Hey @Lanzman, that asteroid attractor ray you've been working on... when you're ready for a test run, could you drop an asteroid onto Venus to speed up its retrograde rotation? 1, it's For Science! 2, that should help start the process to dissipate its hellish atmosphere and slowly start bringing it down to norms, as Venus is theoretically in the Habitable Zone. 3, once we know you attractor ray does work, we can say, "Fuck it," and just end it all here on Earth. I think it's a win-win-win on all fronts
Alas, the AAR is designed to drop a big rock on Earth, not target other planets. Maybe in version 2.0 . . .
Link: "Thick clouds of sulfuric acid move in a westerly direction on account of the entire upper atmosphere rotating significantly faster than the planet itself." On Earth, the winds blow the way they do owing, as far as I know, to different degrees of surface-heating by the sun and to the planet's rotation (also differential). Venus rotates extremely slowly. I still wonder how you get upper-level winds all moving in the same direction.
This is extremely interesting Venus news. I'm going out on a long hypothetical wishful thinking limb here & hope this bizarre atmospheric phenomenon may be evidence of Venusian life. Life radically different than we could ever imagine. Wishful thinking I know.
Perhaps. But before they found life at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, half a mile under the surface of Antarctic ice sheets, and at hydrothermal vents, no-one would have thought it possible. "Extremophiles" also thrive on high acidity and whatnot. So they might find Venus a great place for a beach vacation.
They are experiencing catastrophic climate change because they keep driving SUVs and using plastic bags and this is Mother Venus' revenge.
Back to extremophiles for a second. I just read this take (which shows once again that everything is relative): We now believe life on Earth started in hot, volcanic springs at the bottom of the ocean. What I love about that is that it makes you rethink the whole idea of what an extremophile is. When you think about it, we’re the extremophiles, sitting here having a conversation, breathing in oxygen, at absurdly low temperatures compared to how life first started out. And we’re not even in water! We are an extraordinary, hyper-organized colony of bacteria that started its evolutionary journey in scalding hot, alkaline water in the bottom of some primordial ocean. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/11/aliens-coming-science-life-universe-ben-miller/
Even more bizarre, is that the first life on Earth, created conditions which were inhospitable to itself. It is believed that the earliest forms of life couldn't handle an oxygen atmosphere, yet that was their waste product.
