel for that bit of insight. I am embarrassed I did not see it sooner. It is so obvious now.
I read somewhere that Earth-Moon would eventually become tidally locked like Pluto-Charon, but apparently that would take far longer than the life of the Sun. Anyway, what would happen to Earth’s climate if a day were just a few hours longer? Talk about “extreme weather!”
It might be a good idea to mount giant rocket motors around the equator to ensure rotational velocity does not decline beyond some “tipping point.”
verdeviewer July 22, 2015 at 10:54 am
This is incorrect. The tides subtract energy from the earth’s rotation and add half that to the moon’s orbital energy. This slows the rotation of the earth and pushes the moon further away and slows it down. (The NASA page that calls this an “acceleration” is incompetent science writing, if we assume it isn’t just incompetent science.) However, getting back to verdeviewer’s point, the earth can push the moon all the way to infinity without the earth’s rotation slowing enough to get tidally locked to the moon. When this (never will) happen, the earth’s day would be about 55 hours long.
BTW, the other half of the energy lost by the earth is a net loss due to frictional heating. The human energy usage in the 1970s was twice that lost by tidal friction, and would be many times more now. So tidal energy is most definitely NOT “renewable”.
Early in Earth’s history, the length of a day was only about 4 to 5 hours. The rate of rotation has slowed dramatically such that it is now about 24 hours.
As the moon retreats, the length of a day will gradually increase.
The rate of rotation of a planetary body has a major impact on its conditions.
Since the Moon’s orbital velocity around the Earth slows down as it moves into a higher orbit, what is this acceleration of the moon about.
Stan Vinson
…
Before you move an object into a higher orbit, you have to accelerate it. This acceleration increase the kinetic energy of the satellite which then coverts this new kinetic energy into potential energy by moving to a higher orbit. After the acceleration it’s orbital radius increases, and it’s velocity decreases to keep the sum of kinetic and potential energy constant.
This is one reason why an elliptical orbit with high eccentricity has the orbiting object moving faster at perigee and slower at apogee.
Ron House says: “(The NASA page that calls this an “acceleration” is incompetent science writing, if we assume it isn’t just incompetent science.)
…
The NASA page is correct in calling it an acceleration.
Any time you apply a force to a mass you are “accelerating” it (Remember F=MA ? )
…
For example if you put a weight at the end of a rope, and swing it round and round to show how centripetal force works, the weight is at constant velocity, but undergoing constant acceleration to follow a curved path.
The sun has heated up over time because of the buildup of impurities (elements other than hydrogen) in the Sun, requiring higher temperatures to maintain fusion.
Wut. Obviously the Sun doesn’t create higher temperatures to get the fusion it has an ego-driven desire for. And given the stock notion you’ll see tossed around everywhere, the Sun’s heat is a consequence of fusion, not the other way around. So I’m completely baffled as to what you’re attempting to convey here.
The fusion was ignited in the core by the heat of gravitational contraction. One fusion ignited, it pushed back against the contraction, and a steady-ish state was reached, with the gravitational contraction forces balanced by the fusion heating/expansion forces.
This state will exist until the sun burns through the hydrogen in it’s core, and it’s mass will determine where in lies on the main sequence, how long it will reside there, and where, on the Hertzsprung -Russel diagram, it will go next. Our star will pass into it’s red giant phase when the hydrogen it the core is used up, and the hydrostatic equilibrium it maintained for about 8-10 billion years is disrupted. The stability of a star on the main sequence, and at a mass of the sun, is considerable. And how much energy it radiates is not a function of temperature alone, and surface brightness is not the same is core temperature in any case. The sun could be cooler, but larger, and thus deposit more energy to the Earth. The core will not get significantly hotter until the lack of hydrogen causes core contraction and helium burning commences. We will not last long when that show begins.
