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And it could be again... I wish we would plan ahead and try a solar shield at L1. If we cooled the planet sufficiently, the CO2 would solidify and we could ge

• rtx 6y ago
  Or send some microbes which convert it into oxygen. You are right Mars doesn't have enough resources to support anything.
  • chii 6y ago
    that's an interesting proposition. If terraforming is really about engineering the right microbes to slowly (over several millenia even?) the atmosphere to habitable for humans, do we currently have the technology to actually accomplish it? Or is it still too advanced form of engineering?
    • ramraj07 6y ago
      With concerted effort I’m sure we can do something about it in a couple decades at best.
    • excalibur 6y ago
      We can't even terraform the Earth.
      • chii 6y ago
        we are terraforming the earth - see how much co2 is being pumped out!
        • ncmncm 6y ago
          It is being prepared for species better adapted to high temperatures than us.
        • k3liutZu 6y ago
          Since we're trying to move _away_ from "terra", should we call the current state maybe "marsforming"?
          • tsimionescu 6y ago
            Terraforming refers to 'turning another planet into a second terra'. Marsforming would be 'turning the planet into a second Mars', which wouldn't be particularly useful, since we can't live on Mars anyway.
            • flawi 6y ago
              The joke they're making is that since we are in the process of turning the Earth into a second Mars, we should be calling what we are doing now marsforming.
              • chii 6y ago
                i think you'll find that venus is the place with the runaway greenhouse effect, not mars!
              • tsimionescu 6y ago
                Whoosh... Sorry
          • thaumasiotes 6y ago
            The combining form would be marti-. (Compare "Martian".)
          • scatters 6y ago
            We're going towards Venus rather than Mars, though. So "veneraforming".
    • f6v 6y ago
      I think biology-wise it’s a question of money. We might not be able to engineer such microbes just right now, but we could if we had more resources dedicated to it.
  • MichaelMoser123 6y ago
    Also Venus is closer (minimum 38.2 million kilometer for Venus vs minimum distance of 55.7 million for Mars). However I don't know about the microbes, i fear that they might get killed at an average temperature of 737 K (464 C). https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/marsfact.html https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/marsfact.htm... https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/venusfact.html https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/venusfact.ht...
    • rajansaini 6y ago
      Hopefully someone can provide more info, but apparently there are some bacteria in geothermal vents near Baja California that seem to be able to handle venus-like conditions. No idea what the details are though
      • MichaelMoser123 6y ago
        Interesting, wikipedia says these microbes are called thermophiles, and that they can survive for up to 122 degrees celcius. That is still less than what they have on Venus, that is 464 degress. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermophile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermophile
    • hoseja 6y ago
      You cant really use distances for orbiting bodies like that. But it is true it's easier to get there.
  • tomerico 6y ago
    The problem is that Venus is missing important ingredients for life. Most notably is the lack of hydrogen. If you are interested in learning more on hypothetical approached of terraforming Venus, I suggest reading this Wiki article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Venus#Biological_approaches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Venus#Biologic...
    • Chris2048 6y ago
      But the outer planets have excesses of hydrogen, so round trips could help there? The upside is, of water aka H2O that we need, the 2 H atoms are the lighter component, specifically: 2H = 2 * 1.67 * 10(-24) grams 1O = 1 * 2.65 * 10(-23) grams So hydrogen is 11% of water, and oxygen is 88%; meaning every kg hydrogen can combine with 8kg oxygen to give 9L water. So all the Oxygen already being there (in CO2) is good.
      • HPsquared 6y ago
        If we were capable of planetary-scale transportation of materials, we wouldn't really need to live on planets anyway - it'd be a rather moot point.
        • Chris2048 6y ago
          Space stations would also be practical, yes, but I'm not sure how desirable they'd be (for long-term habitation). Also, we don't really know the long-term effects of low gravity, whereas earth and Venus have similar gravity wells.
        • XorNot 6y ago
          Transportation no, but with large enough reflective surfaces we could redirect comets to impact courses on Venus. Early stage terraforming need not be too fussed about collateral damage from multiple extinction-events (and the footage I presume would be spectacular).
