First Star I See Tonight
Other measurements taken from orbit show that only 2% of sunlight reaches the surface, although landers on the surface saw a landscape lit up as if the sky were glowing. Furthermore, Venus radiates twice the energy it receives from the sun. The atmospheric layers are also uniform in temperature from dayside to nightside, despite the planet's slow rotation.
Bright hills
Frequently seen as a brilliant point of light in the evening or morning sky, Venus has been identified with beauty by many cultures. But the truth is somewhat different. Although it is about the same size as the Earth, its closer proximity to the Sun means that it is a very different planet. Its thick atmosphere – composed chiefly of carbon dioxide – gives it an intense greenhouse effect, whereby trapped solar radiation heats the surface of the planet to an average temperature of 467 Celsius. Also, its pressure is 90 times greater than that at the Earth’s surface.
Comment:
I cannot let this glib reference to the supposed Venusian ‘greenhouse effect’ pass without comment. The very high surface temperature of Venus of 750°K or 900°F is usually explained by the ‘greenhouse effect’ of a thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide, or even the ‘runaway greenhouse effect,’ first suggested by Fred Hoyle in 1955 and worked out in detail in the late 1960s by Ingersoll and Pollack of Caltech. Such explanations assume that both Venus and Earth have had largely parallel development (so-called twins) and that therefore something went seriously wrong with the atmospheric evolution on Venus. However, there is not a shred of evidence for the ‘twin planets’ theory.
As for the greenhouse effect, it is a desperate model clutched at by theorists who have no alternative ideas. Yet the astronomer Firsoff noted: “Earth’s seas are not boiling hot, despite the total greenhouse effect of water and average sunlight stronger than at the ground level of Venus. Nor is it at all clear how such a condition could have become established.”
Venus receives 1.9 times more solar radiation than Earth but its clouds reflect about 80% of that sunlight, so that Venus actually absorbs less solar energy than the Earth. Solar radiation measured at the surface is 10-20W/m2 (compare this with 340W/m2 at the Earth’s surface in the tropics). Even with the maximum greenhouse effect, the effective surface temperature of Venus should be low enough to freeze water. What is being asked of the ‘runaway greenhouse effect’ is equivalent to expecting a well-insulated oven to reach a temperature sufficient to melt lead by having only the pilot light switched on!
The humorous but sadly apt inversion, ‘I’ll see it when I believe it,’ seems to apply to the interpretation of results relayed to Earth from all four Pioneer lander probes as their radiometers began to give anomalous results as they descended through the atmosphere.
“Taken at face value, the anomalies suggest that parts of the atmosphere are transmitting about twice the energy upwards that is available from solar radiation at the same level.”
[Pioneer Venus, NASA Report SP-461, p. 127].
Despite the obvious interpretation that the laws of thermodynamics are not being violated and that, put simply, Venus is intrinsically damned hot and still cooling, the investigators are able to blandly state in the same paragraph:
“In spite of these difficulties in interpreting some of the observations, the greenhouse effect, coupled with global dynamics, is now well established as the basic explanation of the high surface temperature.”
The Shiny Mountains of Venus | holoscience.com | The Electric Universe
This is merely consensus ignorance, not science.
The BBC report continues:
The only way to glimpse what lies beneath its opaque clouds is by radar, and several missions have carried our radar surveys from orbit, principally the Magellan probe which operated from 1990 to 1994.
Magellan’s images astounded astronomers who were able to see the surface of Venus in detail for the first time. They showed the planet was covered in volcanic features, such as vast lava plains, fields of small lava domes, and large shield volcanoes. But the images were puzzling as well. It appeared that parts of the highlands were abnormally bright, reflecting radar beams much better than lower elevations. Several explanations were put forward ranging from the presence of a loose soil to a coating of metal – specifically, tellurium.
Lined with lead
The theory suggests at Venus’s hot lower layers any metal would be vaporised and exist as a metallic mist. Only at higher elevations, where it is a little cooler, would that metal condense to form a thin, highly reflective layer on the ground. Using detailed chemical calculations involving 660 metal compounds, Laura Schaefer and Bruce Fegley, of the Washington University in St Louis, conclude that tellurium is not responsible, but that c
