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I am wondering if there might be some unrecognised process at work in the protoplanetary nebula of a solar system which directs elements in different directions. It is the polar ion jets of a young star which begins the work of flattening the disk. the north pole and south pole of the star magentically balance each other at the plane of the ecliptic and this is where the dust and gas get compressed next. It is friction and static electricity in the cloud which begins the process of clumping and leads to larger objects which collide and clump some more until protoplanets form and the big game of billiards begins.

Let's think about static electricity in the gas cloud. Would this have the effect of "shepherding" elements into bands or tracks, just like on a vinyl LP record? Do planets attract the elements needed to stay in ionic balance internally?? I can see charged ions repelling one another along the gaps in the rings around the Sun, akin to the gaps we see in planetary rings today around Saturn or the other Jovians. This would result in an assortation of the ions (one for you, one for me, one for you, one for me) and neighbouring planets attracting oppositely charged element balances. One would pull in the sulphur and the chlorine and the fluorine and then the neighbour would pull in the sodium and the calcium and the silicon.

This is getting very interesting ....

Lime (CaOH) is used to scrub H2SO4 from industrial chimneys, resulting in the production of pure gypsum (CaSO4) and water, via:

H2SO4 + CaOH -> CaSO4 + H2O + H-
(so you actually need to double the recipe to complete the H ion)

But CaOH will precipitate out CaCO3 in the presence of CO2. And it decomposes at temps of 512°C.

CaSO4 is highly insoluble in water, so therefore dropping calcium on Venus should scrub the atmosphere of sulphur and release the water as well as lots of hydrogen. I think there are some varieites of sulphur-eating bacteria, yes?

But then read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfate
which talks about the contribution of aerosol sulphates to Earth's albedo and the masking of incoming sunlight (insolation), resulting in "global dimming": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming

Sulphates in the sky will promote cloud formation and discourage rain droplet formation, hence extending cloud longevity. Sulphates are suspected of promoting droughts on Earth and the decrease in sulphates since the collapse of Cold War industry in Eurasia may be responsible for the acceleration of global warming and megastorm systems.

How much of this applies to Venus? Global cloud cover and no rain.

What element could we transport to Venus to provoke a global endothermic reaction?

Robert;
I was just looking at this equation again. Sorry, but where does the "F5" go in the second part? It fails to surface on the other side of this equation.

So once again Venus has in abundance what Mars desperately needs ...

Very good research!

I vote for "hens and chickens" -- the plants, I mean, not the birds.

Anyone not know what these are? A small garden succulent plant which grows in a circular "nest" form. Wikipedia calls them Sempevivum or Jovibarba.

That's not what I wrote. I said "terrestrial rocky planets tend not to grow coeval moons". Coeval is the big word here -- meaning a moon which accretes out of the planet's disk, both independent of the planet and yet in the same "egg sack" as the planet -- from the same yolk. Not by capture or by collision, but by accretion -- that is coeval. Luna is not coeval with the Earth. Earth had already formed and its disk was fully condensed or collapsed into a sphere, likely a smaller sphere than Venus is. Then Earth got walloped by another protoplanet the size of Mars and the layer of light elements on its surface got peeled away with such force that it was lifted beyond the Roche Limit and was able to form a new body. The continents, like Africa (which is very elevated overall), represent the thickness of the crust before impact. If you calculate the cubic volume of Earth's oceans, I think it approximates the cubic volume of the Moon -- but I can't remember if that is to sea level, to the continental shelves or to the average elevation of the continents.

I agree that there is no reason Venus could not hold an impact formed moon, but such a moon is born out of very special circumstances in an impact. What I am saying is that there appears to be some conditions in the stellar disk which work against formation of planetary satellites in the inner system. It may be just "material deprivation" in the womb.

Venus actually has a thick crust. It is Earth with the thinnest crust in the solar system! The object which collided with protoEarth did not become the Moon. That was engulfed by Earth itself. Luna is our crust flung into orbit. The composition of Luna is basaltic lava rock -- 100% of Luna matches the "sea floor" rock of Earth, but not inner Earth. In other words, when Earth got hit, it was already a hot molten ball and it had already stratified into layers, with the iron and nickel and radioactive elements sinking into the core while the lighter elements floated in the crust. When the mother of the Moon hit Earth, it vapourised the crust and sent it all aloft. The continental shield lands (like the Canadian Shield -- the cratons I mean) are the survivors who stayed put. The Atlantic has opened and closed many times while the Pacific has existed always. Think about a world with all the high table lands (cratons) huddled together in a global ocean and you will know where that other proto-planet hit us. Also -- the only way many of the cratons fit together properly is if the curvature of the Earth is increased (ie: the planet is assumed to be smaller), which means the cratons pre-date the collision. But Venus kept all its crust, hence it is too thick and the heat cannot get out.

