[meteorite-list] BIG VENUS NEWS

[Sterling K. Webb]

Hi, List,

ESA had a big (press) conference to release the first
findings of the Venus Express spacecraft. There will 
be nine papers by principal investigators in "Nature,"
next issue. So all the science reporters were there, of
course, to get the inside story.

The spacecraft detected "whistlers." Whistlers are 
sharp, short, frequency decreasing bursts of low 
frequency radio waves. You can detect whistlers on 
Earth by connecting an old-fashioned quarter-mile wire 
antenna to a stereo set, as the radio waves are in the 
audio frequencies! They are caused by lightning. Earlier 
indications of lightning on Venus have always been 
dismissed as "mistaken" but it appears we were mistaken
about being mistaken.

The second big story is the confirmation of the old Pioneer 
probe's detection of a high ratio of deuterium-to-hydrogen 
in the atmosphere of Venus. Well, that's only the small end 
of the big news. The big end of the big news is that the D-to-H 
ratio of the UPPER atmosphere is 2.5 times greater than it is 
in the lower atmosphere.

Well, you say, scratching your head, so what? It means that
water loss from Venus is going on right now, not a few billion
years ago or just one billion years ago. No, Venus is losing water
right now. The deuterium is heavier than hydrogen; when water 
is split and stripped from the top of the atmosphere by the solar
wind, more deuterium remains than hydrogen. The fact that there
is a higher D-to-H ratio up top means that the water loss is both 
very active and on-going, that Venus is still bleeding water, that 
the water loss did NOT begin anciently, but recently (cosmically 
speaking, say 400 or 500 million years, or even more recently).

The reporters had heavy going trying to figure this out, quite
possibly because the Venus "specialists" are also having heavy
going trying to figure all this out, mostly because reality is doing 
such a poor job of matching theory. They were disapproving
of these unruly facts. Example: whistlers, yes, but not from 
lightning. From what? It's a mystery.

There isn't one press account I can paste in here to sum it 
all up, since every press account varies according to which
"expert" was being interviewed. So, here's the major news
stories, with a scorecard...

Space.com believes the lightning but doubts the water:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/071128-venus-express.html

The NY Times doubts the lightning, believes the water,
but doesn't know what it's all about:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/29/science/space/29venus.html?ref=space

The Independent believes in more lightning, thinks the lack of 
a magnetic field caused the loss of water, not global warming:
http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_tech/article3204073.ece

The AFP says Venus was "doomed by global warming!"
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gFOc6GAb7TDdajJhw-5xwwcfFZRA

The Houston Chronicle thinks Venus was "just too close to the Sun"
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/5337291.html
(The last time I was in Houston, I flew into Hobby at 7pm 
and it was 107 F. in the shade, and there was no shade as all
the leaves had died and dropped off from the heat. This is a
"natural" theory for a Houston paper, I think.)


Sterling K. Webb