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Venus, Velikovsky & Miscellaneous Speculations

Ghostisfort

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
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It seems that even the new generation of scientists have been dumbed-down today regarding the workings of Venus atmosphere, the thermal gradient of Venus atmosphere being one of the best kept secrets in science.
As I recall, Carl Sagan's paper on the subject was classified for years.

As much of the above article depends on this suppressed information, it's difficult to take any of it seriously.
http://www.jamesphogan.com/bb/content/041498.shtml (No longer there)
The conventional response is to explain Venus's temperature as the result of a "runaway greenhouse effect." This falls down for a number of reasons:
" With surface pressure 90 times and mass 75 times Earth's, the atmosphere of Venus has thermal properties comparable to an ocean 3,000 feet deep. Penetration of solar energy is nowhere near sufficient to produce appreciable heating to any depth. Further, the high albedo (reflectance), means that only a minor portion of incident energy gets past the cloud tops to begin with. Heating at the base of the atmosphere due to solar input alone would be around 6 deg C above freezing.
" Carbon dioxide, the major constituent of the atmosphere, is incapable of producing the postulated runaway on its own. It would require an additional component to "close" the critical 25 % transparency window that permits reradiation back into space at thermal wavelengths. Water vapor, the primary candidate, is conspicuously absent. Methane is a possibility, but puts proponents in the position of confirming another of Velikovsky's predictions (an atmosphere would be rich in hydrocarbon gases derived from the atmosphere of Jupiter) that was ridiculed when first put forward. Even so, the problem remains that solar penetration is inadequate for any runaway to happen.
" Probably the most damning for the greenhouse theory is the data from all of the US and Russian probes showing that the thermal gradient of the atmosphere is from base to cloud tops, i.e. the heat source is at the bottom, not outside. In short, the claims that have been made publicly notwithstanding, the planet is not in thermal equilibrium. According to the probe data, the emitted surface infrared flux is 40 times more than enters as sunlight. About 2 percent of the heat at the surface can be attributed to solar input. Overall, Venus emits 15 percent more energy than it receives from the sun, implying a heat output 10,000 times greater than Earth's. Although Venus rotates 243 times more slowly than Earth (58-day dark period), nightside temperatures are slightly higher than on the day side--contradicting the notion that the sun is the heat source. Rigorous mathematical modeling by the thermodynamicist George R. Talbott showed that given an incandescent state 3,500 years ago as the recent-origin theory proposes, the cooling curve over that period yields a temperature today exactly as observed.
" A solar heating model predicts large-scale atmospheric circulation in a north-south direction, transporting heat from the equator to the poles, which should be highly pronounced in view of the planet's slow rotation. Probe data show no such circulation. On the contrary, the entire atmosphere is in a state of super east-west rotation 100 times faster than the surface speed (5 m.p.h equatorial) at all latitudes. (Note. This enormous super-rotation of the atmosphere is consistent with the idea of evolution from a giant comet-like body, whose tail wrapped around the planet gravitationally as Venus slowed into its present orbit, and is still dissipating angular momentum.)
Atmospheric Composition
Argon isotope ratios: Argon 36 is primordial. Proportion should be comparable to Earths' if Venus is of comparable age. In fact, it is 300-500 times higher. Argon 40 is a decay product of Potassium 40, and again should be represented comparably if ages are similar. In fact, it is 15 times lower than Earth's. Both differences indicate a younger age for Venus.
Carbon dioxide. For planet hot and rich in hydrocarbons, CO2 should have decomposed to CO & O2 in billions of years. But there is little CO and no O2--consistent with an age of a few thousand years only.
Water vapor is absent, although volcanic outgassing should have supplied plenty on an ancient planet. The conventional answer is to hypothesize that the water vapor was photodissociated by solar ultraviolet into oxygen which recombined with the rocks, and hydrogen which escaped. The "gardening" of surface rocks needed to absorb the amount of oxygen liberated over billions of years, however, is unrealistic, and no plausible mechanism has been proposed to induce it. Also, this theory ignores the fact that photodissociated oxygen could be expected to recombine into high-level ozone just as it does on Earth, blocking out the high-energy ultraviolet and terminating the process.
Sulfuric acid present in the cloud tops but not at the surface. Again, a short life expectancy due to ultraviolet dissociation would be expected, causing decomposition in about ten thousand years.
Motion
Retrograde rotation is not compatible with the conventional model of accretion of the Solar System from a rotating nebular disk.
Surface
Indications consistent with the proposition of a young terrestrial-type planet:
" No tectonic plates. 5/6 of Venus is continental crust, 1/6 is shallow basin. Implication is that processes of major continental fracturing, moving, and shaping have yet to occur.
" The surface is dominated by volcanism in the form of large-scale lava flows flowing up through a thin crust. Impact craters would have long ago been obliterated if relics from activity billions of years ago. Viscous creep rates of rock at the temperatures of Venus's surface are such that the two main uplifted regions--almost certainly volcanic in origin--should have disappeared if Venus is ancient. With 100,000 volcanic formations, collapsed rivers, rising chambers, Venus has been described as the biggest volcano in Solar System.
" Absence of erosion. The surface is scoured by superheated, dust-laden, highly corrosive winds, yet the rocks show relatively sharp, uneroded features--certainly compared to what would be expected after billions of years. Further, the atmosphere contains both hydrochloric and hydrofluoric acids, which would quickly be neutralized by contact with rocks. The combination of mechanical and chemical erosion should, over a protracted time, have created a thick soil, or regolith, but no such feature is found.
Those curious to read more might like to try Charles Ginenthal's book Carl Sagan and Immanuel Velikovsky (1995), which I also recommended previously (CATASTROPHISM, February 20, 1997). Ginenthal also produces a quarterly journal entitled The Velikovskian, dedicated to papers on these and related issues by a broad spectrum of writers. I can recommend the back issues for some fascinating reading.
Contact: Ivy Press, 65-35 108th Street, Forest Hills, New York 11375
 
