Salt on Venus

In my previous posts on the run-away greenhouse (which we know must
have happened to Venus some time in its past), I have assumed that
liquid water would disappear when the surface temperature reached the
critical point (705 degrees F). This is not true, though, because of
the presence of salts which will raise the critical point beyond any
reasonable surface temperature [1] causing the last parts of the ocean
to remain liquid as long as the atmosphere is near saturated with
water vapor, which it will be until almost all the water is lost to
space. When this occurs there should remain large deposits of salts on
the surface. Now though Venus has HCl in its atmosphere, it is only a
small fraction (10^-4) of the amount that must have existed in its
oceans.

So where is all the salt on Venus? Obviously, it is thought that Venus
underwent complete resurfacing ~700 my, which must have been later
than losing its water. Therefore there need be no large salt deposits
today, but it would still be interesting to now where the halogens go
in the absence of water; they are still largely incompatible elements.

[1] There is probably no limiting critical point, and salts and water
have then a continuous critical curve, but that can never be
determined in the laboratory. Not only NaCl, but I don't know any
salts that have a low enough critical point for observation and do not
decompose or react with water below that temperature.

Andrew Usher

On 5/30/10 9:33 PM, Andrew Usher wrote:
In my previous posts on the run-away greenhouse (which we know must
have happened to Venus some time in its past), I have assumed that
liquid water would disappear when the surface temperature reached the
critical point (705 degrees F). This is not true, though, because of
the presence of salts which will raise the critical point beyond any
reasonable surface temperature [1] causing the last parts of the ocean
to remain liquid as long as the atmosphere is near saturated with
water vapor, which it will be until almost all the water is lost to
space. When this occurs there should remain large deposits of salts on
the surface. Now though Venus has HCl in its atmosphere, it is only a
small fraction (10^-4) of the amount that must have existed in its
oceans.

Atmosphere of Venus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus

"The Venusian atmosphere supports opaque clouds made of
sulfuric acid, making optical observation of the surface
impossible".

HCl is 0.1–0.6 ppm



"Through studies of the present cloud structure and geology of the
surface combined with the fact that the luminosity of the Sun has
increased by 25% since around 3.8 billion years ago, it is thought that
the atmosphere of Venus up to around 4 billion years ago was more like
that of Planet Earth with liquid water on the surface. The runaway
greenhouse effect may have been caused by the evaporation of the surface
water and the rise of the levels of greenhouse gases that followed.
Venus' atmosphere has therefore received a great deal of attention from
those studying climate change on Earth."

"There are no geologic forms on the planet to suggest the presence of
water over the past billion years. However there is no reason to suppose
that Venus was an exception to the processes that formed Earth and gave
it its water during its early history, possibly from the original rocks
that formed the planet or later on from comets. The common view among
research scientists is that water would have existed for about 600
million years on the surface before evaporating, though some such as
David Grinspoon believe that up to 2 billion years could also be plausible".

Also keep in mind that The higher temperature of the early Venus
may have led to higher humidity so that atmospheric water vapor
produced a greenhouse effect. This may have raised temperature and
humidity and improved the greenhouse effect still further. Also,
as oceans shrank carbon dioxide couldn't be stored away in carbonate
rocks and would have entered the atmosphere to improve the
greenhouse effect.

On May 31, 8:33*am, Andrew Usher wrote:
In my previous posts on the run-away greenhouse (which we know must
have happened to Venus some time in its past), I have assumed that
liquid water would disappear when the surface temperature reached the
critical point (705 degrees F). This is not true, though, because of
the presence of salts which will raise the critical point beyond any
reasonable surface temperature [1] causing the last parts of the ocean
to remain liquid as long as the atmosphere is near saturated with
water vapor, which it will be until almost all the water is lost to
space. When this occurs there should remain large deposits of salts on
the surface. Now though Venus has HCl in its atmosphere, it is only a
small fraction (10^-4) of the amount that must have existed in its
oceans.

Holy-free-holy! The boiling point of seawater is 2500°C¿!? I realized
that salt would raise the boiling point of the water, but I was
thinking along the lines of going from 100°C to maybe 110°C or at the
outermost 150°C, but I never imagined 2500°C!

boiling point seawater - Wolfram|Alpha
"temperature | elements | boiling point: 2500 deg C (degrees Celsius)
"
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i...point+seawater

So where is all the salt on Venus? Obviously, it is thought that Venus
underwent complete resurfacing ~700 my, which must have been later
than losing its water. Therefore there need be no large salt deposits
today, but it would still be interesting to now where the halogens go
in the absence of water; they are still largely incompatible elements.