(On a “personal favorite” object of interest note: Just be glad we do not live a lot closer to Eta Carina, and hope that it does not produce a gamma ray burst. Wolf-Rayet stars may do, but it is uncertain in this case. It seems we are not in line with the axis of Eta Carina, but if we were, and if it did produce a gamma ray burst…even at 2700 light years, it would flash fry everyone and everything on the half of earth facing it, and could be the equivalent of a Hiroshima sized bomb on every square mile of the Earth.)
I think the sun is actually powered by gravity, which sucks. So long as you have enough mass of Hydrogen (any species), you will eventually get fusion reactions; which will stave of the gravity suction for a while.
We don’t have near enough hydrogen on earth to build a gravity suction reactor.
And the coulomb force blows instead of sucks, and that is inherently unstable.
g
I think that means nyet on earthly controlled (continuous) fusion.
“Have all the planets slowly moved farther out over the millions of years?”
According to the Nice Model, the orbits of the giant planets may have changed substantially since their formation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nice_model
John, the Earth has moved further from the sun over the 4.5 billion years because the sun is continually losing mass both through conversion to energy and through the solar wind. However, the effect is small, not enough to explain the young sun paradox, although every little bit helps.
Tidal effects from the sun also move the Earth away from the sun.
The tidal effect slowing the Earth’s rotation is converted by conservation of angular momentum to increasing distance between Earth and Sun. I don’t know the exact distance- the earth/moon system is separating at 1 and a half inches per day, but Lunar tides are twice as powerful as solar tides..
However I don’t know if adding this effect to the others you mention is especially significant. I’d love to see the numbers.
More modelling BS? Yep. The real world isnt 1s and 0s in silicon chips…
So the late early bombardment (or was it the early late bombardment?) kneaded our mantle, massaging it into tectonic activity. Extraordinary speculations need extraordinary evidence. Of course, there is none, but fun to think about nonetheless.
Neat idea… but wouldn’t uranium (and any other heavy radionuclides) sink to the middle of a molten earth?
Yeah, the potassium would float, but only potassium 40 has a reasonably long half life, and unless we detected huge outgassing of argon from the Moon or certain asteroids, I’d say that we still have most of our potassium 40.
Indeed, that’s where most of the earth’s uranium inventory is located. Radioactive decay is what’s kept the earth’s core liquid for the past 4.5 billion years.
Ah, see now, this is part of the problem of modern science that is rife throughout things like Climastrology. We have estimated the age of the universe on the basis of various things, none of which are testable as such. And from that we’ve stated what the temperature of the Earth should be, which it isn’t. From which we estimate the amount of radioactive product that must be in the inaccessible and untestable Deep Earth (Hansen call your office.) From which we then state that since the Earth contains an estimate of whatever quantity of radioactive whatevers, therefore the age of the universe is… Each of the estimates is used to correct each of the other estimates such that they all hang together consistently. But calling it an ‘estimate’ is a little optimistic. As we certainly aren’t validating any of these things.
The consequences of which are statements such as: The Moon has no molten core, it’s too old. And then, surprise, it in fact does. Not much of one mind, but there you have it.
Lets do ourselves and the integrity of Science a favor. It’s not a ‘fact’ unless you can, and multiple people have, demonstrated it with experiments. Not estimates, experiments. And let’s ensure that a chain of provenance is always kept for all things. If P is clobbered together out of some idea of Q, then we cannot turn around and correct Q on the basis of P. As that’s just correcting Q on the basis of itself.
This question was debated starting in the 19th century. Stored radiation of heat would long since have produced a much smaller core with a much thicker crust. Radioactive decay explained how the earth’s core retained its high temperature and much larger volume that would otherwise be the case. And this statement:
“We have estimated the age of the universe on the basis of various things, none of which are testable as such”
is simply incorrecdt. Of course they’re testable. And they have been tested by observation. The problem is that the different observations conflict.
cgh:
This only follows if we already know the age of the universe, or some minimum bound on it’s youth.
Yes, I’m perfectly well aware that there’s a fondness about for calling an ‘observation’ a ‘test.’ But that hardly makes it so and why I said ‘testable as such.’ Consider one of the key notions around sorting out cranks from science. It is common for cranks to let you observe their over unity energy machine, but not test it. You may look, but you may not touch. You may observe, but you may not test.