Ghostisfort said:
It seems that even the new generation of scientists have been dumbed-down today regarding the workings of Venus atmosphere, the thermal gradient of Venus atmosphere being one of the best kept secrets in science.
As I recall, Carl Sagan's paper on the subject was classified for years.
Any references for that bizarre idea?

(And preferably better than this one:
http://www.jamesphogan.com/bb/content/041498.shtml (No longer there) :roll:
We have threads on Velikovsky, BTW.)
 
Well, (a) Venus is not an extra-solar planet, and (b) the article seems to be from a Velikovskian angle. You'd also have to explain how the Soviets were in on this 'conspiracy'. But maybe in a thread seperate from this one, so as not to go OT ;)
 
You are obviously not going to find any peer reviewed documents regarding the original analysis of early probe data as this stuff throws a spanner into global warming assumptions about greenhouse effects. All the original files that were on the Internet have been deleted.
What I do have is a photocopy of Sagan's declassified document "The Radiation Balance of Venus", on file and there is an identical copy here:
http://www.theblackvault.com/m/articles ... gan-Papers
I don't think I can post a PDF on FT.

Also some other interesting info here that throws light on scientific consensus during Sagan's reign:
THE YOUTHFUL ATMOSPHERE OF VENUS
by
Charles Ginenthal
http://saturniancosmology.org/files/venus/venair.txt

I know that Venus is not an extra-solar planet, but it is used in examples in the original article about extra-solar planets - the reason why I said the article is unreliable.
It would be interesting to know where you got your information that the Soviets were in on the conspiracy?
 
I first read Sagans ideas about Venus when I was 13 in 1973. It was in the Sunday Telegraph Magazine. Not classified but they would never have guessed that a leftie like my dad would have bought it.
 
