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You are here: Home / Science & Technology / Just Like Dallas

Just Like Dallas

by Tim F|  November 29, 200711:05 am| 15 Comments

This post is in: Science & Technology

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From the department of ledes that inspire a double-take:

Other than the hellish heat, a crushing carbon dioxide atmosphere and corrosive clouds of sulfuric acid, Venus is a lot like Earth, scientists said yesterday.

In an astronomical sense they’re right. Water oceans, Earth-like weather and an atmosphere that could theoretically support life aren’t that common in the universe, at least as far as we know today. Venus has since heated up a notch and Mars has cooled down, but after dialing back time a few billion years that makes three different planets in our solar system that could have sheltered the evolution of life*, plus one moon if you count Europa. Space feels less lonely these days.

(*) …or I suppose where God could have blinked into existence cavemen who didn’t immediately freeze solid or catch fire.

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15Comments

  1. 1.

    Tom Shipley

    November 29, 2007 at 11:22 am

    “but dial back time a few billion years that makes three different planets in our solar system that could have sheltered the evolution of life”

    Mars being the other. I know this because I watched a show on “Alien Planets” last night that said Mars, Earth and Venus are the three planets in our solar systems “habitable range.” History Channel makes you smart.

  2. 2.

    Cindrella Ferret

    November 29, 2007 at 11:59 am

    (*) …or I suppose where God could have blinked into existence cavemen who didn’t immediately freeze solid or catch fire.

    Thank you for the objectivity. As an observant Pastafarian its nice to know you are open to “other” options.

    P.S. I don’t need the History Channel to make me this smart.

  3. 3.

    demimondian

    November 29, 2007 at 12:05 pm

    Oh, come now, Tim. God is omnipotent. I suspect that the *real* Venerians live in a Garden of Eden; it is just we fallen Malacandrians who perceive a hell there.

    I mean, really — prove me wrong.

  4. 4.

    yet another jeff

    November 29, 2007 at 12:13 pm

    Sounds more like Houston, actually.

  5. 5.

    Evinfuilt

    November 29, 2007 at 12:21 pm

    Sounds more like Houston, actually.

    Dear Lord, the pollution this morning on the way in looked like Venus. I start out closer to Galveston than Houston, but this thick blackish cloud was all the way down there. In my 8 years here, I’ve never seen a day so bad.

    I’m moving to Mars.

  6. 6.

    Tsulagi

    November 29, 2007 at 12:38 pm

    but dial back time a few billion years that makes three different planets in our solar system that could have sheltered the evolution of life

    You better be careful writing that kind of stuff, Tim. Giuliani/Huckabee get into the WH and have the buttons, given that level of heresy, your butt will be barcoded for Gitmo. Better have your two-fruit preference ready.

  7. 7.

    Seanly

    November 29, 2007 at 12:41 pm

    All three have life already! Haven’t you read C.S. Lewis’ “Space Trilogy”?

    for the record “That Hideous Strength” is one of this atheist’s favorite novels.

  8. 8.

    ThymeZone

    November 29, 2007 at 12:41 pm

    Yes, it is like Houston, I’ve been to both cities and the comparison is apt. But still it’s a great post title no matter how you slice it.

    Kudos.

  9. 9.

    Zifnab

    November 29, 2007 at 12:51 pm

    As a resident, I will concede that Houston is uninhabitable.

  10. 10.

    Horselover Fat

    November 29, 2007 at 1:15 pm

    Earth lost its original atmosphere when the proto-Moon collided with it. Then a new atmosphere formed from susequent volcanism, one reason Earth has so much less atmosphere than Venus.

    The Moon is a big factor making Earth extraordinary.

  11. 11.

    dbrown

    November 29, 2007 at 1:49 pm

    Horselover Fat Says,
    ‘one reason Earth has so much less atmosphere than Venus’
    Very interesting point, but is that really true? That is, do you happen to remember the ref. source for that?