Different observations can hardly conflict with one another. They simply are. However, any one or more observations can conflict with a given theory. If there were no errors in the observation or its interpretation, then the only error is the theory itself. Until you sort this out, the rest of your education in the Scientific Method will need to wait.
Well why would the Uranium sink to the bottom ?? After all, the gravity at the center of the earth is zero, not some huge number that attracts heavy stuff. The deeper you go, the lower that gravity gets. So nothing is crushing anything, at the earth’s center.
g
“Well why would the Uranium sink to the bottom ?? After all, the gravity at the center of the earth is zero, not some huge number that attracts heavy stuff. The deeper you go, the lower that gravity gets. So nothing is crushing anything, at the earth’s center.”
This is just wrong! This is like saying that a submarine at neutral buoyancy can go as deep as it wants in the ocean and not have to worry about being crushed. There may be no net gravitational force at the center of the earth, but you still have the weight of 3,500 miles of rock pressing down on you from all sides even tough you yourself are floating weightless.
george e. smith said “Well why would the Uranium sink to the bottom ?? After all, the gravity at the center of the earth is zero” .
But the gradient is maximal .
Time for a REAL SAVE THE PLANET! movement. Earth don’t need it; Venus does.
Could Ceres be put on a collision course with Venus at just the right trajectory to put some spin on her?
First we will need to drill the three big finger holes.
When the global warming scare first came to light, I believed it until some “scientist” said that if we did not stop burning fossil fuels Earth would end up like Venus because of the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. This did cause me some worry until i decided to check it for myself.
“The density of the air at the surface is 67 kg/m3, which is 6.5% that of liquid water on Earth. The pressure found on Venus’s surface is high enough that the carbon dioxide is technically no longer a gas, but a supercritical fluid.” Wikipedia,
I realised that if temperatures increased so much that CO2 was lost from the oceans and limestone broke down to CaO and CO2 (which only happens at 848 Celsius anyway!) there would be a problem, until I then thought that all this CO2 was in the atmosphere in the first place and that did not cause Armageddon!
The whole AGW “theory” (in my view it is only a hypothesis) must be wrong! If I am missing something here, I would be grateful, if someone could let me know
Venus is hotter than Earth due to more mass in the atmosphere.
The evidence is that after adjusting for distance from the sun the atmospheric temperature is similar to that of Earth at the same pressure.
Exactly so.
Show me the equations .
“The only respite from the heat on Venus is to be found around 50 km into the atmosphere. It is at that point that temperatures and atmospheric pressure are equal to that of Earth’s”
from here:
http://www.universetoday.com/14306/temperature-of-venus/
but they don’t appreciate the implications of that fact.
and although this article:
http://www.datasync.com/~rsf1/vel/1918vpt.htm
discusses the viability of viruses on Venus it does show some relevant charts.
Although I don’t agree with Harry Dale Huffman on many matters he is dead right on this:
http://theendofthemystery.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/venus-no-greenhouse-effect.html
Stephen , I know that it is claimed that at some height in the Venusian atmosphere the observations apparently match Earth . But I want to understand it . And for me that requires being able to compute it — which for me means to express the relationships succinctly in an APL ( at this point , my own 4th.CoSy ) .
Thus , to me , it remains just an interesting observation until I see and understand the equations and can derive it quantitatively to observational accuracy .
The classical quantitative relationships I assert have been and can be experimentally demonstrated and should be in any highschool physics curriculum .
I also disagree with Harry on the absorption / convection aspect but that does not detract from the calculation he presents.
Bob,
Stephen and Harry are just confusing themselves. The mean temperature at the 1 bar level in the Venusian atmosphere is ~339K. On Earth, the equivalent temperature (at the surface, at 1 bar) is 288K.
http://www.datasync.com/~rsf1/vel/1918-4a.gif
http://www.datasync.com/~rsf1/vel/1918-3b.gif
Yes, Venus is closer to the Sun, but it still absorbs a lot less solar energy as heat than what Earth does: 163 W/m2 vs. 239 W/m2. What Stephen and Harry leaves out is simply global albedo – Venus: 0.75, Earth: 0.3.