• ncmncm 6y ago
  Venus is interesting in so many ways. It did not, so far as we can tell, get blasted by a Mars-sized proto-planet like Earth did, which made the Moon and entirely re-melted Earth, so probably got a good head start on breeding life. But maybe Earth's plate tectonics came from that event, too. AIUI, our Moon is also the reason we are not tidally -almost- locked to the sun, with a permanent equatorial 250 mph wind.
  • montychain 6y ago
    If Venus wasn't hit with something massive why the weird backwards and slow rotation that no other planet has? I feel like even if Venus had Earth-like atmosphere it'll still be hard for life to endure the 121-day long "day" and "night" where temperature would go from like 250°C to -250°C (numbers from the top of my head). Maybe only on poles there would be possible for water to stay in liquid form for long enough so that life could emerge.
    • ncmncm 6y ago
      Tidal locking is the normal condition for solid planets. Literally all large and all close-in moons, and most of the distant ones, are tidally locked to the parent planet. Pluto and Charon orbit a common center, locked. Mars and Ceres get a pass being far from the sun and close to Jupiter. Earth gets a pass because it has a massive moon keeping things stirred up. Venus, like Mercury, is not quite locked. As your rotation period gets close to your orbital period, tidal forces are much reduced. Venus could be oscillating around a resonant point, not yet settled into it. Temperature difference between day and night cannot be large with a 250 mph global wind keeping the atmosphere well-stirred. Under an ocean, life would be further protected from temperature extremes, with high wind performing evaporative cooling on the day side, and surface ice insulating on the night side.
• Chris2048 6y ago
  A solar shield would be a serious space structure. A mega-structure even. We (any/all nations of humanity) don't really have much of a space presence, let alone industry. If we did, I think we'd first build solar array, around earth, to help our energy shortage; I'm not sure we have a space shortage, so Venus doesn't really solve any current problems. Maybe we can find a light gas that could form a thin layer in the upper Venus atmosphere to change its reflective profile?
  • nkingsy 6y ago
    That would be a very long extension cord
    • Chris2048 6y ago
      Either stuff could be manufactured in space or, light could be beamed down to the planet; I wasn't thinking of a solar array of photo-voltaic panels, but rather an array of mirrors and something to condense it into a deathray / beam. The great thing about a solar array in space is it can be in sunlight 100% of the time, without needing to change orientation, and the shadow it casts needn't be on earth (i.e. nothing is deprived of sunlight). The difficulty is that since the earth spins, and we couldn't beam down to the same location, so maybe we'd need an array of geo-statically orbiting beam relay stations to switch between.
• galaxyLogic 6y ago
  > And it could be again... It could. On the other hand Earth could become the next Venus, if climate change runs out of control. No?
  • dimitrios1 6y ago
    No. For one, Earth is much further away. But most importantly, we have no clue if our current carbon levels are any sort of maxima in regards to what the planet can handle. We just have our own little recent industrialized history, and some charts about the past that are, at best, educated guesses. As George Carlin would say, "The planet will shake us off like a bad cold" Climate change is more important for our species survival much more so than the planet. The planet will be fine. The planet will recover after we're gone.
    • TaylorAlexander 6y ago
      I’m curious if you’ve read research on this? “The earth cannot become like Venus” seems like a strong positive statement that should come from research. I genuinely don’t think our innate intuition is enough here, even if it aids in comedic punchlines.
      • dimitrios1 6y ago
        This innate intuition comes from the familiarity of the research. Much of science in this realm is essentially conjecture, useful for securing funding dollars and keeping bright minds entertained. Comedians such as Carlin were highly intelligent, part of what made their genius. His jokes are typically funny because they contain much truth that otherwise few others would say.
    • erispoe 6y ago
      The planet might be ok after us, but still might not be able to birth another potentially space faring civilization, dooming earth life to extinction. Look at how: - no other earth based space faring civilization has evolved before us. - other intelligent species do not seem well equipped to do so, as it's hard to evolve tools without hands / prehensile organs (cetaceans), or when your lifespan is short or you're not social (octopuses & squids). - we used up pretty much all easily accessible fossil fuels for our industrial revolution and they may take hundreds of millions of years to reconstitute, and it's unclear if anyone could evolve an industrial civilization without that kickstart of easy energy. It's far from certain that if we disappear earth will get another good shot at evolving a space faring civilization before it's too late.
