Visit Venus

Visit Venus

Two spacecraft in the Soviet Venera series have taken pictures down there. Les us follow in the footsteps of these pioneering missions, and visit another world.

In ordinary visible light, the faintly yellowish clouds of Venus can be made out, but they show, as Galileo first noted, virtually no features at all. If the cameras look in the ultraviolet, however, we see a graceful, complex swirling weather system in the high atmosphere, where the winds are around 100 meters per second, some 220 miles per hour. The atmosphere of Venus is composed of 96 percent carbon dioxide. There are small traces of nitrogen, water vapor, argon, carbon monoxide and other gases, but the only hydrocarbons or carbohydrates present are there in less than 0,1 parts per million. 

The clouds of Venus turn out to be chiefly a concentrated solution of sulfuric acid. Small quantities of hydrochloric acid and hydrofluoric acid are also present. Event at its high, cool clouds, Venus turns out to be thoroughly nasty place.

Venus 14. Venus is a kind of planet-wide catastrophe.

High above the visible cloud deck, at about 70 kilometers altitude, there is a continuous haze of small particles. At 60 kilometers, we plunge into the clouds, and find ourselves surrounds by droplets of concentrated sulfuric acid. As we go deeper, the cloud particles tend to get bigger. The pungent gas, sulfur dioxide, SO2, is present in trace amounts in the lower atmospheres. It is circulated up above the clouds, broken down by ultraviolet light from the Sun and recombined with water there to form sulfuric acid – which condenses into droplets, settles, and at lower altitudes is broken down by heat in SO2, and water again, completing the cycle. It is always raining sulfuric acid on Venus, all over the planet, and not a drop ever reaches the surface.

The sulfur-colored mist extends downwards to some 45 kilometers above the surface of Venus, where we emerge into a dense but crystal clear atmosphere. The atmosphere pressure is so high, however, that we cannot see the surface. Sunlight is bounced about by atmospheric molecules until we lose all images from the surface. There is no dust here, no clouds, just an atmosphere getting palpably denser. Plenty of sunlight is transmitted by the overlying clouds, about as much as on an overcast day on the Earth.

With searing heat, crushing pressures, noxious gases and everything suffused in an eerie, reddish glow, Venus seems less the goddess of love than the incarnation of hell. As nearly as we can make out, at least some places on the surface are strewn fields of jumbled, softened irregular rocks, a hostile, barren landscape relieved only here and there by the eroded remnants of a derelict spacecraft from a distant planet, utterly invisible through the thick, cloudy poisonous atmosphere.

Martian Orbit

Martian Orbit

When each of the two Viking orbit-lander combinations was inserted into Martian orbit, it was unalterably committed to landing at a certain latitude on Mars. If the low point in the orbit was at 21 degree Martian north latitude, the lander would touch down at 21 degree North, although, by waiting for the planet to turn beneath it, it could land at any longitude whatever. Thus the Viking science teams selected candidate latitudes for which there was more than one promising site. Viking I was targeted for 21 degree North. The prime site was in a region called Chryse (Greek for “the land of gold”), near the confluence of four sinuous channels thought to have been carved in previous epochs of Martian history by running water. The Chryse site seemed to satisfy all safety criteria. But the radar observations had been made nearby, not in the Chryse landing site itself. Radar observations of Chryse were made for the first time – because of the geometry of Earth and Mars, – only a few weeks before the nominal landing date.

Illustration: Elena

The candidate landing latitude for Viking 2 was 44 degrees North; the prime site, a locale called Cydonia, chosen because according to some theoretical arguments, there was a significant chance of small quantities of liquid water there, at least, at least at some time during the Martian Year. Since the Viking biology experiments were strongly oriented toward organisms that are comfortable in liquid water, some scientists held that the chance of Viking finding life would be substantially improved in Cydonia.

On the other hand, it was argued that, on so windy a planet as Mars, microorganisms should be everywhere if they are anywhere. There seemed to be merit to both positions, and it was difficult to decide between them. What was quite clear, however, was that 44 degree North was completely inaccessible to radar site-certification; the scientists had to accept a significant risk of failure with Viking 2 if it was committed to high northern latitudes. It was sometimes argued that if Viking 1 was down and working well the humans could afford to accept a greater risk with Viking 2. Carl Sagan found himself making very conservative recommendations on the fate of a billion-dollar mission. He could imagine, for example, a key instrument failure in Chryse just after an unfortunate crash landing in Cydonia. 

Grenadier Pond,  Toronto. Would the hopeful name of Utopia instead of banal Earth help the human race to overcome all the troubles? Image Light Colors by © Elena

To improve the Viking options, additional landing sites, geologically very different from Chryse and Cydonia, were selected in the radar-certified region near 4 degree South latitude. A decision on whether Viking 2 would set down at high or at low latitude was not made until virtually the last minute, when a place with the hopeful name of Utopia, at the same latitude as Cydonia, was chosen.

Mars Belongs to Martians!

Mars Belongs to Martians!

The surface area of Mars is exactly as large as the land area on Earth. A thorough reconnaissance will clearly occupy us for centuries. But there will be a time when Mars is all explored; a time after robot aircraft have mapped it from aloft, the time after rovers have combed the surface, a time after samples have been returned safely to Earth, a time after human beings have walked the sands of Mars. What then? What shall we do with Mars?There are so many examples of human misuse of the Earth that even phrasing this question chills us. If there is life on Mars, we should do nothing with Mars.

