What would Venus look like if there were even surface water on Earth?
A viral map highlights how Earth-like Venus can result in an impressive Venus.
The map was shared in a Reddit post by a user named “Dragnight-2” on the “Mapporn” subredit on 21 August. A scene from one of them Bold proposals for solar system terraforming.
The map bears a resemblance to Aditya Raj Bhattarai’s water-filled map of Mars, which was shared on Reddit earlier this month. Proposals for teraforming elsewhere in the Solar System focus on the Red Planet. Elon Musk’s idea for the colonization of Mars is the most popular. Musk plans to build a city on Mars, and then somehow free up the planet’s carbon dioxide stores, creating an environment in which humans can move around with just one breathing device.
Venus is a completely different story. Unlike the comparatively quiet surface of Mars, Venus will be tough for humans to live in – its surface temperature is 46,665 degrees, and the thick, acidic clouds of the atmosphere spread around the Earth in just five days.
But experts like Carl Sagan have suggested methods to evoke the treacherous planet, and to give its surface a little more hospitality. It also has advantages over Mars – Venus is about the size of Earth, and very close to our planet. Mars is about twice as far from Earth as Venus.
The post “Dragonnight-2” gives an idea of how the final results of such a terraforming mission might look. The map shows a mountainous continent to the north, an agile range of land to the east, a range of large islands to the west, and a large archipelago to the south.
This post caused a great deal of controversy. Other users will establish settlements in the new world by sharing ideas about where they live: A user named “JPRCR” wrote: “If I wanted to settle there, I think I would prefer a large continent to the north, possibly the southern edge. And the fertile valleys will be cold. “
But how accurate is the map? Paul Byrne, an associate professor of planetary science at North Carolina State University, who has previously written about the surface of Venus, says Busy It is best to take with a pinch of salt.
“The map is fairly accurate, with someone taking a real-world digital elevation model for Venus and adding ‘sea level’ to it,” Byrne says.
“I don’t know how real‘ Venus was as much water as Earth ’, but I’m guessing that whoever created this map prefers the average sea depth for Earth and‘ floods ’Venus’s geography at the same depth. “
Sadly, that’s where realism ends. Byrne explains that oceans like these will create rivers, rain, and lakes, meaning that the surface will look quite different after erosion and other natural movements. Oceanic planets are likely to have plate tectonics, which can also change the arrangement of geographic features.
Perhaps most importantly, Byron says, the atmosphere of Venus would be terrible for hosting the oceans.
“In reality, it’s not remotely real,” Byrne says.
But that doesn’t mean the map has no value. Byrne notes that there is some evidence that Venus has Earth-like oceans, and that it could be used by future human research.
“Although Venus with the oceans will not look like the Reddit image, it will Is Byron says it’s fun to think about what blue Venus once looked like – and why its atmosphere has turned into today’s hellish world.
How to Terraform Venus – There may be different approaches to eclipsing Venus. Carl Sagan proposed photography and carbon dioxide reduction in the clouds in 1961 with the help of algae. Three decades later, he had to admit that his plan would not work: the atmosphere later turned out to be darker than expected.
In 1991 Journal of the British Interplanetary Society On paper, scientist Paul Birch proposed using a sunshade to cool the planet, an insulating cover to prevent re-evaporation, breaking the ice moon to add a little water, using solar mirrors to move it into orbit, and more satellites. . 24-hour day and night cycle. Birch suggests the whole process could take about 200 years.
Changing a planet on this scale will not be an easy task. NASA engineer Geoffrey A. Landis explained in a 2011 research paper that most of the proposals sought to undo the enormous greenhouse gas effects, which would require huge amounts of energy or very advanced technology. In practice, Landis says, these proposals aim to reverse climate change and return Venus to the hypothesized state.
But even though the relatively peaceful Mars gland has captured the imagination of pro-researchers, Byron argues that Venus could be an excellent candidate. It is closer in size, which will make gravity closer to Earth. It is possible to remove carbon dioxide from the existing atmosphere of Venus rather than try to weaken the atmosphere of Mars.
“If we had to land anywhere, I’d prefer Venus over Mars,” says Byron. “But, to put it bluntly: it would be more of an order of availability than a worthwhile endeavor for humans to live anywhere far away to enjoy our own climate on Earth.”
The future may be closer than it seems to a nice, water-filled planet.