  12. 12.

    dbrown

    November 29, 2007 at 1:59 pm

    Tim,
    you are not really correct about ‘earth’ like planets being rare from a ‘scientific point of view. In the only fully know system, three out of four planets inner rocky planets started off earth like and one became eath.
    Do not confuse what astronomers are saying about other planetary systems – they can not detect planets much smaller than giant Jupiter around other suns; there may be a lot of earth’s out here (in all the systems) and the best proof we have are 1) our system had three, still has one (for now); and 2) planets are VERY common around stars … so, it appears that with BIG space telescopes being developed over the next ten+ years, they will find a lot of earth like planets – or at least the odds say they will – want to bet on it?

  13. 13.

    Abe Froman

    November 29, 2007 at 4:21 pm

    As an observant Pastafarian its nice to know you are open to “other” options.

    i am so going to convert to being a pastafarian.

  14. 14.

    Paul C.

    November 29, 2007 at 6:34 pm

    Venus does have another difference – it seems to lack a system similar to earth’s plate tectonics, which on earth helps release internal heat in a smooth, measured way. Venus seems to explode with catastrophic volcanic activity every 500 million years or so. Even with a nicer atmoshphere, this would have made the evolution of complex life very difficult.

  15. 15.

    Bruce Moomaw

    November 29, 2007 at 6:56 pm

    For the record, it ain’t the Malacandrians (aka Martians) who were “fallen”; it was the Thulcandrians (aka us).

    As for Venus: there is recent speculation from the U. of Colorado’s David Grinspoon that ancient Venus may have retained its original oceans a lot longer than has been thought — maybe for as much as a couple of billion years rather than the several hundred million years previously thought to be the max — which means there’s even a chance that life evolved further on Venus than on Mars before the two became uninhabitable. However, there are still a few underground citadels on modern Mars where it’s conceivable that martian microbes might survive even into the present day, whereas the only possible redoubt for present-day Venusian life would be its cloud droplets — which, being concentrated sulfuric acid, are a lot less promising. Also — quite apart from the fact that it’s tremendously more difficult to explore Venus’ surface, even with robots — Mars’ geological conditions are far more favorable toward the preservation of such ancient microbial fossils than Venus’ geological conditions are (or Earth’s, for that matter).

    Also, the majority opinion now is that a giant impact like the one that created the Moon was NOT necessary to make Earth habitable. The real problem, for Venus, was that it started out about 90 deg F warmer than Earth, which was warm enough that all its surface liquid water could eventually — during its periods as atmospheric water vapor — drift high enough into the atmosphere to get above the ozone layer (unlike Earth’s water vapor) and be broken down by solar UV light. Then, with the planet thus finally stripped of liquid water, there was nothing to keep turning the CO2 emitted by Venus’ volcanoes back into carbonate minerals (as happens in Earth’s CO2 recycling process, which is controlled by a natural geological “carbonate thermostat” that keeps both the CO2 level and the temperature set at a level to allow the constant maintenance of liquid-water oceans). And so, once Venus’ volcanoes belched all the planet’s internal CO2 back into the air yet again, this time it stayed there — forming a stultifying blanket 100 times denser than Earth’s entire atmosphere, and generating enough greenhouse heat to turn the planet all the way up to 890 deg F.

    (By contrast, the problem with Mars is not that it’s too far from the Sun and too cold — it’s that it was too small to hold onto most of its original dense CO2 atmosphere. Had it been as clsoe to the Sun as Earth, it would have lost ALL its atmosphere and subsurface water ice and become as totally hostile as the Moon — whereas, if Mars, was as big as Earth, it would probably still have a working carbonate thermostat allowing it to remain about as warm as Earth through the automatic maintenance of a much higher level of CO2, equalling 2 or 3 times the total atmospheridc mass of Earth. Earth is actually close to the inner edge of the very wide zone in which an Earth-sized planet would be habitable because of the workings of the carbonate thermostat — so one of the very few things we can say with reasonable confidence about intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe is that most of it must live onn planets where the sunlight is dimmer than on Earth, and the atmospheric CO2 evel is a lot higher. Harry Turtledove even wrote an SF novel, “A World of Difference”, about a parallel history in which Mars is thus habitable — setting off a political propaganda frenzy between the US and the USSR when they discover Stone Age-level intelligent Martians on it in the 1970s…)

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