Why is the temperature of Venus hotter than Mercury that is closer to the sun. Search for life in our (1) solar system and (2) Milky Way Galaxy How life has and is now impacting our earth

1. PLANETARY ATMOSPHERES &
Life in the Universe?
Paul H. Carr, Ph.D.
Sigma Xi Member since 1957

2. PLANETARY ATMOSPHERES &
Life in the Universe?
• Why is the temperature of Venus hotter than
Mercury that is closer to the sun.
• Search for life in our (1) solar system and
(2) Milky Way Galaxy
• How life has and is now impacting our earth

3. REQUIREMENTS FOR LIFE ?
LIQUID WATER & ATMOSPHERES

4. Vacuum of
1 Bar 3 x 10-15
10-14 0.0192
Gravity helps hold planet’s atmosphere.
Venus had a CO2 runaway greenhouse effect.

5. VACUUM ON THE MOON 3 X 10-15 BAR
No greenhouse gas atmosphere
• Diurnal Variations:
Night -233 C (40 Kelvin)
Day 123 C (396 Kelvin)
ON EARTH
• Greenhouse gasses, blanketing the earth, give much
smaller variations.
• On cloudless nights, non-condensing and increasing CO2
(100+ year life) and other greenhouse gases keep us
warmer than on the moon.

6. Increasing CO2 gas density: 1. raises temperature of earth’s surface.
2. reduces temperature of the stratosphere.
6

7. PLANETARY TEMPERATURES, VACUUMS, & ATMOSPHERES.
Science, 330, 356-359, 15 October 2010
Parameter Mars Earth Venus Mercury
Temp. (K) 293 Day 300 Day 730 Day 700 Day
200 Night 280 Night 730 Night 100 Night
Pressure (bar) 0.01 1 92 10-14
Ultraviolet observations of VENUS’ cloud cover----
Venus surface temp hotter than Mercury’s 700 K.
730K (457 C) is hot enough to melt lead.
ATMOSPHERES
Venus: 96% CO2
Earth: 21% Oxygen, 0.04% CO2
Mars: 95% CO2

8. NASA’s Curiosity Rover discovered this layered geological
history of Mars at the base of Mount Sharp in August 2012.
Are fossils in these rock strata?

9. Strip coal mine on Federal land in Wyoming
Sierra Mar-Apr 2016

10. NASA
Oceans left Mars 1 billion years ago.
It lost its denser CO2 atmosphere whose
greenhouse effect kept water liquid.

11. The solar particle wind may have stripped away Mars’ CO2
atmosphere. Unlike our earth, Mars does not have a global
magnetic field to deflect these particles. Its gravity is less than
that of our earth. NASA will be sending an orbiter to Mars called
Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Satellite.

12. The gassy planet Jupiter’s
moon, Europa could have life.

13. Jupiter’s Moon, Europa, has the right combination for life:
a) chemical abundance of essential elements in its rocky core,
b) a liquid water ocean (covered by an icy crust), and
c) a constant source of energy (tidal heating) from its elliptical
orbit, operating over billions of years.
All this implies a “sea floor” environment analogous to, if not
identical to, Earth’s mid-ocean ridges.

14. Life in our Milky Way Galaxy?

15. Earth
Artist concept of likely rocky
Exoplanet Kepler 452b,
385 day orbit in habitable zone of
star, 20% hotter than our sun,
1400 light-years away. Discovered
July 2015

16. An artist’s impression of the
planet Proxima b orbiting
Proxima Centauri, the
closest star to Earth’s sun,
4.2 light years away.
Period 11 days. 1.3 mass of
earth.
Tidally locked.
Could have liquid water
Star is a red dwarf, 1/12th
mass of sun.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/25/science
/earth-planet-proxima-
centauri.html?hpw&rref=science&action=click
&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-
region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-
well&_r=0

17. Feb 22, 2017 Artist’s concept of the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system.
(TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope)
The seven planets of TRAPPIST-1 are all Earth-sized and terrestrial, (journal Nature.)
TRAPPIST-1 is an ultra-cool dwarf star in the constellation Aquarius,40 light years away,
and its planets orbit very close to it. They are most likely tidally locked like our moon.