Now, even if you can't reach the 2500°C in the atmosphere of Venus,
there is one place on Venus you can reach those temps -- underground.
On Earth, we know that vast quantities of seawater get swallowed up
when ocean tectonic plates slide under continental plates. The
seawater in turn helps to lubricate the sliding process. The
temperatures rise above 2500°C, and the water vaporizes, and
eventually comes back out through volcanoes, salt-free. Once this
water reemerges into the atmosphere, it's got a normal water-only
boiling point. I'm sure that is the point where it can escape from the
atmosphere of Venus completely.

This would also explain Venus' periodic volcanic resurfacing. It no
longer has water to lubricate plate tectonics, and now the only way to
relieve heat pressure is through massive volcanism only. Earth's
rotation probably also fuels its plate tectonics activity, which is
missing on Venus. Several factors against plate tectonics on Venus.
Venus isn't really a model for what could happen on greenhouse Earth,
as no matter how hot it gets here, Earth will still have seawater, and
daily rotation.

[1] There is probably no limiting critical point, and salts and water
have then a continuous critical curve, but that can never be
determined in the laboratory. Not only NaCl, but I don't know any
salts that have a low enough critical point for observation and do not
decompose or react with water below that temperature.

Andrew Usher

Yousuf Khan

YKhan wrote:

Holy-free-holy! The boiling point of seawater is 2500°C¿!? I realized
that salt would raise the boiling point of the water, but I was
thinking along the lines of going from 100°C to maybe 110°C or at the
outermost 150°C, but I never imagined 2500°C!

boiling point seawater - Wolfram|Alpha
"temperature | elements | boiling point: 2500 deg C (degrees Celsius)
"
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i...point+seawater

Obviously this is not accurate - the boiling point of seawater is
about 101 C, when that of pure water is 100. A saturated solution of
NaCl boils at 109 C at 1 atm, so that boiling seawater will rise to
about this temperature when nearly dry. Other salts can of course
raise it higher, or even produce a continuous solubility curve at 1
atm (sodium and potassium hydroxides, ammonium nitrate, most organic
salts), thus giving no boiling point of a saturated solution. I was
referring, though, to behavior at the critical point, and not 1 atm.

So where is all the salt on Venus? Obviously, it is thought that Venus
underwent complete resurfacing ~700 my, which must have been later
than losing its water. Therefore there need be no large salt deposits
today, but it would still be interesting to now where the halogens go
in the absence of water; they are still largely incompatible elements.

Now, even if you can't reach the 2500°C in the atmosphere of Venus,
there is one place on Venus you can reach those temps -- underground.
On Earth, we know that vast quantities of seawater get swallowed up
when ocean tectonic plates slide under continental plates. The
seawater in turn helps to lubricate the sliding process. The
temperatures rise above 2500°C, and the water vaporizes, and
eventually comes back out through volcanoes, salt-free.

Temperatures in the upper mantle are less than 2500 C and no great
temperatures are required to get it to vaporise from volcanoes. And
much of the chloride is liberated at volcanoes in the form of HCl, and
would be also on Venus. The acid is rapidly fixed by water on Earth,
but on Venus must react with solid minerals.

Once this
water reemerges into the atmosphere, it's got a normal water-only
boiling point. I'm sure that is the point where it can escape from the
atmosphere of Venus completely.

Atmospheric escape depends only on conditions at the top of the
atmosphere.

This would also explain Venus' periodic volcanic resurfacing.

We don't know that it's happened more than once, or whether it will
happen again.

Several factors against plate tectonics on Venus.
Venus isn't really a model for what could happen on greenhouse Earth,
as no matter how hot it gets here, Earth will still have seawater, and
daily rotation.

No, not so. The seas will largely boil off in the run-away greenhouse
event, and I don't believe the rotation matters much if at all.

