Venus Express’ Objectives include the study of the huge greenhouse effect on Venus (the strongest found in the Solar System); the hurricane force Winds that permanently encircle the planet; the mysterious ultraviolet absorption features at an altitude of about 80 km; the ay solar wind particles interact with the upper atmosphere: the surface and geological activity; and the similarities/differences with our own planet. Topics Long ago, from the fires of our Sun’s birth, twin planets emerged: Venus and Earth, Nature draped one world in the greens and blues of life, while enveloping the other in acid clouds, high heat, and volcanic flows.
Why did Venus take such a disastrous turn and Earth developed a vibrant biosphere? For as long as we have gazed upon the stars, they have offered few signs that somewhere out there are worlds as rich and diverse as our own (autobiographer’s. As. Gob/planets/profile. CFML? Recently, though, astronomers hue found ways to see into the bright lights of nearby stars. They’ve been discovering planets at a rapid clip using observatories like Anna’s Keeper space telescope. A Preach observatory known as Court and an array of ground-based instruments.
The count is approaching 500 and rising. These alien worlds run the gamut from great gas giants many times the size of our Jupiter to rocky, charred remnants that burned when their parent Star exploded. Some have Wild elliptical orbits swinging far out into space then diving into scorching stellar winds. Still others orbit so close to their parent stars that their surfaces are likely bathed in molten rock. Amid these hostile realms, a few bear tantalizing hints of water or ice ingredients needed to nurture life as we know it.
The race to find other Earths has raised anew the ancient question whether, out in the folds of our galaxy, planets like our own are abundant and life commonplace? Or whether Earth is a rare Garden of Eden in a barren universe? With so little direct evidence theses other worlds to go on, we have only the stories of planets within our own solar system to gauge the chances tot finding another Earth. Consider, for example, a world that has long had the look and feel of a life- bearing planet Except for the moon, there’s no brighter light in our night skies than the planet Venus known as both the morning and the evening star.
The ancient Romans named it for their goddess of beauty and love. In time, the master painters transformed this classical symbol into an erotic figure. It avgas a scientist, Galileo Galilee, who demystified planet Venus charting its phases as it moved around the sun, drawing it into the ranks of the other planets. With a similar size and weight, Venus became known as Earth’s sister planet. But how Earth-like is it? The Russian scientist Mikhail Lemons caught a tantalizing hint in 1761. As Venus passed in front of the Sun, he witnessed a hair thin luminescence on its edge.
Venus, he found, has an atmosphere. Later observations revealed a thick layer of clouds. Astronomers imagined they were made of water vapor, like those on Earth. Did they obscure stormy, wet conditions below? And did anyone, or anything, live there? The answer came aboard an unlikely messenger an asteroid that crashed into Earth, That is according to the classic sic-if adventure, The First Spaceship on Venus. A mysterious computer disk is found among the rubble, With anticipation rising on Earth, an international crew sets off to tint out who sent it and why.
Approaching Venus, the astronauts translate the contents of the disk, The news is not good, In a desperate attempt to prevent an interplanetary war and save their home planet the crew embarks on a dangerous mission. They descend to the planet’s dark surface to confront the adversaries, The Venusians surface was a subject of speculation until some of its secrets were revealed by planetary science in the 20th century. It was finally mapped in detail by Project Magellan in 1990-91. The ground shows evidence of extensive volcanism, and the sulfur in the atmosphere may indicate there have been some recent eruptions.
About 80% of the Venusians surface is covered by smooth, volcanic plains, consisting Of 70% plains With wrinkle ridges and 10% smooth or lobule plains. Two highland “continents” make up the rest of its surface area, one lying in the planet’s northern hemisphere and the other just south of the equator. The northern continent is called Sister Terra, after Sister, the Babylonian goddess of love, and is about the size of Australia. Maxwell Months, the highest mountain on Venus, lies on Sister Terra, Its peak is 11 km above the Venusians average surface elevation.
The southern continent is called Aphrodite Terra, after the Greek goddess of love, and is the larger of the two highland regions at roughly the size of South America. A network of fractures and faults covers much of this area. The absence of evidence of lava flow accompanying any of the visible caldera remains an enigma. The planet has few impact craters, demonstrating the surface is relatively young, approximately 300-600 million years old. In addition to the impact craters, mountains, and valleys commonly found on rocky planets, Venus has some unique surface features.