So Venus is hotter than the Earth by 51 degrees at the same atmospheric pressure level, even though it receives only 68.2% of its heat from the Sun. Go figure!
Kristian,
The albedo difference and the insolation difference are both dealt with by convective adjustments within the atmospheres which is why the ratios noted by Harry (and the ‘old’ pre radiation theory science) still apply to those planets with atmospheres where we have been able to ascertain the vertical temperature profile.
http://www.public.asu.edu/~hhuang38/mae578_lecture_06.pdf
“Radiative equilibrium
profile could be unstable;
convection restores it
to stability (or neutrality)”
Kristian , Thanks for the data ; Hockey has supplied critical equations . The temperature curve I would believe is the one that turns back towards the 328k equilibrium temperature of a gray ball ( flat spectrum ) in Venus’s orbit . That’s simply the temperature related by the StefanBoltzmann equation to the total energy impinging on a point in the orbit . Any difference from that from that as one descends in the atmosphere then is attributable to the absorption=emission spectrum of that atmosphere .
And the minimum of the curve would indicate that Venus is substantially more absorptive=emissive in the IR than its extreme albedo with respect to the solar spectrum .
However , the 184.5 or whatever NASA misleadingly labels Venus’s “black body” temperature is a useless inexcusably crude step-function approximation assuming Venus’s absorption=emission spectrum jumps to 1.0 at longer wavelengths . This is inexcusable when I am sure far more accurate measurements of Venus’s full spectrum are available . The fact that the atmosphere is apparently transparent at radar frequencies shows it’s not simply opaque black . At those frequencies , it is the absorptivity=emissivity of the surface which matters .
These emendations may seem small , but the total variation this statist useful hysteria is about is on the order of the 4th decimal place , a few 10s of a percent . There is no way you will ever understand such small phenomena if stuck on 2 digit crude ( and biased ) approximations when data are , or should be , available .
Stephen Wilde July 24, 2015 at 1:27 am
“The albedo difference and the insolation difference are both dealt with by convective adjustments within the atmospheres which is why the ratios noted by Harry (and the ‘old’ pre radiation theory science) still apply to those planets with atmospheres where we have been able to ascertain the vertical temperature profile.”
Er, no. Of course it isn’t “dealt with”. It is completely ignored. If it’s “dealt with”, that is, included, there is no fit, and hence Huffman’s great “discovery” is shown to be nothing more than an expression of the man’s profound confirmation bias.
What else is new? My new post:
“Convection Is Instability and Does Not Rule”
How do the computer models factor in the effect that the lack of a magnetic flux, which would shield Venus from the solar winds striping away the Hydrogen and Oxygen and other gases from the higher atmosphere? Why is the fact that Venus has no magnetic flux never addressed in the feeble AGW explanations justifying the effect that CO2 has on the Earths temperature based upon the Temperature on Venus?
Mustread: Bullock & Grinspoon, The recent evolution of climate on Venus, Icarus 150 (1) 19-37
http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~bullock/Homedocs/vclime.pdf
Well, that’s a massive house of cards.
Ancient astronomers and ancient oral histories from around the world — in areas and cultures that had zero interaction — all describe Venus as a stupendous comet.
Ironically, the best math teacher I had was very much into Velikovsky. I would have liked to have been in the teacher’s room when he ran into the best history teacher I ever had, and who had, shall we say, another opinion on Velikovsky.
well even a broken clock can be right twice a day. therefore it’s not out of the realm of possibility that velikovsky could be right once in his lifetime.
I think that our moon is the reason why Earth is unlike Venus. But that’s a long story involving:
http://www.imcce.fr/Equipes/ASD/preprints/prep.2002/venus1.2002.pdf
and a few more thoughts that the authors missed.
