Venusians?

[TransformerRobot]

Hi, me again, with another problem involving my story concept from before.

 

One of the alien races in the story is situated on Venus, which of course would not be a suitable place for life as we know today.

 

I was thinking what if the Venusians were underground dwelling beings who could survive extreme heat (up to 1000 degrees Celsius), and breathed carbon dioxide. They would also need something that would grant them immunity to sulphuric acid rain.

 

But what would they have to be made of to survive the conditions on that planet?

[Moontanman]

Hi, me again, with another problem involving my story concept from before.

 

One of the alien races in the story is situated on Venus, which of course would not be a suitable place for life as we know today.

 

I was thinking what if the Venusians were underground dwelling beings who could survive extreme heat (up to 1000 degrees Celsius), and breathed carbon dioxide. They would also need something that would grant them immunity to sulphuric acid rain.

 

But what would they have to be made of to survive the conditions on that planet?

 

 

If they evolved there that is all you have to say, we evolved to live in low temperatures immersed in hydrogen monoxide and breathing toxic oxygen...

[TransformerRobot]

But how fast did Venus' runaway greenhouse effect give in on the planet?

 

Evolution takes centuries last I heard, so are you sure they could've evolved fast enough to gain those immunities?

[Dekan]

This point about fast evolution is good. Perhaps life did start on Venus first Stimulated by the warmth of the nearby Sun.

Such warmth would naturally speed up chemical reactions. Just as they're speeded up, by putting a test-tube of chemicals, into the flame of a Bunsen-burner. It makes things happen fast.

 

So one might well expect life in the Solar System to have started on Venus. And perhaps progressed, by about 3.5 billion years ago, to multicellular organisms. These organisms evolved into intelligent Venusians, who took stock of their situation. And reasoned like this:

 

- Venus is our home planet, and it's given us life. For which we're thankful.

- But life can't continue here much longer. Our oceans are drying up, owing to the Sun's fierce heat.

- The heat will be less, if we go outwards from the Sun, to the third planet - the Earth.

- The Earth looks, through our telescopes, to be a beautiful moonless blue planet, with big oceans, and a lot of fertile land. This is confirmed by our space-probes. They've verified habitat-suitability for Venusians. Gravity is no problem, and there's plant-life and oxygen. So we'll go there.

 

Unfortunately for the colonising Venusians, after they'd landed, a Mars-sized mega-asteroid smashed into the Earth, boiled the oceans, sterilized the planet, and blew a chunk off it - to create the Moon, which we still see today. I don't what more proof anyone could want than that.

[TransformerRobot]

What if I said they had evolved into the beings I described earlier who were resistant to such extreme heat and could breathe the CO2 on Venus?

 

I was thinking that if that were the case, they didn't first encounter other races in the galaxy until Earth figured out how to terraform Venus.

[MigL]

I would consider Venus to have always had its present conditions, not a result of the runaway greenhouse mechanism.

Then life forms would have evolved to suit those conditions.

 

I could be wrong, but I think there are strains of bacteria which will survive the conditions you mentioned.

( I've always wondered why we don't seed Venus' atmosphere with bacteria to start the slow process of transforming the atmosphere )

 

A chemistry expert may be more help, but I believe Carbon forms the most compounds of the elements, and life makes use of this diversity for a certain range of temperatures and environments.

I believe the second element forming many compounds is Sulfur, and any life chemistry involving Sulfur would involve higher temperatures. So maybe stinky, sulfur based life forms ?

[TransformerRobot]

So they'd likely be just too small for us to see?

[Dekan]

I would consider Venus to have always had its present conditions, not a result of the runaway greenhouse mechanism.

Then life forms would have evolved to suit those conditions.

 

I could be wrong, but I think there are strains of bacteria which will survive the conditions you mentioned.

( I've always wondered why we don't seed Venus' atmosphere with bacteria to start the slow process of transforming the atmosphere )

 

A chemistry expert may be more help, but I believe Carbon forms the most compounds of the elements, and life makes use of this diversity for a certain range of temperatures and environments.