Among these are flat-topped volcanic features called “far”, which look somewhat like pancakes and range in size from 20 to 50 km across, and from 100 to 1,000 m high; radial, star-like fracture systems called “novae”; features with both radial and concentric fractures resembling spider webs, known as “arachnoids”; and “cornea”, circular rings of fractures sometimes surrounded by a depression. These features are volcanic in origin. Most Venusians surface features are named after historical and mythological women.
Exceptions are Maxwell Mantes, named after James Clerk Maxwell, and highland regions Alpha Region, Beta Region and Ovid Region. The former three features were named before the current system was adopted by the International Astronomical Union, the body that oversees planetary nomenclature. The longitudes of physical features on Venus are expressed relative to its prime meridian. The original prime meridian passed through the radar-bright spot at the center of the oval feature Eve, located south of Alpha Region.
After he Veneer missions were completed, the prime meridian was redefined to pass through the central peak in the crater Ordained. Much of the Venusians surface appears to have been shaped by volcanic activity. Venus has several times as many volcanoes as Earth, and it possesses 167 large volcanoes that are over 100 km across. The only volcanic complex of this size on Earth is the Big Island of Hawaii, This is not because Venus is more volcanically active than Earth, but because its crust is older.
Earth’s oceanic crust is continually recycled by subsection at the boundaries of tectonic plates, and as an average age of about 100 million years, whereas the Venusians surface is estimated to be 300-600 million years old. Several lines Of evidence point to ongoing volcanic activity on Venus. During the Soviet Veneer program, the Veneer 11 and Veneer 12 probes detected a constant stream Of lightning, and Veneer 12 recorded a powerful clap Of thunder soon after it landed. The European Space Agency’s Venus Express recorded abundant lightning in the high atmosphere.
Although rainfall drives thunderstorms on Earth, there is no rainfall on the surface of Venus (though sulfuric acid rain alls in the upper atmosphere, then evaporates around AS km above the surface). One possibility is that ash from a volcanic eruption was generating the lightning. Another piece of evidence comes from measurements of sulfur dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere, which dropped by a factor of 10 between 1978 and 1986. This may imply the levels had earlier been boosted by a large volcanic eruption. Almost a thousand impact craters on Venus are evenly distributed across its surface.
On other cratered bodies, such as Earth and the Moon, craters show a range of states of degradation. On the Moon, degradation is caused by subsequent impacts, whereas on Earth it is caused by wind and rain erosion. On Venus, about of the craters are in pristine condition, The number of craters, together with their well-preserved condition, indicates the planet underwent a global resurfacing event about 300?600 million years ago, followed by a decay in volcanism. Whereas Earth’s crust is in continuous motion, Venus is thought to be unable to sustain such a process.
Without plate tectonics to dissipate heat from its mantle, Venus instead undergoes a cyclical process in which mantle imperatives raise until they reach a critical level that weakens the crust, Then, over a period of about 100 million years, subsection occurs on an enormous scale, completely recycling the crust. In March 2014, the first direct evidence for ongoing volcanism was located, in the form of infrared “flashes” over the rift zone Gaining Chasms, near the shield volcano Mat Moons. These flashes, ranging from 40 to coca above the ambient, are believed to be either hot gases or lava released from volcanic eruptions.
Venusians craters range from 3 km to 280 km in diameter. No craters are smaller Han 3 km, because Of the effects Of the dense atmosphere on incoming Objects. Objects with less than a certain kinetic energy are slowed down so much by the atmosphere that they do not create an impact crater. Incoming projectiles less than 50 meters in diameter will fragment and burn up in the atmosphere before reaching the ground. Without seismic data or knowledge of its moment of inertia, little direct information is available about the internal structure and geochemistry of Venus.
The similarity in size and density between Venus and Earth suggests they share a similar internal structure: a core, mantle, and crust. Like that of Earth, the Venusians core is at least partially liquid because the two planets have been cooling at about the same rate. The slightly smaller size of Venus suggests pressures are significantly lower in its deep interior than Earth. The principal difference between the two planets is the lack of evidence for plate tectonics on Venus, possibly because its crust is too strong to subdued without water to make it less viscous.