18. Why does our earth have 21 % oxygen, 0.04% CO2?
-Neighboring Venus & Mars are mostly CO2

19. Figure from “Cosmic Dawn” by Eric Chaisson
Photosynthesis of blue-green algae converted CO2 to Oxygen
Carbon Dioxide, CO2
Prokaryote Cells Eukaryote Cells
7

20. • Cambrian Explosion of multicellular life made possible by
increasing oxygen levels.
- CO2 was converted to O2 by photosynthesis.
- Enabling animals that get energy by oxidizing sugars.

21. LIFE on EARTH Single celled life for billions of years.
Cambrian Explosion of Multi-celled life, 540 million years ago.

22. 542 M years Beginning of Multicellular Life.
“The Fossil Record of the Cambrian Explosion”
Keith Miller, PSCF, June 2014
8

23. • 52 Million years ago, Thermal Maximum, Earth was ice-free, sea levels
100s meters (~300 ft) higher.
•40 – 35 Million years ago, Antarctic Glaciation, CO2 was 700 ppm
•8 M Arctic glaciation, years ago when CO2 400 ppm.
Dinosaur Extinction 65M Yr. BP Figure from Dr. James Hansen, NASA GISS
23
THERMAL MAXIMUM

24. 6-7 MYA
Our smaller jaws made room for larger brains,
which require 20% of our energy. Increase enabled
by the invention of fire for cooking & advanced
stone tools for hunting & butchering.
American Scientist Mar-Apr 2016.

25. LIFE’S MILESTONES
First single celled life 4,000,000,000 years ago
Cambrian Explosion of multicellular life 400, 000,000
Mammals replace dinosaurs 40,000,000
First Primates and Humans 4, 000,000
Neanderthal human hunter-gathers 400,000
Cave Paintings, Neanderthals extinct 40,000
Homo Sapiens’ agricultural revolution, writing 4,000
Western scientific revolution, printing 400
Electronics, Satellite Communication 40
Internet, Facebook 4
THE HUMAN IMPACT IS MUCH FASTER THAN NATURAL PROCESSES

26. PROPOSED DEBATE ON
LIFE in the UNIVERSE
Between
Cosmologist, CARL SAGAN (1934 – 1996)
Sagan believed many kinds of intelligent life could form, but that the
lack of evidence suggests that intelligent beings destroy themselves
rather quickly.
And
Evolutionary biologist, ERNST MAYR (1904 - 2005, Bedford, MA)
Mayr believed single cell life in the universe is very likely,
but intelligent life very rare.

27. PLANETARY ATMOSPHERES &
Life in the Universe?
• Why is the temperature of Venus hotter than
Mercury that is closer to the sun
• Search for life in our solar system and galaxy
• How microbial life has and
humans are now impacting our earth.

28. Global mean temperature and atmospheric CO2 all rose dramatically during the great
deglaciation that ushered in the present Holocene Epoch 10,000 years ago. During the
periods of steepest warming, the CO2 rise precedes the global temperature by several
centuries CO2 INCREASE = 0.009 PPM/YEAR
A 3.5 deg C increase in average global temperature = a major climate change.
3 M PEOPLE 7 B
Ice Age

29. At present rate
of 2.5 ppm rise
per year,
humans are
increasing
CO2 at a rate
300 times
faster than
the recovery
from the ice
age 18,000 -
10,000 years
ago.
CO2 CONCENTRATIONS, HIGHEST (33%) IN 800,000 YRS,
COULD REACH ~1000 PPM BY 21OO.
Ice Age
29

30. 2017 CO2 levels
of 408 ppm are
123 ppm above
the pre-
industrial
average
1875
• Carbon
isotope ratios
indicate the
CO2 increase
since1750 is
from burning
~300 million yr
old fossil
fuels.
1. HUMAN INFLUENCE ON WARMING
30
Little Ice Age