The “scientists” crafted a very nice creation story. What religion are they doing this for?
By the way, I can’t find anyplace where gravity and the mass of the earth’s atmosphere vs. the same on Venus are mentioned. Really? The weight of the atmosphere makes no difference?
“Erupting volcanoes release greenhouse gases from deep inside the planet and regular eruptions help to maintain the habitable climate”
Well, there goes any chance of them scoring a follow-on grant for further study.
I highly recommend the book Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe (2000), by Peter Ward, Donald E. Brownlee.
It’s thesis is that simple forms of life may be quite common in the universe, but the development of Complex Life, not necessarily intelligent life, is probably much rarer than we thought just a couple decades ago.
The first argument, that simple life is that we have found simple life forms is some incredibly hostile environments such as deep sea volcanic vents that depend upon chemosysthesis. We have found bacteria inside rocks such as shales. Extremophiles that live in hot springs. Such discoveries make the finding of single cellular life on other bodies in just our own solar system a real possibility worth scientific investigation.
But the study of astronomy, astrophysics, paleontology, geology, biology, also lead to the conclusion that the condition that allowed the development of trees, dry land on a waterly planet, and animal life require conditions very unlikely to develop.
Most of the galaxy is hostile to life. A planet needs to be in a stable orbit around a stable star, in the “habitable zone”. The planet needs to have plate tectonics. It needs to be sufficiently large to retain an atmosphere, yet not so large that it becomes a gas giant. A large moon helps the planet maintain a stable axis with mild seasons. A rapid day-night cycle helps. You need all this stable enough for evolution to do its job. Rare conditions indeed.
In an infinite universe, everything is not only possible, but likely.
Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy.
Think about it. The attraction between protons and electrons and all fundamental particles has to be just “right” for matter to exist. What are the chances of that happening? The multiverse concept is very likely true.
So, I would expect there to be many thousands of worlds with complex life in our galaxy. Not intelligent life as we understand it (human). Intelligence is highly over-rated and, as we have seen, soon leads to self-destruction through technology.
Or through politics.
Sir Fred Hoyle and The Beryllium Bottleneck.
” as we have seen, soon leads to self-destruction through technology”
Actually, we haven’t seen that.
100% otherwise you wouldnt be here to ask that question
With untold billions of suns in our galaxy, with billions of galaxies, my thoughts would be that Earth like planets abound.
That depends on what you mean by “Earth-like”.
Earth-like in Mass? certainly
Earth-like in Habitable zone? yes many.
Earth-like in a stable orbit? Well that rules out half the galaxy.
Closer to the core the density of the stars make it a sure thing that one will pass close enough to another to jiggle the harmonics of any once-stable planetary system. One close encounter every 100 million years and you get repeated mass extinction events. We have survived a couple of them — the end of the Permian was a close call and it *probably* wasn’t a close encounter with a stellar neighbor.
So Earth like in Mass AND in a Habitable zone FOR a billion years…. The odds are getting longer.
Mind you, none of the previous condition preclude simple life. As Michael Crichton wrote: “Life will find a way.” Who knows what lie beneath the ice of Europa? The color bands of Jupiter may owe some of their existence to the biological waste products of scores of genus of simple life creatures.
Complex life, on the other hand, takes time for evolution to do its work. It need a place without gamma-ray bursts, solar variability, and dozen other environmentally hazardous astrophysical influences to destroy the handiwork of evolution.
There is a well known calculation multiplying each of the mentioned requirements (or what we might suppose are requirements) and then calculating the number of systems that have earth-like planets.
The final number is large.
The question then, now, has become: If this is true, then where the heck is everybody?
Funny thing about questions…until one knows the answer, one really has no idea whether they are even good questions, much less what the answers will turn out to be.
Our assumptions may be wrong, or we may just be less important than we think…or, there is no such thing as a warp drive engine, and space and time are very big…VERY BIG.
That may be the only real answer we need.
