Comments on: Why is Venus Express Looking for Life on Earth?

By: Apidcloud

Apidcloud — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 20:49:23 +0000

why you say that troglodyte?
Am I a chicken?
..
what did I say wrong?
Farewell

By: troglodyte

troglodyte — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 23:51:15 +0000

apidcloud put down the peace pipe. 50 years? typical chicken-little environmentalist

By: Sili

Sili — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 18:16:47 +0000

I'd like to ecco The Occupant's suggestion.

Could we do this with any of the Mars sattellites too? Or Messenger? It'd be nice to get some appreciation of how the signal might decay with distance, even if it's orders of magnitudes smaller than what'll be needed for exoplanets.

Voyager's too dead by now, but perhaps Cassini could be tried. That might even allow for looking at what happens when Earth passes in front of the Sun, emulating what'll happen with exos.

By: Chuck R.

Chuck R. — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 16:54:26 +0000

Brilliant @ article.

Huh @ Apidcloud?

By: Apidcloud

Apidcloud — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 11:33:16 +0000

ahm, are you guys all Experts?
I didnt even know that.. but in 1000 years?
we will be all dead with the Global temperature.. Maybe at 2100, we will be all burned, because the temperature of the Earth is near 550ppm, some scentists says that we are more than that, but if we reach 550, e we will damned.. And with the problem of oil, we won´t be able to stop it.. Even if we stop now, we wouldnt be in time… So, we will need a good tecnology, in like 50 years, or we will be all burned..
See ya

By: nicjasno

nicjasno — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 09:00:27 +0000

Venus' orbit is just fine. It needs to be sped up in rotation, and it needs its rotational axis straightened up. Also, it needs a moon. Then, the magnetosphere will appear (after the core gets up to speed and the atmosphere will sort out itself too. Maby in 1000 years we'll have the technology to do that. Who knows.

By: Yael Dragwyla

Yael Dragwyla — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 06:53:28 +0000

Oddly enough, fire — i.e., ordinary combustion of carbon-based substances in an atmosphere with plenty of oxygen — is an indicator not just of the possibility of life, but the certainty that a world has a biosphere filled with living creatures, many of whom live on land, and that that world has an oxygenated atmosphere. Only life on land produces substances that can burn, e.g, the tissues of plants; and only in a richly oxygenated atmosphere can fire occur. So if we observe the products of combustion — carbonaceous particulates and, simultaneously, increased CO2 levels, a higher than average temperature, etc. — in the atmosphere of a world, you can bet there's life on that world, and that it has an oxygenated atmosphere. This will never be true of Venus, at least if we don't terraform her (after pulling her back from the fire and into a larger orbit around the Sun) or build domed habitats on her inhospitable surface that can simulate a pleasant terrestrial home. You'd have to view a world for a while, maybe for a year or longer, to be sure there is no combustion occurring in it — without creatures that have a technology of fire, using fire as its most powerful tool for shaping its environment to its satisfaction, only lightning and, much more rarely, volcanoes could touch off a fire large enough to make its presence known to a probe at any distance. But if you detect combustion products in a world's atmosphere, you can be sure it has life, and land-life, at that.

By: The Occupant

The Occupant — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 01:26:41 +0000

Neato! I wonder what other more distant probes we could do this with. Could any of this be done with information from Voyagers 1's famous Pale Blue Dot?