From: justinf@cco.caltech.edu (Justin Fang)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Uniformity:  minuscule cause and monstrous effect
Followup-To: talk.origins
Date: 14 Dec 1992 12:13:23 GMT
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: macintosh25.cco.caltech.edu

In article <173@fedfil.UUCP>, news@fedfil.UUCP (news) wrote:
> 
> In article <justinf-121264011153@macintosh25.cco.caltech.edu>, justinf@cco.caltech.edu (Justin Fang) writes:
> ^In article <170@fedfil.UUCP>, news@fedfil.UUCP (news) wrote:
> ^> In brief, the doctrine of uniformity is forcing natural scientists into
> ^> a tighter and tighter intellectual corner.  Amongst other problems, they are
> ^> continually forced to ascribe giant effects to piss-ant causes.
> 
> ^> For instance, the assumption that the 900 F surface temperature on Venus
> ^> is caused by the tiny to non-existant modicum of solar energy which reaches
> ^> the surface as uv and then, supposedly, cannot escape as ir, despite there
> ^> being no lid on Venus' atmosphere at any level.
> 
> ^Ted, do you have a real grasp of ANY area of science? The greenhouse effect
> ^on Venus comes about because of Venus's extremely dense CO2 atmosphere. The
> ^solar radiation which reaches the surface (mostly short wave IR) 
> 
> It is exceedingly doubtful at present that ANY solar radiation reaches the
> surface at all.  Probes indicated utter darkness going through the middle 
> cloud layer, and then light becoming more intense as the descent was made to
> the surface.  The light present at the surface is thus local, caused by
> some combination of chemical reactions and/or heat.  I've pointed this
> out before.  Soviet and American probes showed the same thing.

Well, thanks for answering my first question... You seem to have
misinterpreted the probe reports. Of COURSE a camera would show darkness
going down -- there's nothing to see! (If there's nothing for light to
scatter off, you won't see it... and Venus's atmosphere is almost
completely composed of transparent CO2.) And yes, solar radiation in
significant amounts does reach the surface...ask any planetary scientist.

A bit of thought would reveal that your chemical/heat explanation is
impossible. First of all, the atmosphere is almost completely composed of
inert CO2, and I can't imagine any reaction that would produce light with
the substances present on Venus. Secondly, and more importantly, the
current conditions on Venus have existed for billions of years... long
enough for the walls of impact craters to "slump" under the high heat, like
a very viscous fluid. Unless its reactants were being replenished somehow,
any possible chemical reaction proceeding at a rate high enough to generate
the measured amounts of light would long since have exhausted itself. And
neither CO2 nor your average silicate rock will give off much light when
heated to 900F.

Finally, American probes couldn't have shown "the same thing" since no
American probe ever landed on Venus. (They have orbited, and produced very
accurate radio images, spectrographic analyses, and the like, though.
Magellan is doing so now, in fact.)

> 
> ^Photons check in but they don't check out.
> ^
> Again, there is no glass lid to keep the heated air from checking out, as it
> invariably will.  It isn't easy on Venus, but it does happen.  The concentric
> rising waves which have been observed throughout the Venereal atmosphere are
> no illusion.  That's heated air seeking its way upwards.
 
Ted, I AM aware of convection. By your argument, the earth would ALSO lose
all its heat as warm air rose upward. There is a "glass lid" keeping the
air in, though, it's called *gravity*. Warm air rises only because it is
less dense than the air above it. It will keep rising until it cools down
enough to be denser than the air below it, at which point it will sink to
the ground and get heated up again. This is what causes weather. On Venus,
the air near the surface moves very slowly due to its great density. Near
the "top", however, the winds are something like 300 mph. Anyway, the point
is that the solar energy Venus recieves and the energy it radiates into
space have balanced at the point where the surface is at 900F.
 
> -- 
> Ted Holden
> HTE

I'm going to be out of town for a few weeks, so Ted gets to be spared my
pointing out all his errors.

Standard disclaimer about my opinions and CalTech's. 
"And God said, "Run SimUniverse (tm)", and it ran..."
Newsgroups: talk.origins