Venus: the 360 Earth day, Solar day

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-01-16 19:44:46

If we could alter Venus' rotation in the process of terraforming, would it be better to speed up the rotation or slow it down?
We can't do much about Venus' actual orbital period, but with much less energy we could slow down Venus' rotation so that it takes 360 Earth days from sunrise to sunrise, creating seasons as shown
Local Time : Season
6 am-12 pm : Spring
12 pm - 6 pm: Summer
6 pm - 12 am : Autumn
12 am to 6 am: Winter

What do you think?
Migrating animals instead of traveling north and south would instead head east, if one travels east at the right speed one could stay in perpetual summer and gather fruits and nuts just as they ripen, each degree of longitude would have its own day in the 360 day season cycle. Or do you think Venus should have a 24-hour day and a short Venusian year? What do you think?

SpaceNut · 2015-01-16 20:43:51

http://www.universetoday.com/22554/size-of-venus/

Venus has a diameter that is about 95% of Earth’s. It is 12,100 km across. The Venusian surface area is around 90% of our own at 4.6×108 km2. The planet has a volume of 9.38×1011 km3. That puts it a little over 85% of Earth’s volume. One final way to measure the size of Venus is to consider its mass. It has a mass of 4.868 x 1024 kg., just over 81% of Earth’s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus

Equatorial rotation velocity 6.52 km/h (1.81 m/s) or 4.05 Miles/hour just a slight jog and slowing as we have seen just in a half century of measurement...

Void · 2015-01-17 09:03:03

I have this to add. I will focus on your primary topic, but may add things that do not significantly interfere with your primary topic.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/01/ … -spinning/

In the end, the authors find at least five equilibria (two not entirely stable) that could potentially keep a planet rotating. As a result, they conclude "Earth-like planets with a 1 bar atmosphere are expected to have a non-synchronous rotation if they are in the habitable zone of stars more massive than ~0.5 to 0.7 [times the mass of the Sun]." The precise details will vary based on where they orbit, but it's probably no longer safe to assume that any planet close enough in to its host star will be tidally locked.

So, how to manipulate that?

L1, L4, L5, and I suppose L2, could be locations where light can be selectively reflected back onto Venus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point

L1, L4, L5, and I suppose L2, could be locations where light can be selectively reflected back onto Venus.

Lets say that L4 or L5 were used to heat either the leading or lagging side of the planet. That heated atmosphere would then be displaced to the night side of the planet more or less, and cause a induced atmospheric spin which would drag eventually on the surface of Venus, slightly altering its spin rate. Also L4 or L5 could be focused on one pole more than the other, in hopes of altering the spin axis of Venus.

As a side effect, this might puff up the atmosphere of Venus, and increase tail activity, making it more possible to collect tail materials at L2. If L1, L2, L4, L5 have artificial habitats, then tail materials could be exported to them, and to other locations in the solar system.

In this plan, it is till possible to have a high temperature robot community on the surface and floating in the atmosphere. It would also be possible to entertain the colonization of the atmosphere by humans, until Venus was more greatly altered.

So, I have complied with your apparent starting subject.

Last edited by Void (2015-01-17 09:20:44)

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-01-17 10:05:30

If hit Venus with comets against its rotation, perhaps we can slow it down to a 360 day rotation period, that would be better for plants I think. Would you want to live on a planet where the Sun took 180 days to go from sunrise to sunset and then endure 180 days of darkness?

Void · 2015-01-17 10:35:57

I don't think it will matter what I wanted. I don't believe that I will be remembered in any way by then, Not even supposed.

I do think this: If you add water to Venus it will get hotter. It is thought that it might have reached 10,000 degrees, when it's oceans evaporated, and before most of the Hydrogen left.

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-01-17 12:07:00

Can't have life without water though. Naturally we have to take care of the excess sunlight. White clouds seem to reflect light though. If light isn't first absorbed by the ground, it doesn't get retained as heat. Venus has a short year though, and it doesn't have seasons, I figure if we lengthen its day, that could be a substitute for seasons. Basically though you would get 6 months of winter effectively if you have no sunlight.

Void · 2015-01-17 18:44:49

Don't be so sure:
http://www.space.com/27777-alien-life-s … oxide.html
Besides Venus has water already at the base of it's clouds.
And I note that I feel it is a bit unkind for you to not respond to what I supplied you. But fine, I can take a bloody nose now and then

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-01-18 16:07:35

Void wrote:

I have this to add. I will focus on your primary topic, but may add things that do not significantly interfere with your primary topic.
http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/01/ … -spinning/
In the end, the authors find at least five equilibria (two not entirely stable) that could potentially keep a planet rotating. As a result, they conclude "Earth-like planets with a 1 bar atmosphere are expected to have a non-synchronous rotation if they are in the habitable zone of stars more massive than ~0.5 to 0.7 [times the mass of the Sun]." The precise details will vary based on where they orbit, but it's probably no longer safe to assume that any planet close enough in to its host star will be tidally locked.
So, how to manipulate that?
L1, L4, L5, and I suppose L2, could be locations where light can be selectively reflected back onto Venus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point
L1, L4, L5, and I suppose L2, could be locations where light can be selectively reflected back onto Venus.
Lets say that L4 or L5 were used to heat either the leading or lagging side of the planet. That heated atmosphere would then be displaced to the night side of the planet more or less, and cause a induced atmospheric spin which would drag eventually on the surface of Venus, slightly altering its spin rate. Also L4 or L5 could be focused on one pole more than the other, in hopes of altering the spin axis of Venus.
As a side effect, this might puff up the atmosphere of Venus, and increase tail activity, making it more possible to collect tail materials at L2. If L1, L2, L4, L5 have artificial habitats, then tail materials could be exported to them, and to other locations in the solar system.
In this plan, it is till possible to have a high temperature robot community on the surface and floating in the atmosphere. It would also be possible to entertain the colonization of the atmosphere by humans, until Venus was more greatly altered.
So, I have complied with your apparent starting subject.

Well L2 can be a place to reflect light back on Venus, L4 and L5 not so much. One has to keep in mind L4 and L5 are points of an equilateral triangle, one point is L4 or L5, one point is Venus, and the third point is the Sun, so L4 or L5 is just as far from Venus as the Sun!

Void · 2015-01-18 18:38:28

I am thinking that if it turns out there is no life on Venus,
Then decisions of the use of Venus could be done. I am not going to say that those deciding will not like your ideas. It is hard to sway. I am not going to worry about that. However, finding options is likely to be useful.

Yes L2 could perhaps be used to make the night side of Venus bubble up even more than it does, dumping ions into it's tail, and we hope humans having the ability to capture a significant portion of them for use.

In a different thread, I am pushing for Venus to be kept much like it is with the consideration of a shell of decks in the atmosphere. That could be a closed shell with different gasses above it and below it. Or there might be a ring, which just has more habitable conditions within it. For a time, none of these would conflict with your objective.

But I am going to comply on this thread of yours, and further try to help you improve your plan to Terraform Venus, since it is only fair to see if it could be done, to make it more Earth-Like.

I do actually think that eventually Venus_L4 and Venus_L5 could be inhabited, Perhaps Venus_L2 would export Venus_Tail materials to them. Would they be involved in the final capture of asteroids? You have both gravitational methods, and aerobraking methods, to alter their orbits.

I would think gravitational passes might work over time. That and some type of solar driven propulsion.

I did kind of throw cold water on putting more Hydrogen into the Venus atmosphere, but actually, if it is decided to radically alter Venus and strip most of it's atmosphere away, Hydrogen might be a good tool, and so would asteroid and comet impacts. That would make the atmosphere swell, and after the impacts, you could again maintain floating cities, only higher up. Venus_Tail would be amplified, and perhaps could be collected. If your cities are higher up, then you have a better situation for launching rockets to orbit.

However what might be sacrificed would be the ability to have high temperature robot mining on the surface.

Possibly for a time, the whole surface would be supercritical, and very, very hot compared to now. There might be a means to have floating robots go part way down just above the supercritical limit, and server as condensing nuclei, for dissolved minerals.

So, perhaps all of this would be a pathway to what you want for Venus.

But I have to tell you it would be very tempting to keep adding comets to Venus, where the atmosphere would be resupplied with gas, and the metals would fall down to the supercritical oven to be dissolved perhaps, and the swollen tail would keep pumping gasses out to be used for what-ever. Then you only need small deviations of the comet paths, to use many of the planets for gravitational pool. However, I recommend that before playing pool, there better be backup cultures on some other planets like Mars, Ceres, and Titan, just in case there were to be a goof-up.

So, perhaps there are choices.

Is it L1, between the Sun and Venus, I think. That might be used to alter the rotation and the axis. Since if you had a double mirror you could concentrate the light and put a focus on the location of your choosing. Also swelling up the atmosphere and tail.

Last edited by Void (2015-01-18 18:41:11)

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-01-20 20:59:01

Has anyone spotted a city on Venus? Looking for life in drops of sulfuric acid? It life isn't under that rock, what about the next one or the next one? When can we stop looking for life, and when can we start terraforming? After a while it gets ridiculous. One thing is for certain, there is no obvious life on Venus. Might there be an alien observer station that is cloaked from our probes with incredible advanced technology that we can't detect? Of course! Lets just say, on a World like Earth, the presence of life is obvious, on Venus, it is not so obvious, but we go to the tail end of the bell curve to come up with explanations as to how life might survive on Venus, the chances of such explanations being true, diminish with the increasing cleverness of such explanations. I'll bet you there are hundreds of science fiction writers who could come up with plausible but not likely explanations as to how life could exist on Venus, yet still not be seen by us. For one thing, as no one has actually ever set foot on Venus, how can we tell the aliens didn't jam the signals of the probes we sent and then duplicated their responses so we think Venus is a hell hole when it is actually a swampy planet full of dinosaurs? They could also infiltrate all our Earth bound instruments so they would not detect the swampy Venus and instead detect the Hell hole we know it to be? I'll call this the "Men in Black" explanation, is it possible? Sure! Is it likely? Nope!