This results in reduced heat loss from the planet, preventing it from cooling and providing a likely explanation for its lack of an internally enervated magnetic field. Instead, Venus may lose its internal heat in periodic major resurfacing events. Venus has an extremely dense atmosphere, which consists mainly of carbon dioxide and a small amount Of nitrogen. The atmospheric mass is 93 times that of Earth’s atmosphere, whereas the pressure at the planet’s surface is about 92 times that at Earth’s surface?a pressure equivalent to that at a depth of nearly 1 kilometer under Earth’s oceans. The density at the surface is 65 keg/m, 6. % that of water. The CO. Rich atmosphere, along with thick clouds of sulfur dioxide, narrates the strongest greenhouse effect in the Solar System, creating surface temperatures of at least 462 co (864 This makes the Venusians surface hotter than Mercury’s, which has a minimum surface temperature of -220 co (-3640 OF) and maximum surface temperature of 420 co (788 OF), even though Venus is nearly twice Mercury’s distance from the Sun and thus receives only AS% Of Mercury’s solar radiance. The surface of Venus is often described a shellfish. This temperature is higher than temperatures used to achieve sterilization.
Studies have suggested that billions of years ago, the Venusians atmosphere was such more like Earth’s than it is now, and that there may have been substantial quantities of liquid water on the surface, but, after a period of 600 million to several billion years, a runaway greenhouse effect was caused by the evaporation of that original water, which generated a critical level of greenhouse gases in its atmosphere. Although the surface conditions on the planet are no longer hospitable to any Earthlier life that may hue formed prior to this event, it is possible that life could exist in the lower and middle cloud layers of Venus.
Thermal inertia and the transfer Of heat by winds in the lower atmosphere mean hat the temperature of the Venusians surface does not vary significantly between the night and day sides, despite the planet’s extremely slow rotation. Winds at the surface are slow, moving at a few kilometers per hour, but because of the high density Of the atmosphere at the Venusians surface, they exert a significant amount of force against obstructions, and transport dust and small stones across the surface. This alone would make it difficult for a human to walk through, even if the heat, pressure and lack of oxygen were not a problem.
Above the dense CO layer are thick clouds consisting mainly of sulfur dioxide ND sulfuric acid droplets. These clouds reflect and scatter about of the sunlight that falls on them back into space, and prevent visual observation of the Venusians surface. The permanent cloud cover means that although Venus is closer than Earth to the Sun, the Venusians surface is not as well lit. Strong 300 km/h (190 MPH) winds at the cloud tops circle the planet about every four to five earth days. Venusians winds move at up to 6-0 times the speed of the planet’s rotation, whereas Earth’s fastest winds are only 10-20% rotation speed.
The surface of Venus is effectively isothermal; it retains a constant temperature tot only between day and night but between the equator and the poles. The planet’s minute axial tilt?less than 30, compared to 230 on Earth?also minimizes seasonal temperature variation. The only appreciable variation in temperature occurs with altitude. The highest point on Venus, Maxwell Months, is therefore the coolest point on the planet, With a temperature Of about COCA (71 OFF) and an atmospheric pressure of about 45 bar (44 ATM).
In 1935, the Magellan probe imaged a highly reflective substance at the tops Of the highest mountain peaks that bore a strong resemblance to terrestrial snow. This substance arguably formed from a similar process to snow, albeit at a far higher temperature. Too volatile to condense on the surface, it rose in gas form to cooler higher elevations, where it then fell as precipitation. The identity of this substance is not known with certainty, but speculation has ranged from elemental tellurium to lead sulfide (galena).
The clouds of Venus are capable of producing lightning much like the clouds on Earth, The existence of lightning had been controversial since the first suspected bursts were detected by the Soviet Veneer probes. In 2006-2007 Venus Express clearly detected whistler ode waves, the signatures tot lightning. Their intermittent appearance indicates a pattern associated with weather activity. The lightning rate is at least half of that on Earth. In 2007 the Venus Express probe discovered that a huge double atmospheric vortex exists at the southern pole.
Another discovery made by the Venus Express probe in 2011 is that an ozone layer exists high in the atmosphere of Venus. On January 29, 2013, SEAS scientists reported that the ionosphere of the planet Venus streams outwards in a manner similar to “the ion tail seen streaming from a comet under similar conditions. The Venusians orbit is slightly inclined relative to Earth’s orbit: thus, even the planet passes between Earth and the Sun, it usually does not cross the face Of the Sun. Transits of Venus occur when the planet’s inferior conjunction coincides With its presence in the plane Of Earth’s orbit.
Transits of Venus occur in cycles of 243 years with the current pattern of transits being pairs of transits separated by eight years, at intervals Of about 105. 5 years or 121. 5 years?a pattern first discovered in 1639 by English astronomer Jeremiah Horrors. The latest pair was June 8, 2004 and June 5-6, 2012. The transit could be watched live from many online outlets or observed locally with the right equipment and conditions. The preceding pair of transits occurred in December 1874 and December 1882; the following pair will occur in December 21 17 and December 2125.
