Science News Review

Venus and Earth: Twins Separated at Birth?

Nov 29 at 5:05pm by Aileen

On November 29 the New York Times published an article about the European Space Agency’s Venus Express mission, highlighting findings from that mission that suggest Earth and Venus are “really twins which are just separated at birth.” Hmmm…

In New Findings Underscore an Earth-Venus Kinship, author Kenneth Chang cites scientists’ surprising findings that Venus experiences lightning, wide swings in temperature, and evidence that Venus once hosted oceans covering as much of the planet as Earth’s oceans do.

Eight different articles about findings from the mission were published in the 11-29 issue of the journal Nature. The scientists speculate that Venus’ oceans evaporated to form the water vapor canopy that shrouds the planet, trapping heat in the good old ‘greenhouse effect’ to cause surface temperatures approaching 900º F, yet the mission also found that the temperature varies as much as 70º F between day and night. Which must be quite a relief in a climate hot enough during the day to melt metals!

NASA’s Project Magellan extensively mapped the surface of Venus during the 1990s, finding far fewer surface craters than expected. According to some planetary scientists this indicates that Venus Is a New Planet, a whole lot younger than the ~4.5 billion years generally accepted as the age of the planets in our solar system.

Some readers may recall the infamous Velikovsky Affair, the concerted scientific persecution of Immanuel Velikovsky due to his 1950 theory that Venus was ejected from the planet Jupiter just about 3,500 years ago (possibly the result of cometary impact, something we observed just a few years ago). Velikovsky made a number of predictions about the high temperature (primarily internal heat), the circular orbit, and the atmosphere of Venus. He predicted a high concentration of petroleum hydrocarbons in gaseous form circulating in the atmosphere, but planetary scientists have not found the large molecules he predicted.

One of the most exciting findings from the Venus Express mission was the discovery of Earth-like Lightning on Venus, which now places Venus in the exclusive company of Earth, Jupiter and Saturn as the only planetary bodies in our solar system known to generate lightning. According to one NASA-sponsored scientist on the mission…

“Lightning on Venus — as well as on any other planet — is an important discovery because the electrical discharges drive the chemistry of an atmosphere by breaking molecules into fragments that can then join with other fragments in unexpected ways. The lightning on Venus is unique from that found on Earth, Jupiter and Saturn in that it is the only lightning known that is not associated with water clouds. Instead, on Venus, the lightning is associated with clouds of sulfuric acid.”

The sulfur clouds (sulfur dioxide and sulfuric acid) are above the CO₂ and water vapor canopy layer, higher in the stratosphere, which is where the strong lightning was observed. Which, if there are hydrocarbons in the Venusian stratosphere - as there are in Jupiter’s [Slavin, J.A., et al, Geophys. Res. Ltrs., 10, 973-976 (1983)] - may explain why large molecules aren’t found. They’ve been “cracked” by strong electrical discharges.

Despite being “twins separated at birth,” our sister-planet has remained shrouded in mystery and anomalies that just don’t seem to fit with the orderly, clockwork solar system astronomer Harlow Shapely defended against Velikovsky’s catastrophism to his dying day. Of course, we now know that things in our solar system are not nearly as calm and orderly as Shapely believed, and that Venusian puzzles are still crying out for explanation.

Science marches ever onward, knowledge increases. We live in interesting times!

Links:

New Findings Underscore an Earth-Venus Kinship

Earth-like Lightning on Venus

Venus Is a New Planet

Velikovsky Affair