Mars then belongs to the Martians, even if the Martians are only microbes. The existence of the independent biology on a nearby planet is a treasure beyond assessing, and the preservation of that life must, I think, supersede any other possible use of Mars. However, suppose Mars is lifeless. It is not a plausible source of raw materials: the freightage from Mars to Earth would be too expensive for many centuries to come. But might we be able to live on Mars? Could we in some sense make Mars habitable?

What shall we do with Mars? Illustration: Comic Style Whisperer – Fantasy Art © Elena

A lovely world, surely, but there is – from our parochial point of view – much wrong with Mars, chiefly the low oxygen abundance, the absence of liquid water, and the high ultraviolet flux. (The low temperatures do not pose an insuperable obstacle, as the year-round scientific stations in Antarctica demonstrate). All of these problems could be solved if we could make more air. With higher atmospheric pressures, liquid water would be possible. With more oxygen we might breath the atmosphere, and ozone would form to shield the surface from solar ultraviolet radiation. The sinuous channels, stacked polar plates and other evidence suggest that Mars once had such a denser atmosphere. Those gases are unlikely to have escaped from Mars. They are, therefore, on the planet somewhere. Some are chemically combined with the surface rocks. Some are in subsurface ice. But most may be in the present polar ice caps.

Pulsars

Pulsars

If the Earth happens to lie in the beam of this cosmic lighthouse, we see it flash once each rotation. This is the reason it is called a pulsar. Blinking and ticking like a cosmic metronome, pulsars keep far better time than the most accurate ordinary clock. Long-term timing or the radio pulse rate of some pulsars, for instance, one called RSR 0329+54, suggests that these objects may have one or more small planetary companions. It is perhaps conceivable that a planet could survive the evolution of a star into a pulsar; or a planet could be captured at a later time.  Astronomers wonder how the sky would look from the surface of such a planet.

Neutron star matter weighs about the same as an ordinary mountain per teaspoonful – so much that if you had a piece of it and let it go (you could hardly do otherwise), it might pass effortlessly through the Earth like a falling stone through air, carving a hole for itself completely through our planet and emerging out the other side – perhaps in China.

Pulsars. The Sun will end its days… And we, as a civilisation, as well. Image : Elena

People there might be out for a stroll, minding their own business, when a tiny lump of neutron star plummets out of the ground, hovers for a moment, and then returns beneath the Earth, providing at least a diversion from the routine of the day.If a peace of neutron star matter were dropped from nearby space, with the Earth rotating beneath it as it fell, it would plunge repeatedly through, punching hundreds of thousands of holes before friction with the interior of our planet stopped the motion.

Before it comes to rest at the center of the Earth, the inside of our planet might look briefly like a Swiss cheese until the subterranean flow of rock and metal healed the wounds. It is just as well that large lumps of neutron star matter are unknown on Earth.  But small lumps are everywhere. The awesome power of the neutron star is lurking in the nucleus of every atom, hidden in every teacup and dormouse, every breath of air, every apple pie. The neutron star teaches us respect for the commonplace.

A star like the Sun will end its days, as we know, as a red giant and then a white dwarf. A collapsing star twice as massive as the Sun will become a supernova and then a neutron star. But a massive star, left, after its supernova phase, with, say, five times the Sun’s mass, has an even more remarkable fate reserved for it – its gravity will turn it into a black hole.

Radio Transmitters

Radio Transmitters

As the Earth rotates, our more powerful radio transmitters slowly sweep the sky. A radio astronomer on a planet of another star would be able to calculate the length of the day on Earth from the times of appearance and disappearance of our signals. Some of our most powerful sources are radar transmitters; a few are used for radar astronomy, to probe with radio fingers the surfaces of the nearby planets.

The size of the radar beam projected against the sky is much larger than the size of the planets, and much of the signal wafts on, out of the solar system into the depths of interstellar space to any sensitive receivers that may be listening.

Most radar transmissions are for military purposes; they scan the skies in constant fear of a massive launch of missiles with nuclear warheads, and augury fifteen minutes early of the end of human civilization. The information content of these pulses is negligible: a succession of simple numerical patterns coded into beeps.

The mindless contents of commercial television and the integuments of international crisis and internecine warfare within the human family are the principal messages about life on Earth that we choose to broadcast to the Cosmos. What must they think of us? Image: Elena

Overall, the most pervasive and noticeable source of radio transmissions from the Earth is our television programming. Because the Earth is turning, some television stations will appear at on horizon of the Earth while others disappear over the other. There will be a confused jumble of programs. Even these might be sorted out and pieced together by an advanced civilization on a planet of a nearby star. The most frequently repeated messages will be station call signals and appeals to purchase detergents, deodorants, headache tables, petroleum and automobile products. The most noticeable messages will be those broadcast simultaneously by many transmitters in many time zones – for example, speeches in times of international crisis by the President of the United States or the Premier of the Soviet Union in the 1960’s.

There is no calling those television programs back. There is no way of sending a faster message to overtake them and revise the previous transmission. Nothing can travel faster than light. Large-scale television transmission on the planet Earth began only in the late 1940’s.

Thus, there is a spherical wave front centered on the Earth expanding at the speed of light and containing Howdy Doody, the Checkers speech of the Vice-President Richard M. Nixon and the televised inquisitions by Senator Joseph McCarthy. Because these transmissions were broadcast a few decades ago, they are only a few tens of light-years away from Earth. If the nearest civilization if farther away than that, then we can continue to breathe easy for a while. In any case, we can hope that they will find these programs incomprehensible.