Historically, transits of Venus were important, because they allowed astronomers to determine the size of the astronomical unit, and hence the size of the Solar System as shown by Horror in 1639. Captain Cook’s exploration of the east coast of Australia came after he had sailed to Tahiti in 1768 to observe a transit of Venus. Anna’s MESSENGER mission to Mercury performed two fly- bays venous in October 2006 and June 2007, to slow its trajectory for an eventual orbital insertion of Mercury in March 2011 It collected scientific data on Venus during both fly-bays.
The Venus Express probe was designed and built by the European Space Agency. Launched on g November 2005 by a Russian Soy-great rocket procured through Starter, it successfully assumed a polar orbit around Venus on 11 April The probe is undertaking a detailed study Of the Venusians atmosphere and clouds, including mapping of the planet’s plasma environment and surface heartsickness, particularly temperatures. One Of the first results from Venus Express is the discovery that a huge double atmospheric vortex exists at the southern pole.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (AJAX) devised a Venus orbiter, Skating (formerly “Planet-C”), which was launched on 20 May 2010, but the craft failed to enter orbit in December 2010. Hopes remain that the probe can successfully hibernate and make another insertion attempt in six years, Planned investigations included surface imaging with an infrared camera and experiments designed to confirm the presence Of lightning, as well as the termination tot the existence of current surface volcanism.
The European Space Agency (SEAS) hopes to launch a mission to Mercury in 2014, called Becoming, which will perform two fly-bays of Venus before it reaches Mercury orbit in 2020 Under its New Frontiers Program, NASA has proposed a Lander mission called the Venus In-Situ Explorer to land on Venus to study surface conditions and investigate the elemental and mineralogical features of the resoling, The probe would be equipped with a core sampler to drill into the surface and study pristine rock samples not weathered by the harsh surface notations A Venus atmospheric and surface probe mission, “Surface and Atmosphere Geochemical Explorer” (SAGE), avgas selected by NASA as a candidate mission study in the 2009 Nevi Frontiers selection, but the mission was not selected for flight. Reaction Throughout history, many people believe that extraterrestrials more technologically advanced than us have helped and taught civilizations important skills needed for the evolution of the human race.
There are no facts surrounding these claims no more than practically any subject in astronomy, but the fact is, the way humans excel in learning and the evolution of modern human civilization till remains a question to many scholars today. More and more evidence shows that ancient civilizations had an amazing understanding of math, science and astronomy that in some cases baffles doffs scholars. The question to most ancient alien theorists is weren’t these ancient civilizations considered to be out tot the stone age? These ancient civilizations built huge structures that have stood the test of time that even with today’s technology and machinery would be nearly impossible to rebuild. How did they do this? Why did they feel it was imperative for civilizations in the near and far future to see their work?
What if these structures were built with the help of aliens from a much more technologically advanced and older culture than humans? Although the mere thought that we are not alone in this universe seems unimaginable that is because our vole natural life we are brainwashed into thinking we are the only intelligible form of life. On the other hand doesn’t it seem kind of naive to believe that us humans are the only and most advanced form of life in this universe, as we know we have only explored less than 10% of the oceans and that’s on our planet earth, let alone exploring space. Numerous ultras from different times have made giant structures that have puzzled many architects and engineers.
A giant Structure in question is the great pyramid Of Gaza, which still to this day remain one the wonders of the world, the Gaza pyramid is lined up precisely with the magnetic North Pole, how in the world could the Egyptians possibly have built their pyramid facing the exact magnetic North Pole, the invention of a compass was discovered years after. Another question of the many still not answered is the coincidence that the other pyramids built in sync with the Gaza pyramid exactly align with the position of the tars in Orion belt, which is led to believe did the Egyptians really have a vast knowledge of astronomy. Reaction Long ago,astronomers major objective is the global examination was the atmosphere of Venus. How was the atmosphere of Venus being different from the Earth? Lets find out the results as we are going to read this study. The fires of our sun’s birth, twin planets emerged: Venus and Earth.
Nature draped one world in the greens and blues of life, while enveloping the other in acids clouds, high heat and volcanic flows Except for the moon, there is no brighter light in our night skies than the planet Venus known as both the morning and the evening star, Ancient Romans also named it for their goodness of beauty and love. Galileo Galilee,a scientist who demystified planet Venus charting phases as it moved around the sun drawing it into the ranks of the other planets. With a similar size and weight and named Venus as the Earth’s sister planet. As the observation goes the similarity in size and density between Venus and Earth suggests they share similar internal structure: A core, mantle, and crust.