Terraformer · 2015-01-21 08:56:42

I don't think anyone's actually attempted to look for life on Venus... if you don't look, you won't find.

Void · 2015-01-21 12:41:19

Well guys, I only mentioned life in passing. It is just correct to put in such a clause. If there were any such life, it's value to us would be enormous I think. At the same time I do believe that in the process of further accessing Venus, it is very unlikely that such life will go unnoticed for very long.

You did prompt me to investigate, and I don't think you will like this, but chances actually look somewhat good for life. I would have said chances were small before this.

http://www.science20.com/robert_invento … dna_insta_

POSSIBILITY OF EARTH LIFE ABLE TO SURVIVE IN THE VENUSIAN CLOUDS
At first sight it certainly seems unlikely that Earth life could survive in the concentrated sulfuric acid droplets in the clouds. These droplets have pH less than 0, similar to battery acid. This is the main reason the COSPAR team gave for their conclusion that no Earth life could survive in them.
However, in 1991 researchers found some Earth microbes able to survive sulfuric acid with pH 0 or lower, close to the Venus cloud top conditions. These researchers also wrote that it is possible that we might find organisms able to tolerate even lower pH levels.
Their most acidophilic (acid loving) microbe was Picrophyilus, which grows optimally in sulfuric acid at pH 0.7 and is capable of growth (not just survival but growth) down to pH -0.06 (1.2 M sulfuric acid). This is a microbe which you can find living naturally in highly concentrated sulfuric acid in the wild, in acid mine drainage and in solfataras (sulfur emitting fumeroles).
So perhaps some Earth micro-organisms could live there after all. Only 1% of the bacteria on Earth can be readily cultivated in culture media. There are various reasons why this might be the case. See Strategies for culture of ‘unculturable’ bacteria for an overview.

POSSIBILITIES OF INDIGENOUS LIFE IN THE VENUSIAN CLOUDS
The other way then there have been suggestions of possibilities for life in the Venus clouds, indigenous life. There are one or two interesting hints, observations that could be interpreted as evidence of indigenous life.
The most intriguing of these are, the presence of OCS which on Earth would be strong evidence for life. On Venus however it is just suggestive, not conclusive. There are processes that could create the observed levels of OCS without life, and detailed models of these processes are compatible with the observed levels.
The atmosphere is also not in equilibrium, as it has both H2S and SO2. This disequilibrium is something that life could exploit. The upper atmosphere of Venus also has been shown to contain particles that are microbe sized, and non spherical, which might be an indication of life in the clouds.
Particles in the Venus atmosphere stay suspended for months, rather than the days for Earth. Still, they will eventually fall to the lower layers; so that makes it an issue, how do the microbes stay aloft?
I haven't yet seen a worked out answer to this, so here are a couple of suggestions to explore.
First, perhaps microbes in one droplet, descending, could send out spores (explosively perhaps) that land in other droplets that ascend, and so continue the reproduction?
Another idea is based on the observation that some microbes form gas vacuoles on Earth more or less permanent, They are used by cyanobacteria to regulate buoyancy in water, not that far off the idea of using hydrogen vacuoles to regulate buoyancy in CO2, evolved over billions of years. Is it possible I wonder? The main difference is, that the gas vacuoles in cyanobacteria take up only a small part of their bodies (and are made up of smaller, rigid, gas vesicles). Apparently Anabaema has gas spaces occupying up to 9.8% of their volume (see page 124 of the paper "Gas vesicles"). But this is far below the levels needed for the Venus atmosphere.

So, I don't know.

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#1 2015-01-16 19:44:46

Venus: the 360 Earth day, Solar day

#2 2015-01-16 20:43:51

Re: Venus: the 360 Earth day, Solar day

#3 2015-01-17 09:03:03

Re: Venus: the 360 Earth day, Solar day

#4 2015-01-17 10:05:30

Re: Venus: the 360 Earth day, Solar day

#5 2015-01-17 10:35:57

Re: Venus: the 360 Earth day, Solar day

#6 2015-01-17 12:07:00

Re: Venus: the 360 Earth day, Solar day

#7 2015-01-17 18:44:49

Re: Venus: the 360 Earth day, Solar day

#8 2015-01-18 16:07:35

Re: Venus: the 360 Earth day, Solar day

#9 2015-01-18 18:38:28

Re: Venus: the 360 Earth day, Solar day

#10 2015-01-20 20:59:01

Re: Venus: the 360 Earth day, Solar day

#11 2015-01-21 08:56:42

Re: Venus: the 360 Earth day, Solar day

#12 2015-01-21 12:41:19

Re: Venus: the 360 Earth day, Solar day

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