I would like to hear your theory -- please go ahead!

Are the cloud layers at different altitudes on Venus chemically different? I understand that the upper cloud deck has the water vapour (such as it is) and sulphuric acid (H2SO4). What is in the lower layer? What constitutes the obscuring component of the clouds at each level?

Maybe Venus is an example of planetary "arrested development" -- it looks how Earth might have looked soon after its birth, with all its heat trapped under heavy gas. It was carbon-lifeforms which got us out of that. Mars, on the other hand, is an example of "accelerated ageing", where it had a promising start but flew through that phase and was left with nothing to show for it.

~~Bryan

Yes, exactly. But the distinction I am trying to make is between two different ways of getting retrograde motion. One would be a collision which absorbs the prograde spin, slows it, stops it, reverses its direction to Rx, all while leaving the poles aligned properly. The other way is to knock the planet upside down (Uranus got knocked more than halfway there!) while leaving its prograde spin intact. A planet with prograde spin but its north pole pointing down will appear to be spinning Rx in comparison to the other planets.

So Venus has yet another vicious cycle working against us -- if the atmosphere cools enough to let heat escape, then the magnetosphere gets stronger and it retains its atmosphere more tightly against the solar wind, leading to reheating. It has reached equilibrium in this direction.

~~ Bryan

Antius -- you haven't been following the "thought history" on this one. We were debating in another thread whether it might be better to colonise Venus "as it is" and nevermind terraforming it. It goes like this: on Venus, Terran atmosphere is a "lifting gas". On Earth, only H2 and He give good lift. On Venus, the whole Terran air mixture of O2 and N2 will lift a bubble. Therefore, we can build floating habitats in the upper atmosphere of Venus, where the pressure is 1-3 bars, the temperature is about 50C, but the gravity is still +90% of Earth's. This is at 50km or higher. Within the bubbles, no pressure suits or breathing apparatus would be required. Bubble breaches would need speedy repair but yet would not be catastrophic failures. The colonies would be widely decentralised, rather than huddling everyone into a single point domed city. Some on here have spoken of Cloud City or Manhattans in the Sky, but I do not see anything so ambitious. What I see is a swarm of ovoid bubbles (eggs) with specialist purposes -- bubble farms, bubble trading posts, bubble carbon scrubbers, bubble factories, bubble spaceports, bubble laboratories, bubble fuel depots, ... mostly untethered and floating freely. There is greater security in numbers and in not concentrating resources.

Raw material resources and energy are nearly unlimited at Venus -- solar radiation, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen (3 bars worth). We never have to go down to the surface. Indeed -- there is no intention to do so. Venus has in abundance what we need as a species to terraform Mars and Ceres and beyond. It may happen that Venus gets terraformed eventually, over time and perhaps as a byproduct of human industrial activity. (Indeed, some may argue that we are veneraforming Earth via global warming!) But that will not be the purpose of going there. That will come about on initiative of the colonists themselves many centuries from now, once they feel they "own" Venus and want to improve it.

The gravity well may be deeper at Venus, but it is not so bad at 50km up and the depth of the well is inconsequential if the resources for overcoming it are in cheap abundance and close to hand. What is more important to consider is the "technology hill": what do we know we do not yet know but need to know in order to make it a go? What are the logistical barriers? And how much local "in situ" initiative, control, sustainable growth, self-sufficiency, industry can the colonists take upon themselves and how quickly? My suspicion is that a Mars colony has a century of dependency ahead of it in all things, including food, fuel, etc. If it costs billions to build one nuclear reactor on Earth, how shall we get 12 built on Mars? But Venus? Solar radiation and heat are cheap there. Self-sustainable food and energy can be achieved within a decade of arrival on Venus. Why? Because on Venus we can grow the infrastructure and the population base at the same rate. We can multiply bubbles a lot faster than caves or pits in rock.

The challenges to this scenario on Venus are the sulphur clouds in the upper atmosphere, the possibility of high wind shear and downdrafts, and the lack of water. Water can be extracted from the sulphuric acid clouds (H2SO4). Long-term effects of acid clouds on bubble materials and equipment are a serious concern -- what do we make these bubbles out of? Fullerene? And coping strategies for storm turbulence. But this is much less than what we face at Mars!

~~ Bryan