Last edited:
Ghostisfort said:
You are obviously not going to find any peer reviewed documents regarding the original analysis of early probe data as this stuff throws a spanner into global warming assumptions about greenhouse effects. All the original files that were on the Internet have been deleted.
What I do have is a photocopy of Sagan's declassified document "The Radiation Balance of Venus", on file and there is an identical copy here:
http://www.theblackvault.com/m/articles ... gan-Papers
As usual, you muddy the waters of this once pure and lucid thread by dragging in irrelevent or off-the-wall speculation.

So Sagan wrote a scientific paper about Venus in 1960. So what? Back then the space age had barely got going - Sputnik was launched in 1957. Why would Sagan's paper have been 'classified', and by whom? Do you have evidence it was? As for Global Warming, that wasn't considered a fact back then either. Although the greenhouse effect was understood, it was just a fact, no big deal scientifically or politically.
 
Why would anyone wish to forge a paper by Sagan?
The waters were muddied long ago by those who decided to use science as education and then refused to consider up-dates to the text books.
By far, the most significant greenhouse gas is water. Venus is hot and dry.
Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927) was a Swedish scientist that was the first to claim in 1896 that fossil fuel combustion may eventually result in enhanced global warming. He proposed a relation between atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and temperature. He found that the average surface temperature of the earth is about 15 oC because of the infrared absorption capacity of water vapour and carbon dioxide.
http://www.lenntech.com/greenhouse-effe ... z0bmcUbIHt
"Probably the most damning for the (Venus) greenhouse theory is the data from all of the US and Russian probes showing that the thermal gradient of the atmosphere is from base to cloud tops, i.e. the heat source is at the bottom, not outside. In short, the claims that have been made publicly notwithstanding, the planet is not in thermal equilibrium. According to the probe data, the emitted surface infrared flux is 40 times more than enters as sunlight. About 2 percent of the heat at the surface can be attributed to solar input. Overall, Venus emits 15 percent more energy than it receives from the sun, implying a heat output 10,000 times greater than Earth's." http://www.jamesphogan.com/bb/content/041498.shtml

One interesting question the habitability of land planets raises is whether or not Venus, the hottest planet in the solar system, ever could have fostered life. Assuming that Venus once had oceans of liquid water, the researchers' calculations suggest "it is possible that Venus went through a period where it was a dry but habitable planet," Zahnle said.

Indeed, Venus could have persisted as a habitable land planet until as recently as roughly 1 billion years ago. Zahnle said that Venus back then would have been "very hot in the tropics, cooler and wetter at the poles. Sort of Earth-like, not a lot of carbon dioxide." http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-09-ali ... anets.html
Assuming an extra-solar planet can be based on Venus is naive in the extreme.
Assuming an extra-solar planet can be based on Venus is naive in the extreme. I have every right to question science and if others did so we would have a much better science.
 
Nobody seems to want to talk about Venus.

They just say `nasty place` and leave it at that.

(Mods can we have a separate Venus thread, please??)
 
Ghostisfort said:
It would be interesting to know where you got your information that the Soviets were in on the conspiracy?

Please re-read my post.
 
Jerry_B said:
Well, (a) Venus is not an extra-solar planet, and (b) the article seems to be from a Velikovskian angle. You'd also have to explain how the Soviets were in on this 'conspiracy'. But maybe in a thread seperate from this one, so as not to go OT ;)
(a) I've already mentioned the use of Venus as an example for an extra solar planet in the original article.
(b) I've also said that the kind of peer reviewed articles that you would prefer are as rare as hens teeth. As a poster above has remarked: "No one wants to talk about Venus".
Also, it's impossible to broach this subject without mentioning Velikovsky as the two went together from the 1950's to the 1970's and beyond with several books and countless magazine articles on the subject.

