Earth- The second Venus?

[hoofhearted4]

i wish Earth had rings. you know how cool it would be to look up and see giant rings around the planet! :teehee:

 

That would be pretty cool 8) . I suspect it would make it a bit more challenging to see stars/predict meteors but it would be a small price to pay for an amazing view ;D .

 

when has has predicting meteors ever mattered anyways? :P

[RitualBlack]

i wish Earth had rings. you know how cool it would be to look up and see giant rings around the planet! :teehee:

 

That would be pretty cool 8) . I suspect it would make it a bit more challenging to see stars/predict meteors but it would be a small price to pay for an amazing view ;D .

 

when has has predicting meteors ever mattered anyways? :P

 

If it ever does matter you will be thankful someone spent their life looking through a telescope :laugh: .

[Jeoshua]

Okay, fine. Venus orbits the sun in a 3:2 retrograde orbital resonance. Far too slow for normal weather patterns, and one side is interminably hot. Due to the thick clouds, the other side is just as hot. Were it not for those clouds, however, the surface temperature would be around 300 degrees on the day side and around 50 on the night side.

 

Either way, not a nice place to live, what with thick sulfuric clouds, raining silicates down on you, with 50 some odd pressures of that atmosphere bearing down, and a surface temperature hot enough to boil lead.

 

It's basically hell.

Edited February 13, 2012 by Jeoshua

[SubjectProphet]

Good explanations so far.

 

Just one thing, which one would be correct? lol

 

Earth's terrain matches that of what we THINK Venus' used to be. Which means it can and probably will happen here. In the next 250 million years though.

[Jeoshua]

Actually I've read a lot of scientists thoughts on this in the past, and until the sun goes nova the Earth will probably remain more or less as it is. It might even freeze over and become a snowball again, like it does every few 10k years.

 

Basically we're not in danger of becoming a Venus-type planet until the moment the Earth is swallowed by a giant red angry sun... and even then the atmosphere will blow away first, so the cloud cover won't be an issue.

 

And if you think global warming would change that, think again. It would only melt the ice caps, shift the global weather patterns, and make the (now mostly freshwater) ocean currents stop and the poles refreeze more solid than they've ever been.

 

Warming --> Polar Melt --> Freshwater Oceans Freeze --> Ice Age

Edited February 13, 2012 by Jeoshua

[hoofhearted4]

Actually I've read a lot of scientists thoughts on this in the past, and until the sun goes nova the Earth will probably remain more or less as it is. It might even freeze over and become a snowball again, like it does every few 10k years.

 

Basically we're not in danger of becoming a Venus-type planet until the moment the Earth is swallowed by a giant red angry sun... and even then the atmosphere will blow away first, so the cloud cover won't be an issue.

 

And if you think global warming would change that, think again. It would only melt the ice caps, shift the global weather patterns, and make the (now mostly freshwater) ocean currents stop and the poles refreeze more solid than they've ever been.

 

Warming --> Polar Melt --> Freshwater Oceans Freeze --> Ice Age

 

yea yea weve all seen Day After Tomorrow.

 

but the earth will be uninhabitable millions of years before the sun goes nova. the sun will get gradually bigger before it novas, as it gets bigger, our precious little life zone will be pushed back and we will be in the "too hott to survive" zone.

[Jeoshua]

Yeah yeah, I would never get my ideas and thoughts from a movie. Just because some Hollywood screenwriter heard the same science I did, doesn't mean it's wrong just because they made a movie out of it.

 

And for the record... No, I haven't seen that movie. I don't dig on disaster flicks.

 

But "uninhabitable" is relative. In millions of years human beings as we are probably won't be able to survive on this planet, but then again in millions of years human beings won't be around anymore. Our descendants might be, or we might have left the planet entirely, through exodus or extinction. Either way, there will be no humans.

 

But that doesn't mean that whatever is here wouldn't have found a way to survive in the new climate, whatever it may be. It's happened millions of times in the past of the Earth, it will happen millions of times in the future.

[antonkr]

The distance from a planet to the sun can't affect very much.

 

There's still another planet closer, and it maintains itself.

 

Earth could still be hit like Venus, no matter what the distance from the sun.

 

Um, no.

 

One degree closer to the sun, our oceans would boil. One degree back, they would freeze. Distance does matter. In fact, it matters a great deal.

 

<snip>

 

You are aware that the Earth has an eliptical orbit, right? It's distance to the Sun changes all the time. We would have to move A LOT to burn up or freeze.

 

Sources:

 

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100624215212AAUGApv

 

http://www.badastronomy.com/mad/1996/earthburn.html

 

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080830183901AAFf8ZG

And by his logic a minor earthquake would cause 2012 :biggrin:

[hoofhearted4]

i wish Earth had rings. you know how cool it would be to look up and see giant rings around the planet! :teehee:

 

That would be pretty cool 8) . I suspect it would make it a bit more challenging to see stars/predict meteors but it would be a small price to pay for an amazing view ;D .

 

when has has predicting meteors ever mattered anyways? :P

 

If it ever does matter you will be thankful someone spent their life looking through a telescope :laugh: .

 

not really. cause there is nothing i could do about it. then i would be spending the last years of my life constantly thinking about this. i would hope they would keep something like this a secret, so the world wouldnt end in a giant Riot (even if they could stop it, this is surely what would happen)

 

plus i dont want to be informed of my inevitable death.

[RitualBlack]

i wish Earth had rings. you know how cool it would be to look up and see giant rings around the planet! :teehee:

 

That would be pretty cool 8) . I suspect it would make it a bit more challenging to see stars/predict meteors but it would be a small price to pay for an amazing view ;D .

 

when has has predicting meteors ever mattered anyways? :P

 

If it ever does matter you will be thankful someone spent their life looking through a telescope :laugh: .

 

not really. cause there is nothing i could do about it. then i would be spending the last years of my life constantly thinking about this. i would hope they would keep something like this a secret, so the world wouldnt end in a giant Riot (even if they could stop it, this is surely what would happen)

 

plus i dont want to be informed of my inevitable death.

 

I would want to know if there was a meteor threat. Just like with most diseases, a early discovery yields the greatest success rate to remove the problem. (my previous statement was more or less meant to be interpreted in a joking manner)