31. 19
The rate of sea
level increase
correlates with
the blue line of
the CO2
increase.
Sea level rise is a proxy for
global temperature, since
it is due to thermal
expansion (50%) and the
melting of ice (50%)
SEA LEVEL RISE
IS A BETTER MEASURE OF
GLOBAL WARMING
THAN AIR TEMPERATURE

32. Blue: Sea level change from tide-gauge data (Church J.A. and White N.J., Geophys. Res. Lett. 2006; 33: L01602)
Red: Univ. Colorado sea level analyses in satellite era (http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/SeaLevel/).
Sea level rise has increased 4X to 12 in/century at
present from 3 in/century 1870– 1924.
12 in./100
years.
7.5 in./100 years
3 in. /100 years

33. Sea levels could rise by 1 m (3 ft) by 2050. Could we take action to
prevent a 5 m (18 ft) rise by 2058? The lifetime of CO2 is 100+ years.
Atmos. Chem. Phys., March 2016.
J. Hansen et. al.
1 M TIPPING LEVEL

34. Absorbed CO2 increases acidity, reduces the calcification rate and
nature’s ability to sequester carbon.
INCREASING ACIDIFICATION THREATENS THE BOTTOM OF THE FOOD CHAIN

35. Solomon H. Katz, Ph.D is a leading expert
on the anthropology of food, U of Penn.
He was editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia
of Food and Culture published by Scribner
(2003). Prof Katz was Chair of the AAA Task
Force on World Food Problems.
Barry Costa-Pierce, Ph.D, Chair of the
Department of Marine Sciences, University
of New England. Biddeford, Maine. Pioneer
of the field of “Ecological Aquaculture” and
helped develop the UN Food and Agriculture
Organization’s global protocols.
Can World Food Production Keep up with
Population Growth in the Face of Climate
Change & Sea Acidification?

36. THE “WICKED PROBLEM” OF CLIMATE CHANGE:
WHAT IS IT DOING TO US AND FOR US?
63nd Conference of the Institute on Religion in an Age
of Science, www.iras.org
June 24—July 1, 2017. Star Island off Portsmouth, NH.
• Climate change is complex with causes and consequences in
economic, ecological, ethical, and technological realms.
• How can global warming be a catalyst for spiritual and
societal transformation?

37. Solar PVs on historic Star Island form the largest off-grid array in New England

38. S Sunrise on Star Island

39. SUNSET OVER PORTSMOUTH, NH FROM STAR ISLAND
Learn more at www.iras.org

40. PLANETARY ATMOSPHERES &
Life in the Universe?
• Why is the temperature of Venus hotter than
Mercury that is closer to the sun.
• Search for life in our (1) solar system and
(2) Milky Way Galaxy
• How microbial life has and
humans are now impacting our earth

42. Might our earth undergo runaway
greenhouse warming similar to Venus?
Fossil fuel burning is increasing CO2 concentrations.
Temperature increases correlate with CO2.

43. • Our present level of 400 ppm could reach ~ 1000 ppm by 2100.
• Arctic became ice-free 8 M years ago when CO2 = 300 to 450 ppm.
• Antarctic melted ~ 40 M years ago, CO2 ~ 700 ppm
• Earth was ice-free, sea levels 100s meters (~300 ft) higher.
Dinosaur Extinction 65M Yr. BP Figure from Dr. James Hansen, NASA GISS
43
THERMAL MAXIMUM

45. Billions of years from now our sun
will expand into a hotter red giant,
evaporating our oceans and making
our earth inhabitable to humans.
We will then need to migrate to a
habitable planet.
The nearest possibility is Mars. The US
is planning to land humans there and
bring them back by 2030.

46. Saturn’s Moon,
Escaladus has salty
water geysers with
organic molecules
erupting through its ice.
Life on Escadalus
or Titan’s methane
lakes?