The only Russian connection, as I recall, is of support for Velikovsky's theories by a Russian scientist who theorised the ejection of smaller planets from the gas giants - planet fission. Otherwise, I don't think the Russians even knew that Velikovsky existed.
http://metaresearch.org/solar%20system/ ... system.asp
This should give some idea as to how prominent the ideas of Velikovsky were:
On the Recent Discoveries Concerning Jupiter and Venus
Letter from Prof. Valentine Bargmann and Lloyd Motz
http://www.velikovsky.info/On_the_Recen ... _and_Venus
 
WRT to my point about the Soviets, it was in relation as to so-called 'supressed' information. The Soviets would have to had been party to that 'supression' in order for the 'truth' about Venus to be controlled. However, this doesn't seem to be the case, unless somehow the US convinced them to make sure their probe information tallied with theirs.
 
The international relationships between scientists is a little strange from what I've read. Although the UK and Americans agree in most areas, the French seem to go their own way.
Russian science is something else: They stray into areas that no European scientist would dare to tread.
I don't think any control is necessary.

However:
Probably the most damning for the (Venus) greenhouse theory is the data from all of the US and Russian probes showing that the thermal gradient of the atmosphere is from base to cloud tops, i.e. the heat source is at the bottom, not outside. In short, the claims that have been made publicly notwithstanding, the planet is not in thermal equilibrium.
http://www.jamesphogan.com/bb/content/041498.shtml
All of the probes showed the same thing, that Velikovsky was right and the planet surface was hot.
This is what is suppressed and the reason no one wants to talk about Venus.
I don't know if the Russians suppress this because as far as I know, they don't talk about it either.

Having said that:
Russia plots return to Venus
Now, after a lull of almost three decades, Russia is making plans for a new mission to the "morning star" and has invited Western scientists to participate.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8294925.stm
 
Venus

The Venera (Cyrillic: ??????) series probes were developed by the Soviet Union between 1961 and 1984 to gather data from Venus, Venera being the Russian name for Venus. As with some of the Soviet Union's other planetary probes, the later versions were launched in pairs with a second vehicle being launched soon after the first of the pair.

Ten probes from the Venera series successfully landed on Venus and transmitted data from the surface, including the two Vega program and Venera-Halley probes. In addition, thirteen Venera probes successfully transmitted data from the atmosphere of Venus.

Among the other results, probes of the series became the first man-made devices to enter the atmosphere of another planet (Venera 4 on October 18, 1967), to make a soft landing on another planet (Venera 7 on December 15, 1970), to return images from the planetary surface (Venera 9 on June 8, 1975), and to perform high-resolution radar mapping studies of Venus (Venera 15 on June 2, 1983). So, the entire series could be considered highly successful. Unfortunately the surface conditions on Venus are extreme, which meant that the probes only survived on the surface for a duration of 23 minutes (initial probes) up to about two hours (final probes).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/sola ... ons/venera
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera

Russia plots return to Venus
Now, after a lull of almost three decades, Russia is making plans for a new mission to the "morning star" and has invited Western scientists to participate.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8294925.stm
 
Pietro_Mercurios said:
He's been burbling on about Venus and Velikovsky on the Extrasolar Planets thread too. If there is a new mission to Venus, there might be some 'New Science' to report - but for now, there's not. I suspect it's a ploy to rehash Velikovsky (who already has a thread) - which is not New science. (Indeed in the eyes of many it's not science at all, or at best it's bad science!)

We shall see...
 
rynner2 said:
Pietro_Mercurios said:
He's been burbling on about Venus and Velikovsky on the Extrasolar Planets thread too. If there is a new mission to Venus, there might be some 'New Science' to report - but for now, there's not. I suspect it's a ploy to rehash Velikovsky (who already has a thread) - which is not New science. (Indeed in the eyes of many it's not science at all, or at best it's bad science!)

We shall see...
Yes. I had been following things. I posted ? because, Ghostisfort's original post was simply a context-less quote.

I supposed that Ghostisfort originally posted on the Extrasolar Planets thread, because followers of Velikovsky's theory believe that Venus swung in to the Solar system from out there somewhere.

