Life Spotted on Venus - Russian Scientist

Originally posted by zorgon

Originally posted by AmatuerSkyWatcher
2nd Edit: Oh dear, it's even worse than the lander debris.

Seriously dude... what did you expect using those low res images? Without the original series that he looked at it is pointless

edit on 25-1-2012 by zorgon because: (no reason given)

To be honest mate, after reading the methods he employed in the making of his paper, I think his whole endeavour was pointless.

reply to post by ZeskoWhirligan


I have seen a number of pictures of Jim O'berg throughout the years. He is a rather distinct looking character (kind of reminds my wife of a younger Wilfred Brimley ).

Actually, I'm a little surprised that a NASA photo analyst and mission planner would think the Russians mistook part of their own probe as a life form. I can see a layperson mistaking the lens cap as something unusual, but someone who works for NASA? Seems kind of amateurish. Maybe he should read the article.

I don't think there is enough proof either but this is just silly.

www.dailymail.co.uk...

Originally posted by ProudBird
reply to post by TheFlash

 

- If not, what were the parachutes and support lines on those probes made of?

The parachutes (and their lines) only used down to a certain depth in the atmosphere (height above ground). The density of the atmosphere then cushioned the landers for the rest of the drop, as the parachutes were released at a certain height....about 50 km, IIRC. It is not as hot in the upper levels of the atmosphere as it is on the surface.

Which probes are you referring to? According to this Web page the Russian probe Venera 7 held till "very close to the surface" and the probe is said to have impacted with a velocity of 17 m/sec (~38 mph) which at a gravity of .904 g, even with a very dense atmosphere, doesn't seem to have fallen very far at all, let alone 50 km. I'd still like to know what those lines and chute were made of to survive such a decent.

reply to post by TheFlash


The velocity of the lander at impact was due to the density of the atmosphere on Venus. You are presuming under the .904 g rate of acceleration due to Venus' gravity that the rate of descent indicates a "short free-fall" drop, as would be seen on Earth.

However, the atmosphere at the surface, on Venus, as about 93 times more dense than on Earth. This gives the gases of Venus a lot more viscosity, and thus anything falling freely will not accelerate as on Earth, in our atmospheric gases.

The "terminal velocity" of objects in the Venusian environment is totally different than here. Although water is even more dense than the Venusian atmosphere, the comparison in the way objects "fall" through water can help to understand how the more dense (than Earth) gases on Venus will slow the fall of an object.


Here, this involves much higher mathematics, but I've found a web page with a calculator function built in, you just insert the variables. The key, there, are the density and viscosity settings.....and that's where the higher math enters....the formulas are provided in links on the web page:

Stokes Law Equations Formulas Calculator

I also read up on the Vega missions, the successors to Venera.

Just fascinating stuff, they actually flew a balloon in the Venusian atmosphere, I completely forgot about that. Now, that's an accomplishment.

Originally posted by ProudBird
reply to post by TheFlash

 

However, the atmosphere at the surface, on Venus, as about 93 times more dense than on Earth. This gives the gases of Venus a lot more viscosity, and thus anything falling freely will not accelerate as on Earth, in our atmospheric gases.

You are mistaken. Though you are correct that the surface pressure on Venus is about 93 times that of Earth's, your assertion that this will greatly increase the viscosity is wrong, as you can see on this Web page.

To quote from it:
"So water and gas's viscosity are mostly independent to pressure. With Gases until the pressure is less than 3% of normal air pressure the change is negligible on falling bodies. "

Originally posted by TheFlash

Originally posted by ProudBird
reply to post by TheFlash

 

However, the atmosphere at the surface, on Venus, as about 93 times more dense than on Earth. This gives the gases of Venus a lot more viscosity, and thus anything falling freely will not accelerate as on Earth, in our atmospheric gases.

You are mistaken. Though you are correct that the surface pressure on Venus is about 93 times that of Earth's, your assertion that this will greatly increase the viscosity is wrong, as you can see on this Web page.

To quote from it:
"So water and gas's viscosity are mostly independent to pressure. With Gases until the pressure is less than 3% of normal air pressure the change is negligible on falling bodies. "

Wait. First off, most of the paragraph you linked to relates to water. Then, it describes gases at low pressure. Clearly, it's not applicable to Venus.

This link would be more relevant. There is no dramatic dependence but there is some. Of course, the atmosphere on Venus is not "air", but still. Note that high temps may lead to higher viscosity.

And of course you can use a handy calculator and try to stick with real Venusian atmospheric composition.

That said, it's not clear what the Reynold's number will be, I don't have time to seriously calculate that.

This would determine whether it's viscosity or momentum transfer that dominates braking. Remember that density of Venusian atmosphere is as high as 0.1 of that of water (roughly), so just pushing it is quite hard.

Originally posted by buddhasystem

Wait. First off, most of the paragraph you linked to relates to water. Then, it describes gases at low pressure. Clearly, it's not applicable to Venus.

This link would be more relevant. There is no dramatic dependence but there is some. Of course, the atmosphere on Venus is not "air", but still. Note that high temps may lead to higher viscosity.

Well then here are several more pertaining specifically to gases that reiterate that the viscosity of a gas is not affected by pressure and so do in fact apply to Venus.

