<
https://theconversation.com/we-landed-a-camera-on-venus-before-seeing-parts-of-our-own-oceans-its-time-to-ramp-up-observations-closer-to-home-212970>
"Viewed from the Voyager 1 space probe as it passed beyond the edge of the
solar system, Earth and Venus might not look too different – same diameter,
similar mass and distance from the Sun.
But from a human perspective, Venus is a hostile spot. Its much denser
atmosphere enables a greenhouse effect on steroids, with surface temperatures
approaching 500°C.
While the timeline that brought Venus’ climate to where it is today is still
being researched, the critical difference between the two planetary systems is
the ocean. Venus possibly never had one, but oceans on Earth have shielded us
from the worst climate impacts by storing around 90% of the heat captured by
the changing atmosphere.
We have managed to land a camera on the surface of Venus, with the Soviet space
probe Venera 9 in 1975. Like the “Earth rise” image captured during the Apollo
8 mission in 1968, this again proved the power of visual imagery. Yet we’re
still learning about our own oceans.
Start your day with evidence-based news.
The first images of the surface of Venus arrived a year before we discovered
mid-ocean hydrothermal vents and three years before we first looked beneath an
Antarctic ice shelf.
If we want to better understand the climate-regulating role of Earth’s oceans,
we must increase the effort we put into observing them, with a focus on our
planet’s largest heat sink, the Southern Ocean."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