What hope does an earthworm in London have of finding a mole cricket in Indonesia?
Maybe so. Doesn’t mean ANY of those billions have life. Life is as improbable, as the number of earthlike planets is huge. Zero times infinity can still be zero. (or anything else).
The biggest difference by far that is the main reason is Earth 1 atm, Venus 90 atm. Mentioned earlier at 1 atm on Venus the temperature is similar to Earth.
Asteroid bombardment, bombschmardment. The thing is we both got hit very early on by Mars-sized planetesimals but we took a glancing blow which actually spun us the right way and gave us a nice big fat moon, whereas Venus ended up spinning the wrong way. Hell on Venus followed from there.
Pointman
Interesting. Is Earth the only planet in the solar system that spins “the right way?”
It’s not the “handedness” but the speed of revolution. How many hours long was the day in the Mesozoic era and what was already the effect of it? What will eventually happen to our spin and why? Follow up question, what happens when you spin up an iron core?
Pointman
Now here’s where probability and statistics come in handy: what are the chances that a collision would stop Venus dead in its tracks? or just a tiny bit backwards? or with resonance with the earth’s orbit? It seems almost as Velilkovskian as claiming a serendipitously circular orbit. Isn’t it more likely that a Venusian ocean or atmosphere slowed it down and stopped it, with the help of a big solar tide? –AGF
Reading skills Mr Foster, we’re not talking orbit here but spin, but I rather think you’re doing the modern version of spin in wilfully misinterpreting my comments. Velikovsky, who a low blow. Cicero: “If you don’t have a good argument, attack the plaintiff”.
Pointman
What the hell do you think I’m talking about? Resonance with the earth’s orbit? 3:2? That’s rotation. Rotation! And don’t take it so personal–I know you’re just spouting the consensus. But it’s a statistically incompetent consensus. The tides have to be invoked even with the questionable collision hypothesis–it’s a matter of degree. Since the history of the Venusian atmosphere and possible ocean is unknown, the collision hypothesis is an unneeded complication, not capable in itself of solving the problem. Do you think Mercury also slowed down via collision? –AGF
Why would statistics tell you anything about something that may not have happened at all, let alone enough times to get a good statistical sample to analyze.
g
The article/link below is intended to support the theory of “Intelligent Design”.
Whether you believe in that theory or not, it’s mind boggling to think about the hundreds of factors, many that are extraordinarily rare, that had to be just right for us to be here, reading and posting on WUWT at this moment.
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/designss.html
What would be the equivalent odds of flipping a coin and getting consecutive heads for instance?
Something on the order of flipping 1,000 consecutive heads, which has odds of 1:2(1,000th power) or ~1:10(301th power)
The actual number/odds for the coin flipping to heads 1,000 times in a row is: 1:
10715086071862673209 484250490600018105614 0481170553360744375 038837035105112493 612249319837881569 585812759467291755 314682518714528569 231404359845775746 985748039345677748 242309854210746050 623711418779541821 530464749835819412 6739876755916554394 607706291457119647 768654216766042983165 2624386837205668069376
………….of course that probability could be much less or much greater since we don’t have enough information to accurately estimate the statistical odds for the occurrence of most factors………but you get the point.
The multiverse concept seems very attractive.
Not to me. What are the odds we would be in the right universe of the multiverse?
About the same as the random chance of us being here in the one single universe?
Inventing something that there is no proof of, no way to test for, and that solves nothing is a lazy man’s way out of wondering about things, IMO.
Why wonder about it if the answer one settles on, is the sophistry ad hoc explanations, or of deciding all things are equally possible, so everything is inevitable?
Why ??
Intelligent design is not a legitimate theory. It is an attempt to sneak creationism into schools through the pretend science back door, as found by Delaware courts.It is fully debunked as a misunderstanding and misapplication of evolutionary principles. Used the eye as the ID example in ebook The Arts of Truth.