"Viscosity is independent of pressure"
"the viscosity of gases is roughly independent of pressure and density"

As for the calculations, using this online calculator we can see that the viscosity of Earthly air at 295K (72F) is 0.018460767567351908 and since the atmosphere of Venus is basically carbon dioxide, we can calculate that the viscosity of it at 735K is 0.032135963713413145. The ratio of these two values is 1.74 - hardly a 'great' difference. I wonder if you would even notice a difference if air was 1.74 times 'thicker'.

reply to post by TheFlash


You didn't understand what I was saying about the Reynold's number.

Just the density difference is enough to make for a completely different resistance during descent. Viscosity is not the only factor. You keep displacing a larger mass continuously, when moving through a dense medium.

Then, again, if there was an advanced civilization on Venus that wished to be left alone by its noisy and nosy neighbors on Earth, perhaps the Venusians would intercept our various interplanetary probes and feed us disinformation about their planet.

I mean, everything we know about the surface of Venus comes to us through very faint radio signals from remote probes, right? Why couldn't an advanced civilization just pour a bunch of corrupted information into our feed? It would put us off of disturbing our neighbors for decades or centuries.

Originally posted by mazzroth
This story fails the "Internet Hoax Rules" I use to determine if I will bother reading a whole thread. The rule it broke was being of Russian origin.

Will be a definite Hoax for sure and I never read the content.

wow...so if it's Russian it's a hoax? I would say no more than those of Americans. There is a significantly bigger number of hoaxers (or at least they have been marked as hoaxers) originating from America, on most subjects.



I thought that superior American space technology, after successfully landing people on the Moon numerous times, would have been able to land an unmanned/one-way tin can on to the surface of Venus. That should have been a piece of cake. Isn't the former much harder task?

And the Russians did it?...how come?


Anyway...that crescent thing looks pretty mechanical to me...

Originally posted by ZeskoWhirligan
Then, again, if there was an advanced civilization on Venus that wished to be left alone by its noisy and nosy neighbors on Earth, perhaps the Venusians would intercept our various interplanetary probes and feed us disinformation about their planet.

I mean, everything we know about the surface of Venus comes to us through very faint radio signals from remote probes, right? Why couldn't an advanced civilization just pour a bunch of corrupted information into our feed? It would put us off of disturbing our neighbors for decades or centuries.

That's an interesting idea. I don't think it's plausible, though. For it to work, we need to assume that various terrestrial agencies have been infiltrated by the Venusians. Again, that's an exciting thought but one that I find hard to believe.

Without prior knowledge, it's impossible to fabricate a credible transmission by just looking at what's approaching your planet (i.e. a probe). It's security by obscurity for us -- without information about what exactly we'll be trying to transmit, there is no way to fake it. Most of transmissions are done via directional antennas, and that is not necessarily easy to intercept, no matter how advanced your technology is.

I think that this is legit. It bugs me when those naysayers always act as if for there to be life on another planet, it must be an earth-like planet. Who is to say that aliens can't live without water or cooler temperatures? We know nothing about them. Heck, who knows, maybe they could even live in the middle of space without firm ground to even stand on, eating space dust and drinking solar particles? We just don't know. This is probably real though

^ agree. Who says our definition of life is the only one? For all we know they could consist completely of dark matter or some other imperceivable matter to us. They could be living among us right now, even existing in the same space! And we wouldn't even know it.

reply to post by genghisKAHNSPIRACY


The possibility of life existence anywhere in the Solar System and beyond has nothing to do with "evidence" as presented by the Russians. We are mostly talking about how this is not evidence. Nobody went as far as to say there is no life there, period. It's unlikely that there is life on Venus, but we don't know for sure at this point. One thing that's different from Earth is that Venus got "resurfaced" by hot lava a few times, due to its unique geology. So if there is indeed life on Venus, it needs to be able to breathe sulfuric acid and drink molten lava. Organics are automatically out, and we simply don't have clues about non-organic lifeforms. So it's speculation in the purest form.

Life adapts to it's environment, not the other way around. Having this in mind, we should expect (and not be surprised as JimOberg says) to find life very often. Even in our solar system. The paradigm is changing before our eyes. I remember my high school biology teacher (some 20 or so years ago), whit a grim on her face, telling us kids that there is no life out there, because a wast number of conditions needed to sprout life. It is what she has been thaught. Today, most scientist accept that possibility. But are wary of stepping out too loud, having their careers in mind.

What is weird and unbelievable today...a plausible theory tomorrow. We just need to step out of our self centered view of the universe. We need to dream. Imagination is much more important than rigid scientific scrutiny, at least IMO.

Everything that has been accomplished, started as someone's dream, a fantasy.

The Wright brothers first flight was initially considered a hoax....and look at as now....

would be so much easier if the probe had a video feed

Well Encyclopedia Astronautica and the Russian Space Web both say the parachutes were jettisoned at 50 km and a metal disk 'air break' was used the rest of the descent. Why not examine the sources of the argument instead of referencing what atmospheric pressure has to do with viscosity.

Its like siting ultra scan analytical layering imaging techniques for de-layering a single layer jpeg NASA moon photo uploaded and compressed with jpeg and upload software, to prove the image has been tampered with, well duh, the very fact it is a jpeg defines its been altered.

I think the Russians found they didn't need flexible parachutes through the Venus atmosphere from both research and trial and error. You know, actually taking the theory to the test.

reply to post by Cassius666


I think you can pretty much throw everything we know about science (and everything else) out the window when it comes to other life because we don't even have a grasp on our own bodies that have been available for us to explore for billions of years... So what makes anyone think that we would, or should, have an understanding of something we have never known existed...

For all we know we could be a computer program on a loop cycle...