Andrew Usher

Andrew Usher wrote:

In my previous posts on the run-away greenhouse (which we know must
have happened to Venus some time in its past), I have assumed that
liquid water would disappear when the surface temperature reached the
critical point (705 degrees F). This is not true, though, because of
the presence of salts which will raise the critical point beyond any
reasonable surface temperature [1]
[snip reat of crap]

1) Post a reference to solutes meaningfully altering the critical
points of solvents.
2) Nobody does science in the Imperial System except NASA. That
admittedly cost more than a quarter $billion at least once when a Mars
probe shot up God's butthole instead of hitting the red planet.
3) idiot

--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/qz4.htm

On May 30, 8:19*pm, Sam Wormley wrote:

* *Atmosphere of Venus
* * *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus

* * "Through studies of the present cloud structure and geology of the
surface combined with the fact that the luminosity of the Sun has
increased by 25% since around 3.8 billion years ago, it is thought that
the atmosphere of Venus up to around 4 billion years ago was more like
that of Planet Earth with liquid water on the surface...."

During Late Heavy Bombardment oceans served to
cushion the impactors from cratering the ocean floor.
Thus, "recent resurfacing" is not necessary to explain
the craterless surface of Venus; evaporation of oceans
will do. Examples are the lack of craters on the floors
of Earth's oceans, dearth of craters on lunar mare and
northern plains of Mars.
http://www.stumblerz.com/if-your-wif...der-the-water/
John Curtis

Uncle Al wrote:
Andrew Usher wrote:

In my previous posts on the run-away greenhouse (which we know must
have happened to Venus some time in its past), I have assumed that
liquid water would disappear when the surface temperature reached the
critical point (705 degrees F). This is not true, though, because of
the presence of salts which will raise the critical point beyond any
reasonable surface temperature [1]
[snip reat of crap]

1) Post a reference to solutes meaningfully altering the critical
points of solvents.

Ha ha. Do some research before making assumptions. For example: start
with http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=...salt+solutions
.. And common sense also would say that this must be possible, as
there's no general way to define which is the solute and which the
solvent, and many pairs of substances (which include water and
NaCl)are completely miscible.

Andrew Usher

what means, pairs of substances completely miscible?

withhttp://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=critical+point+of+salt+solutions

thusNso:
and, thinking of Gauss's characterization of Fermatttt primes,
I'd say, God uses archimedean & catalan dice *if God wants to do, so*
--
just like the D&D nerds ... unless God uses Pierpont primes!

Thinking of photons as baseballs is likely to lead to confusion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement

thusNos:
and, yeah; tangent & cotangent are reciprocal cofunctions.

thusNso:
yeah; the plates move rapidly enough, that "we" can see
that there is creation of plate at the rifts, and
destruction of plate at trenches, and sliding of plates
at transform faults. now, the whole idea of "currents
in the mantle" may be an inoperative mechanism, because
the seismic data clearly shows that the mantle is "a" solid,
not "a liquid in geological time." see "Euler poles,"
please, but the expansion *or* contraction of Earth is too slow,
for us to measure it.

coal is the result of the catastrophic burial (underwater)
of whole ecosystems, presumably followed by sedimentation
and anoxic biological processing. oil may be the result
of sediments "subducted" into the tectonic system,
which is powered by fission & possibly fusion (and,
this is not *my* theory .-)

thusNso:
Rees is interesting, because his "flipbook" analogy
of spacetime, really shows that it is just phase-space --
even if he believes the old crap about it.
I just read in a free paper from a British pub, here,
that the queen of England has just announced austerity measures
of her goment, which must be a precursor to Waxman's capNtrade,
which mandatorizes the huge, voluntary USA capNtrade rip-off.
(the other interesting thing was,
they are going to go on a five-year plan for Parliament, and
also getting rid of the appointed lords, whether this applies
to the hereditory ones, the Blair had promised to get rid of.)
and, yeah; "cooling means warming," because Eric Blair worked
for the goment on Basic English, the dumbing-down
of Shakespeare for the masses (see
"Why the Brits Hate Shakespeare" on http://wlym.com --
cover article in a *Campaigner* magazine .-)
The comments from the current president Lord Rees in his first Reith lecture next week are rather
Looks like someone is covering the science with political correctness.

thusNso:
well, Minkowksi was merely "on about" phase-space,
which is strictly diagrammatical; "loops" in the diagram would
be strictly acausal, mainly because "Time is not a dimension; or,
it is the only dimension, whereby the others are ascertained,"
to paraphrase Bucky (and, this should be obvious, if
you treat special rel. using quaternions .-)
I guess that Feynman diagrams might be the ultimate culprit
in this "reification" of a God-am drawing in phase-space, but
Minkowski was just like any of us;
he had to put his pants on, one lightcone at a time.
try that **** in electronics engineering, and you will
be laughed-at, -out, and -behind-your-back.