• tsimionescu 6y ago
  > Sure, it may take a millenium, but the sooner we start, the sooner we finish. For technology with uncertain results and uncertain resource requirements, this does not follow. It may well be that any effort we spend today is entirely wasted 100 years from now.
  • f6v 6y ago
    But you won’t learn anything unless we try. And having some shared goal for the humanity could be life changing.
    • xvector 6y ago
      And thus the argument on which absurdly expensive shared goal to choose begins. You want to terraform Venus. I want to develop mind uploading and thus optional immortality. Another person wants to solve world hunger. Somebody else wants to cure cancer. Etc.
      • ausbah 6y ago
        the cost, feasibility, and moral imperative of each of those things is vastly different. "curing cancer" has been happening and world hunger has been dropping for decades now, mind uploading is still far on the horizon, and thinking of terraforming at this stage seems silly
• deleted 6y ago
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• howlin 6y ago
  Venus has lost almost all of its atmospheric hydrogen. Teraforming a planet like this to sustain life would be quite a challenge. Here's an excerpt from the wikipedia page ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Venus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Venus ) Difficulties include the fact that the production of organic molecules from carbon dioxide requires hydrogen, which is very rare on Venus. Because Venus lacks a protective magnetosphere, the upper atmosphere is exposed to direct erosion by the solar wind and has lost most of its original hydrogen to space.
  • thaumasiotes 6y ago
    Something's missing. Earth isn't able to retain atmospheric hydrogen either. (And, obviously, therefore doesn't have any.)
    • zczc 6y ago
      Earth's atmospheric hydrogen is oxidized
      • thaumasiotes 6y ago
        Venus has plenty of atmospheric sulfuric acid.
  • simonebrunozzi 6y ago
    Find a few comets with a lot of hydrogen (ice), attach a rocket to it, send it to Venus. Problem mitigated.
  • userulluipeste 6y ago
    "Because Venus lacks a protective magnetosphere, the upper atmosphere is exposed to direct erosion by the solar wind and has lost most of its original hydrogen to space." Venus has a magnetosphere, although not as strong as Earth's. The problem with Venus' atmosphere, AFAIK, is that the heavier carbon dioxide layer is so thick that reaches the limit of that magnetosphere and in doing so it pushes the lighter molecules like hydrogen or even water to be exposed to the mentioned solar wind. If enough of that atmospheric carbon gets somehow fixated, then the freed oxygen should act as a capture net for all the solar wind's incoming protons and form water molecules (which, being heavier than oxygen, should then sink into lower atmospheric layers). P.S.: I assumed only "enough" of carbon taken out of the atmosphere, so enough carbon dioxide should be assumed as left there untouched, which now with newly available water molecules should result in bicarbonate, carbonic acid, and other goodies, thus preserve Venus' traditional acidic environment, so no worries there! ;)
• onion2k 6y ago
  Wouldn't a solar shield get heated up by a force equal to the amount of energy it's providing shielding for minus whatever it can reflect away? That would require some significant cooling even if the shield is 99 9999% reflective. How would you stop it getting too hot and eventually breaking down?
  • tim333 6y ago
    Nah. It would radiate out heat if it got hot, especially if the back was dark. I don't think the heating would be much worse than putting something out in the midday sun on earth.
• ddalex 6y ago
  I may talk out of my arse, but my understanding is that the majority of the heat is coming from the inner planet core which can't cool to space due to the insulating blanket of CO2, not from illumination from the sun (something like an order of magnitude more) so nothing will be practically solved with a sun heat shield, we need to find a way to break the CO2 somewhat quickly but then we have the same challenge here on Earth....
• snarf21 6y ago
  I agree that it is interesting but we haven't learned how to take care of this planet and it has unlimited (with appropriate behavior/population changes) resources. We never consider that humans evolved for this gravity and have no permanent home on the moon but people want to terraform Mars or Venus. Even if we did, we'd destroy them even quicker. We don't need another option until we've proven we can take care of the free gift we already have.