Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site imsvax.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!epsilon!zeta!sabre!petrus!bellcore!decvax!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!seismo!umcp-cs!cvl!elsie!imsvax!ted From: ted@imsvax.UUCP (Ted Holden) Newsgroups: net.origins Subject: Re: Venus and Velikovsky Message-ID: <386@imsvax.UUCP> Date: Fri, 30-Aug-85 16:22:18 EDT Article-I.D.: imsvax.386 Posted: Fri Aug 30 16:22:18 1985 Date-Received: Sun, 1-Sep-85 12:48:15 EDT Organization: IMS Inc, Rockville MD Lines: 113 Bill Jeffries doesn't like my straight forward denunciation of the astronomical profession's motives in having concocted the runaway-greenhouse theory to explain the great heat of the planet Venus. Jeffery's main points were: >Rupert Wildt [1] first predicted an elevated surface temperature >for Venus on the basis of the Greenhouse Effect in 1940, fully >ten years before Velikovsky's book. His estimate erred greatly on >the low side, being based on a hand calculation (no computers >existed at the time). Nevertheless, it is plain wrong to claim >that the idea of a hot Venus originated with Velikovsky, and it is >wrong to claim that the Greenhouse Effect was only invoked after the >fact of Venus' high temperature was known. Velikovsky claims to >have read all the relevant astronomical literature, but gives >no credit to Wildt for any of this. >Modern calculations fully explain the high surface temperature >of Venus based on the Greenhouse Effect. Ted's slander of >astronomers does not alter this fact. Nor does it alter the >fact that Velikovsky's "prediction" of a high surface temperature >for Venus is much more ambiguous than his supporters claim. It is >based on a vague statment in his 1950 edition (p. 77) that the >comet that was supposed to become Venus was in a state of "candescence". >Venus was supposed to have cooled rapidly after that. In his 1965 >edition Velikovsky took credit for having predicted "an incandescent >state of Venus". Nowhere did he predict an actual temperature. >Furthermore, his prediction that Venus would be found to be cooling >off is contradicted by the observations. Assume for the moment that the 4.6 billion year age of the solar system which Jeffery's favors is correct. Estimates for surface temperatures for points on Venus, based on OUR temperatures and relative differences between our distance from the sun and Venus', would run only slightly hotter than for equivalant points on our surface. Such was the general belief amongst scientists until the sixties and seventies of this century. Wildt had proposed a reasonable greenhouse theory calling for surface temperatures around 275 F, based on these same hypotheses regarding the age of the solar system and carbon dioxide in Venus' atmosphere. A Cray I wouldn't have helped him any more than his calculator; his hypotheses were wrong. Velikovsky's 1950 predictions, based on his theory of Venus' catastrophic birth and early existence within our solar system less than 10000 years ago, called for much higher temperatures and, indeed, Venus' real temperatures have been found to be in the neighborhood of 750 degrees K. Velikovsky and Wildt were talking about totally different things; there was no reason for Velikovsky to mention Wildt's theory in his books and he apparently didn't. The runaway-greenhouse theory was concocted by Sagan and others to deal with this wild departure from what their major theories regarding our solar system would have called for. It can be shown to be rubbish by any of several lines of argument which are well documented. Consider that Venus rotates very slowly, about once in 58 earth days or so. If Venus' sole source of heat was the sun, as called for by the runaway-greenhouse theory, we would expect it to be a LOT hotter on the sunlit side of Venus than on the dark side. Indeed, it would be perfectly logical to expect much larger temperature differentials between day and night on Venus than on the earth. Radio emmision analyses have never shown this to be the case, however. Writing in PHYSICS TODAY, in 1961, Frank Drake of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory wrote that "there is little surface temperature difference between the illuminated and dark hemispheres of Venus". Further exhaustive radio spectrum analyses which Sagan and David Morrison have conducted have failed to turn up a shred of evidence which they could use in their anti-Velikovsky crusading. Morrison claimed to have discovered "no phase effect after 100 hours of observations". The British astronomer Firsoff simply states: "Increasing the mass of the atmosphere may intensify the greenhouse effect, but it must also reduce the proportion of solar energy reaching the surface, while the total of the available energy must be distributed over a larger mass and volumn. Indeed, if the atmosphere of Venus amounts to 75 air masses... the amount of solar energy per unit mass of this atmosphere will be about .01 of that available on the earth. Such an atmosphere would be strictly comparable to our seas and remain stone-cold, unless the internal heat of Venus were able to keep it at temperatures corresponding to the brightness temperatures derived from the microwave emission." That is, unless Velikovsky is right. Of course, Jupiter, Saturn, AND Venus radiate more energy than they absorb; no greenhouse theory of any kind could account for that. And even a pathalogical liar like Sagan would be loathe to make the statement that Venus retains heat from it's formation after 4.6 billion years. HOLDEN'S PRAYER "Thank you Lord for not making me a dingo dog, a citizen of any communist nation, or a member of any profession which is obligated to defend major theories which amount to flagrant bullshit before an incredulous world, and then cry and attempt to act outraged when the world reacts by seeking legal limits to the extent to which that profession may determine the manner in which it's children are being educated with it's money."