thsNso:
in my experience, followers of LaRouche are quite idealistic, and
certainly don't make a lot of money; I mean,
I certainly did not. anyway, dowsing is nothing but
utilizing reflexology (or what ever) to entrain one's
own knowledge about "where be water" or what ever.
here's a link to the best "general interest" science mag.,
that is not bogged-down with the Standard Model and
Einsteinmania: http://21stcenturysciencetech.com

thusNso:
British Petroleum is the biggest operator in the Gulf and
in Alaska, but I question the ability to get a transducer
"ten feet instream" to such a massive flow; who y'gonna call,
"Red" whatsisname or Blackwater/Halliburton?... well, maybe,
Trickier Dick Cheeny (from the Nixon Admin.) couldl
be sent to plug it with his butt.
whether it is purposely on accident or accidentally on purpose,
BP are long-time supporters of Waxman's old-time capNtrade,
since the Kyoto Protocol. (if Dubya had been told,
it was nothing byt "free trade," he certainly'd have signed it, and
we'd be further in the Diocletian edict, for sure.)
that is, instead of a simple, tiny carbon tax, that could
be readily adjusted, Waxman has been hornswoggled
into "let the arbitrageurs/day-trippers/hackers make as much
as they can on your CO2 output," because
he brought the original capNtrade in '91, and it seemed to work;
did it?.... if it did, let's have the British Liberal Free Trade
faction,
tell us, just who made the money on that, and the figures
on acid rain reduction, as far as can be known.
Commercially available pressure transducers are extremely precise so

thusNso:
probably, Fermatttt had an insight, that we today call "p-adics,"
and there is glaring evidence that he did, and they are simple,
although "non-archimedean."

thusNso:
I meant, shouldn't force kids to read Shakespeare (or
any thing else) til they are 11 *years* old, or about 5th grading.
the proper hands-on study for pre-pubescence ought
to be spatial geometry, astronomy, music & numberthory,
a.k.a. *mathematica* or *quadrivium* --
not the God-am 3 Rs of the *trivium*, to impose life-
long impedimentia.
It would seem bizarre, if Dudley did not think
that geometry was part of mathematics.

thusNso:
all that it shows, since no violation of causality is known,
is that the pair of waves are correlated,
from the "splitting" to the absorption, and how could that be?
get rid of the "particle" ideal of Einstein's "photon,"
and most (or all) all of the quandary goes away. (then,
dump Minkowski's silly slogan
about phase-space-and-then-he-died .-)
Quantum mechanics predicts that measuring the spin of one proton
in an entangled pair will affect the state of the other proton.

--Stop BP's capNtrade rip-off, "hey,
let's just let a bunch of arbitrageurs/hackers
make as much money as they can, trading CO2 credits!"
http://wlym.com

John Curtis wrote:

During Late Heavy Bombardment oceans served to
cushion the impactors from cratering the ocean floor.
Thus, "recent resurfacing" is not necessary to explain
the craterless surface of Venus;

The surface of Venus is much younger than that (the oldest age I've
seen is max. 1200 Myr). Oceans do not cushions sufficiently large
impactors, either.

evaporation of oceans
will do. Examples are the lack of craters on the floors
of Earth's oceans,

This is mostly because Earth's ocean floor is very young (even younger
than Venus's s7urface.).

Andrew Usher

Andrew Usher wrote:

Uncle Al wrote:
Andrew Usher wrote:

In my previous posts on the run-away greenhouse (which we know must
have happened to Venus some time in its past), I have assumed that
liquid water would disappear when the surface temperature reached the
critical point (705 degrees F). This is not true, though, because of
the presence of salts which will raise the critical point beyond any
reasonable surface temperature [1]
[snip reat of crap]

1) Post a reference to solutes meaningfully altering the critical
points of solvents.

Ha ha. Do some research before making assumptions. For example: start
with http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=...salt+solutions
. And common sense also would say that this must be possible, as
there's no general way to define which is the solute and which the
solvent, and many pairs of substances (which include water and
NaCl)are completely miscible.

Andrew Usher

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=...salt+solutions

Perhaps you should read your references before using them as a straw
man's armature.

Hey stooopid do - do you know what thermodynamic critical constants
are? No, you do not. For water,

Tc = 374 C
Pc = 22 MPa, 220 bar

Venus' surface temperature = 460 C
Venus' surface pressure = 93 bar

All the salt on Venus would not make a sparrow's fart of difference.
The temp is too high and the pressure is too low for colligative
properties to have any effect on outcome.

idiot

--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/qz4.htm