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#1 2016-11-27 21:47:47

Tom Kalbfus
Banned
Registered: 2006-08-16
Posts: 4,401

Mesozoic Venus

This is a thought experiment. Venus was at one time thought to have surface conditions similar to the Mesozoic era on Earth, this Venus along with many other Venuses were later proven to be untrue, but what if we tried to terraform Venus in such a way that it resembles Earth in the Mesozoic Era. The time scale to fully terraform Venus is thought to be in the thousands of years. Humans might very well evolve into something else or more likely engineer themselves into something else by the time Venus is fully terraformed, so therefore Terraforming Venus will be something that is done for fun rather than out of some need for living space. So if we are to terraform Venus, why not terraform it into the place we thought it was back when we were speculating what was under those clouds in the 19th century? Would that be fun? Now who would we do this for? How about people who volunteer for cryonics preservation when they die? We can sell them on that fantasy that they will be recreated on a terraformed Venus that is inhabited by dinosaurs and there left to fend for themselves against those beasts with limited technology at hand. After all this may just be a fantasy anyway, so lets have fun with it!

Does this seem like a viable plan to you?

Last edited by Tom Kalbfus (2016-11-27 21:48:16)

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#2 2016-11-28 18:10:57

SpaceNut
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From: New Hampshire
Registered: 2004-07-22
Posts: 28,832

Re: Mesozoic Venus

The Mesozoic Era was not all that long ago in regards to the life of our solar system. In fact the Happenings During the Mesozoic Era was only 248-65 Million Years Ago With a Thick Mesozoic Atmosphere increases as one travels from the darkness of space downward to the planet’s surface.
With Solar Radiation Determining a Planet’s Temperature. but with Calculated Temperature Average or Range (Kelvin) 329 with the Actual Temperature Average or Range (Kelvin) 753 is giving quite the disperity of temperature. While we know that we can lower the temperature by complex methods we will need to find out why the temperatures are that much hgher than what we would expect as its not just atmoshperic retention.....

mesozoic_temperature.gif

Sure this is Earth but all planets should follow the curve but at the level being recieved instead.

We know that Earth has also been through Ice Ages

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#3 2016-11-28 23:08:12

Tom Kalbfus
Banned
Registered: 2006-08-16
Posts: 4,401

Re: Mesozoic Venus

We go back to those 20 kilometer towers.
thoth-tower-top.jpg
Remember the Thoth tower? Suppose we built a "Forest" of these towers, but this time I'm not going to propose a solid roof over Venus, instead we use these towers to inject humidity into the upper atmosphere, to form a perpetual continuous cloud layer, that reflects Sunlight back into space, much as the current cloud layer does now, but this at a lower equilibrium temperature on the surface. The towers are spaced at equal intervals across the surface.
stone-county-sky-morning-after-joplin-tornado-9-45-am-may-23-2011.jpg
You create an overcast sky with these towers, and by adjusting the amount of moisture you pump into the sky you can either have thin clouds or thick clouds. Sometimes the clouds will be thin enough to provide as much diffuse sunlight as the Earth receives in direct sunlight on a clear day. The cloud towers are there to ensure that there are no gaps in the clouds, at night, the towers can take a break and allow the stars to make an appearance.

As for dinosaurs, we start with robots, we build the robots to look like dinosaur, and we program them to behave the way we think dinosaurs behaved, we build an artificial digestive system and a reactor that breaths air. You know the story of the Bicentenial Man perhaps? it is a book that was written by Isaac Asimov about a robot that wanted to be human, and over time he kept on replacing his mechanical parts with biological parts until he was. We could perhaps do the same with these robot dinosaurs, we don't need to get any Dinosaur DNA from amber as in Jurassic Park, we simply need to figure out how to build cells that divide and grow into the organs we need to make a living organism, and build their DNA accordingly to accomplish reproduction of said organism, they need not be based on any terrestrial dinosaurs that ever existed, we don't even need to obtain ancient DNA, all it requires is an understanding of cellular biology of a sufficient degree so we can engineer our own organisms. We could by this means create the mythical planet Venus. Water clouds are a cood way to block sunlight, while letting enough through to supply plant's photosynthesis needs, and of course with all these clouds, there would be plenty of water, and no deserts, we would just have to take care to ensure that it does not always rain everywhere all the time.

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#4 2016-11-29 12:45:15

Terraformer
Member
From: Ceres
Registered: 2007-08-27
Posts: 3,816
Website

Re: Mesozoic Venus

Tom, the surface of Venus is pretty dim already. The clouds reflect the vast majority of sunlight straight back into space. You have to do much, much better than that in order to actually cool it down.


"I'm gonna die surrounded by the biggest idiots in the galaxy." - If this forum was a Mars Colony

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#5 2016-11-29 13:18:58

Tom Kalbfus
Banned
Registered: 2006-08-16
Posts: 4,401

Re: Mesozoic Venus

You could dim it more by thickening the cloud layer. Right now the system is in equilibrium, the amount of light absorbed by the ground and reradiated as heat and trapped by the atmosphere equals the amount of heat that escapes into space. If we reduce the amount of light absorbed by the ground, the amount of heat escaping into space will remain the same until the atmosphere cools to a new equilibrium point. If we make the surface pitch dark so almost no light gets absorbed by the ground and reradiated as heat, heat will continue to escaped into space and the atmosphere will continue to cool until the surface reaches the desired temperature. Past a certain point we'll get an ocean of liquid carbon-dioxide on the surface, and at that point the carbon-dioxide will rain out of the atmosphere, it will do this until the atmospheric pressure lowers to the point where the carbon-dioxide ocean boils. as the atmosphere cools, the ocean will stop boiling, the carbon-dioxide will continue to rain out of the atmosphere further dropping the atmospheric pressure. By cooling the atmosphere, we can separate out the carbon dioxide and reduce the percentage of that to that which we desire. The next part is tricky, we need plant life above the water clouds, we need photo synthesis above the cloud layers to convert carbon-dioxide into oxygen and hydrocarbons, we then separate out the carbon from the hydrocarbons and burn the hydrogen left over to make more water, and drop the carbon down to settle on the surface. We keep on making water out of the excess oxygen by importing hydrogen. The water clouds thicken the carbon-dioxide ocean thins and a layer of carbon deposits on the ground thickens. Probably a layer of water forms under the carbon-dioxide ocean as the later thins, Carbon will sink to the bottom of the water ocean.

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