A certain amount of reorganisation may be necessary.

Please keep things respectable, we try to run a nice place here.

P_M
 
Pietro_Mercurios said:
I supposed that Ghostisfort originally posted on the Extrasolar Planets thread, because followers of Velikovsky's theory believe that Venus swung in to the Solar system from out there somewhere.
Not from that far out, actually. According to Velikovsky, Venus was ejected from the planet Jupiter and played a bit of planetary snooker before settling down into the most circular orbit of all the planets...

(Other Greek/Roman myths may apply.)
 
kamalktk said:
This is a working link that seems to contain identical text to Ghostisfort's post to the thread. It is also from the same website as Ghostisfort's link.
http://www.jamesphogan.com/bb/bulletin.php?id=82

Googling longish strings of text helps find working links.
Excellent work!
http://www.jamesphogan.com/bb/bulletin.php?id=82

...

* With surface pressure 90 times and mass 75 times Earth's, ...
Blimey! Saturn's mass is only about 95 time greater than the Earth's. According to that piece, Venus is a lot heavier than it looks.

:shock:
 
I did some Googleing and found that "planet fission", one of the original objections of the astrophysicists to Velikovsky's theories is quite respectable these days.
There are also modern theories by scientists that speculate about the movement of the giant planets from a position nearer to the Sun to their present position. This also was said to be impossible at the time of the controversy.

There is not one of the old guy's theories or predictions that has been successfully debunked, all of them in-line with New Science.

I think we can have some fun here and a challenge to those who think that Velikovsky has been successfully dismissed?

And yes, he did it all with an analysis of ancient mythology - interesting take on psychology. :)
 
Ghostisfort said:
I think we can have some fun here and a challenge to those who think that Velikovsky has been successfully dismissed?

And yes, he did it all with an analysis of ancient mythology - interesting take on psychology. :)
Yes, we know - there's already a thread on it!! :roll:
 
As I've already pointed out, it's impossible to discuss Venus without reference to Velikovsky.
However, a thread about Velikovsky covers a spectrum of subjects and this thread refers to Venus.
 
Do you have any links to 'planet fission'? An intriguing concept, but I doubt that it has anything to do with Venus.
 
I have split off the recent Venus discourse from Extra Solar Planets and added to this new Venus thread. I've renamed it, Venus: Planet of Mystery. And why not?

I'm going to have a rootle about and see what we've got on Velikovsky, as well.

P_M
 
Pietro_Mercurios said:
I have split off the recent Venus discourse from Extra Solar Planets and added to this new Venus thread. I've renamed it, Venus: Planet of Mystery. And why not?

I'm going to have a rootle about and see what we've got on Velikovsky, as well.

P_M

Yes, I like it. :)
 
eburacum said:
Do you have any links to 'planet fission'? An intriguing concept, but I doubt that it has anything to do with Venus.

The Original Solar System
Tom Van Flandern, Meta Research [Reprinted from Meta Research Bulletin, Vol. 6 p. 17 -- 97/06/15]
http://metaresearch.org/solar%20system/ ... system.asp
This was the one I was looking at yesterday, but the connection with Venus is that Velikovsky seems to hint but as far as I remember, never actually says, that Venus fissioned from Jupiter.

As I think I already mentioned in passing, there was a Russian scientist who theorised about this at the time (1950's/60's). I'm sure I had a file on it, but these things get lost. I had an attack on my puter about a year ago when all of my files were deleted.
 
Ah, Van Flandern. I wondered if it might be him. He's probably wrong about this, just as he is wrong about several other subjects, but thanks for the link.
 
So, Van Flandern is in a no-win situation.
When he deviates from the consensus he is wrong and when he agrees with the consensus he is also wrong?

"Moon Earth fission" search throws-up over a million hits and they all speak of fission as being the consensus opinion among academics.
 
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