Yes and no. We cannot state that Intelligent Design is not appropriate to Science, nor that it’s not being used by science. At present Monsanto intelligently designs organisms every day. Likewise, forensic genetics are used routinely in biowarfare programs to highlight whether or not a given strain of a pathogen was intelligently designed or not.
What we can state is that because we can show intelligent design, it does not follow that all organisms were designed through all time. But the same problem adheres to the current consensus theory of Evolution. For we can show random mutations currently. But that hardly means that we can show that all organisms were constructed by random mutations through all time.
The problem here is not the current experimental results and engineering practices. It is the origin myths themselves. But as both origin myths have the same argument in favor, and the same epistemic veracity, then we cannot call one an issue of religious creation myth, but not the other. Either neither is, and so both can and should be taught. Or both are, and so neither should be taught on the public dime in nations such as the USA.
So if the universe has expanded and then contracted 10715086071862673209 484250490600018105614 0481170553360744375 038837035105112493 612249319837881569 585812759467291755 314682518714528569 231404359845775746 985748039345677748 242309854210746050 623711418779541821 530464749835819412 6739876755916554394 607706291457119647 768654216766042983165 2624386837205668069376 times, it would only take one of those expansions to be right for intelligent life to evolve and contemplate the question. The next question is: which expansion are we in?
The one we’re in.
The current one. Which is the only one that maters, and the only one we know for sure is not a figment of someone’s imagination, The Matrix notwithstanding.
The United States has 600,000 doctors to deal with the problems of its Intelligently Designed humans. Some intelligence.
I find it interesting that Mars appears to have had it’s surface scarred and partially ripped away by plasma arcing. Was it once like Earth before a close encounter with a charged object?
http://www.plasmacosmology.net/scars.html
It seems as time goes by we find less and less similarities in the individual planetary “experiences” over the aeons while sharing a common heliosphere.
I choose to believe Mars had an earth like environment before the Martians fought a huge planetary war with weapons that make our nukes look like fireworks. ○¿●
Is it just me or do others find that running models and drawing conclusions about an uranium/potassium stripping impact event without any actual observations other than: ” the layer that should have been there isn’t” can’t be classified as “science” much more than a group of guys sitting on the sofa passing a bong and one saying to the others: “yea man what if elephants could fly” Wow man.
It’s not just you. But, hey, in brings in the paycheck.
+1
These articles about how Venus came to be what we see today are garbage. They first of all ignore the widespread, global reports by pagans that Venus arrived in human-historical times as a comet (the feminine attribute derives directly from the comet’s hair). But, far worse than that, there is NEVER ANY MENTION OF THE FACT THAT THE VENUS PIONEER DATA WAS CORRECTED TO REFLECT A GREENHOUSE WARMING HYPOTHESIS.
See original snapshots at https://plus.google.com/108466508041843226480/posts/hKf2QRETTAy.
The only people talking about this are the plasma cosmology folks, so please realize that there’s a price to pay for filtering out their own posts on this site.
Even Plato is clear that a human-historical catastrophe occurred …
From Plato’s Dialogues at https://books.google.com/books?id=6IJEAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA367&lpg=PA367
“Phaethon, the son of Helios, having yoked the steeds in his father’s chariot, because he was not able to drive them in the path of his father, burned up all that was upon the earth, and was himself destroyed by a thunderbolt. Now, this has the form of a myth, but really signifies a declination of the bodies moving around the earth and in the heavens, and a great conflagration of things upon the earth recurring at long intervals of time”
(Notice that Plato is unwittingly describing a debris field that would regularly return to the earth after an initial catastrophe — even though Plato has no idea what gravity or a debris field actually is …)
And, to make sure that everybody understands the meaning of the ancient myths, he further states:
“All of these stories, and ten thousand others which are still more wonderful, have a common origin; many of them have been lost in the lapse of ages, or exist only as fragments; but the origin of them is what no one has told”
I don’t know how Plato could be any clearer:
The myths all originated with a planetary-scale catastrophe.
You’re supposed to put “sarc:)” or something like that. But we know you can’t be serious. –AGF