I believe the second element forming many compounds is Sulfur, and any life chemistry involving Sulfur would involve higher temperatures. So maybe stinky, sulfur based life forms ?

It does seem surprising that Venus is so horribly extreme in its conditions.

 

Given that it has about the same mass and diameter as Earth, it might have been a hotter, but life-bearing, version of Earth. When it turned out to be such an absolute hell-hole, that was of the biggest disappointments, and shocks, of the Space Age.

 

As regards Venusian sulphur-based life forms, that's possible, I suppose. But they'll only be bacteria. So forget 'em. Who wants to have intelligent discourse with a germ?

[TransformerRobot]

If they're sentient and intelligent microbes, why not?

 

Or how about this? What if mankind did something to Venus that mutated the microbes in the clouds into bigger life forms?

[Dekan]

If they're sentient and intelligent microbes, why not?

 

Or how about this? What if mankind did something to Venus that mutated the microbes in the clouds into bigger life forms?

Yes- but isn't that dangerous? The big Venusian microbial clouds could leave their home planet, and expand into space. They might come to Earth and invade us. They'd have rich pickings here - 7,000,000,000 warm human bodies to infest and replicate in. Before you know it, we'd all be taken over, and just be zombie hosts for Venusian microbes. Dare we take such a risk?

 

Maybe we should send a 1,000 megaton nuclear-armed space-probe to Venus. To nuke the planet from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

[Sensei]

It does seem surprising that Venus is so horribly extreme in its conditions.

What is surprising?

 

Inverse square-law is

[math]P = \frac{P_0}{4\pi r^2}[/math]

 

so after reversing there is:

[math]P_0 = P*4\pi r^2[/math]

 

Energy that we receive at Earth is 1367 W/m^2, so Sun emits energy:

[math]1367*4\pi (150*10^9)^2 = 3.8651*10^{26} J[/math]

per second in the all directions.

 

Then replace r by distance between Sun and Venus (~107-108 bln m):

[math]P = \frac{P_0}{4\pi r^2} = \frac{3.8651*10^{26}}{4\pi(108*10^9)^2} = 2637 \frac{W}{m^2}[/math]

 

Literally Venus receives twice the energy that Earth is receiving per meter square of surface per second.

 

It's just a matter of time when the same will happen to Earth, when radius of Sun will be growing as it'll be becoming red giant.

Edited November 2, 2014 by Sensei

[TransformerRobot]

Yes- but isn't that dangerous? The big Venusian microbial clouds could leave their home planet, and expand into space. They might come to Earth and invade us. They'd have rich pickings here - 7,000,000,000 warm human bodies to infest and replicate in. Before you know it, we'd all be taken over, and just be zombie hosts for Venusian microbes. Dare we take such a risk?

 

Maybe we should send a 1,000 megaton nuclear-armed space-probe to Venus. To nuke the planet from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

 

That's terrible. We can't just nuke somewhere out of the paranoid theory of it attacking us. What example of the human race would that send to other civilizations? Bad! They'd think of us as mere monsters.

 

How about I say something like humanity did something that made Venus habitable, but at the same time caused the microbes to fall to the planet and mutate into sentient beings?

 

Or maybe they had been evolving into such creatures for a long time, and by decades into the future we can finally confirm their existance?

[Sensei]

I would consider Venus to have always had its present conditions, not a result of the runaway greenhouse mechanism.

 

See Sun's energy output on timescale:

 

According to this model, around 400 mln after formation, Sun was emitting 75% energy than now. It's believed Earth at that time was snow-ball.

 

See calculations from post #11. Current 2637 W/m^2 of Venusian surface is 2637*75% = 1978 W/m^2 at that moment (44% more than current power on Earth)

[TransformerRobot]

What would happen if the microbes in the Venusian clouds fell to the planet's surface?

 

Would they be destroyed, or would something different happen to them?