NASA: ‘Electric Wind’ Can Strip Earth-like Planets of Oceans, Atmospheres

spacecoastdaily.com ^

[BenLurkin]

Venus has an “electric wind” strong enough to remove the components of water from its upper atmosphere, which may have played a significant role in stripping Earth’s twin planet of its oceans, according to new results from ESA’s (European Space Agency) Venus Express mission by NASA-funded researchers.

“It’s amazing, shocking,” said Glyn Collinson, a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

“We never dreamt an electric wind could be so powerful that it can suck oxygen right out of an atmosphere into space. This is something that has to be on the checklist when we go looking for habitable planets around other stars.” Collinson is lead author of a paper about this research published June 20, 2016, in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Venus is in many ways the most like Earth in terms of its size and gravity, and there’s evidence that it once had oceans worth of water in its distant past.

However, with surface temperatures around 860 F (460 C), any oceans would have long since boiled away to steam and Venus is uninhabitable today. Yet Venus’ thick atmosphere, about 100 times the pressure of Earth’s, has 10,000 to 100,000 times less water than Earth’s atmosphere. Something had to remove all that steam, and the current thinking is that much of the early steam dissociated to hydrogen and oxygen: the light hydrogen escaped, while the oxygen oxidized rocks over billions of years.

Also the solar wind — a million-mile-per-hour stream of electrically conducting gas blowing from the sun — could have slowly but surely eroded the remainder of an ocean’s worth of oxygen and water from Venus’ upper atmosphere.

[Kickass Conservative]

OK, it’s obviously time for Common Sense Electricity Control.

I hope Congress gets right on this before it’s too late.

[chris37]

Commonsense electric wind control!

Republicans are big corporate electric wind!

Did you know that Ken Starr wants to electrify yo wind!?

[Fred Hayek]

Basic science. A water molecule is light compared to that of carbon dioxide. A mole weight of 18 versus 44. Light materials rises. Add to that Venus has no magnetic field even though it probably has a molten iron core. This is due to the lack of rotation, possibly due to a tidal lock with the Sun. The lack of magnetic field results in the lighter materials in the upper atmosphere scoured away by the solar wind.

[shibumi]

Electric Universe Ping?

[ml/nj]

OMG! Government please protect me.

ML/NJ

[Nifster]

I don’t know why this yob thinks it’s shocking....in the 70s when the solar wind was being modeled that was evident

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

“Electric Wind”. Should be the name of a stripper. Takes the money right out of your wallet.

I once met “Chili Peppers”, a stripper from the Block in Baltimore. Not bad looking for an octogenarian.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Here, Mr. Big Gov...take all my money and fix this. This is way to urgent to wait for you to raise my taxes.

[Arthur McGowan]

The owner of The Troc had great names:

Beth Lehem. All wise men come to see her.

Can’t remember the others I heard years ago.

[gigster]

Will someone please post the picture of the giant atmospheric vacuum cleaner in the movie Space Balls?

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

This is Purple Rain, and it can rip your freakin’ head off.

[Paladin2]

Electric Wind is shocking?

[mylife]

Good name for a rock band.

[BitWielder1]

Venus is also a lot closer to the sun than Earth is.
Its atmosphere is 96% CO₂, a far cry from our 0.04%, and much thicker, yet it has been used as an extreme example of what will happen to us if we use the wrong light bulbs.

[zzwhale]

nasa hole

[misanthrope]

Electric Universe; moving closer.

[catbertz]

I read that theory years ago. Interesting, but then I’m no scientist. In my lifetime I’ve discovered that scientists continually prove that they don’t know what they don’t know.

[Ozark Tom]

What they didn’t bring in to the discussion, is the lack of a magnetic field generating plasma bubble around the planets of Venus and Mars. Earths magnetosphere blocks the solar wind plasma from interacting on the atmosphere to the same extent.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks BenLurkin.

Get ready for some laughs.

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Venus has an "electric wind" strong enough to remove the components of water from its upper atmosphere... according to new results from ESA's (European Space Agency) Venus Express mission by NASA-funded researchers. "It's amazing, shocking," said Glyn Collinson, a scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "We never dreamt an electric wind could be so powerful that it can suck oxygen right out of an atmosphere into space. This is something that has to be on the checklist when we go looking for habitable planets around other stars." ...Venus is in many ways the most like Earth in terms of its size and gravity... However, with surface temperatures around 860 F (460 C)... thick atmosphere, about 100 times the pressure of Earth's, has 10,000 to 100,000 times less water than Earth's atmosphere.

"Venus is in many ways the most like Earth in terms of its size and gravity..." -- and both are oblate spheroids, don't forget that! Size and density are similar, and that's about it.