47. Pluto
--Dwarf Ex-
Planet
Pluto is in
the Kuiper
Belt.
--4.5 light-
hours from
sun
-Rocks &
50 K temp
ice too
cold for
life.

49. The laser is the most intimidating and expensive of the challenges. It would have to
generate 100 gigawatts of power for the two minutes needed to accelerate the
butterfly probes to a fifth of the speed of light (subjecting its tiny innards to 60,000
times the force of normal gravity.} That is about as much energy as it takes for a
space shuttle to lift off. To achieve that energy would require an array about a mile
across combining thousands of lasers firing in perfect unison.
the sails, which would have to be very thin and able to reflect the laser light without
absorbing any of its energy. Absorbing as little as one part in 100,000 of the laser
energy would vaporize the sail.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/13/science/alpha-centauri-breakthrough-starshot-yuri-milner-stephen-
hawking.html?hpw&rref=science&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-
well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

50. Earthrise
on the
Moon
December
2015,
from NASA’s
Lunar
Reconnais-
sance Orbiter

51. Naturalist John Muir (1838 – 1914)
When we contemplate the whole globe as
one great dewdrop, striped and dotted
with continents and islands, flying through
space with all other stars all singing and
shinning together as one, the whole
universe appears as an infinite storm of
beauty.

52. Earthrise
on the
Moon
SAVE OUR
PLANET!
It’s the
only one
with
chocolate

53. PLANETARY ATOMOSPHERES &
Life in the Universe?
Paul H. Carr
www.MirrorOfNature.org

54. Atmospheric CO: Principal Control Knob
Governing Earth’s Temperature
Andrew A. Lacis,* Gavin A. Schmidt, David Rind, Reto A. Ruedy
15 OCTOBER 2010 VOL 330 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org
“Furthermore, the atmospheric residence time of CO2 is
exceedingly long, being measured in thousands of years
(23). This makes the reduction and control of at-
mospheric CO2 a serious and pressing issue, worthy of
real-time attention.”
23. F. Joos, R. Spahni, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 105,
1425 (2008).

55. AMERICAN SCIENTIST, July-August 2011
ALONE IN THE UNIVERSE
Despite the growing catalog of extrasolar planets, data so far do
not alter estimates that we are effectively on our own.
Howard A. Smith
This artist’s impression shows
the planet HD 189733b, about
63 light-years from Earth, which
is known to have water and
methane in its atmosphere,
although at temperatures over
1,000 degrees Celsius. However,
data from extrasolar planets so
far do not alter estimates that we
are probably alone in the
universe, for all practical
purposes.

56. “…Life on earth is precious and
deserves supreme respect. Even if we are
not unique in the universe-though we may
not know one way of another for eons-we
are fortunate. We have a responsibility to
act with compassion toward people and
our fragile environment.” Howard
Smith

57. CLIMATE SHOCK
• “If an asteroid hurling toward Earth with
strong probability strike within 40 years, rise
sea levels 3 feet, render coasts uninhabitable,
intensify hurricanes and tornadoes, cause
frequent floods and landslides…every
government would work furiously to discover
how that asteroid could be diverted and
destroyed.”
from “Environment: An Interdisciplinary Anthology” by G.
Adelson, J. Engell, B. Ranalli, & K. Van Angeln 2008. Yale U
Press.Pg 17

58. Canadian Tar Sands: “Scraping Bottom”
National Geographic, 3/2009
“Reverence for
the life” of this
forest?

59. PLANETARY VACUUMS, ATOMOSPHERES, & LIFE
CONCLUSIONS:
• The emergence of plant photosynthesis
produced the 21% oxygen that enables our
life.
• We can stop CO2 fossil fuel emissions by:
- conservation, efficiency increases,
carbon emission surcharge, and
- energy from solar, wind, nuclear, & hydro.

60. CORRELTAION BETWEEN TEMP AND CO2 INCREASE
From the Greenhous Effect. 60

63. -Outgoing spectral radiance at the top of Earth's atmosphere showing the absorption at specific
frequencies and the principle absorber CO2 at 16 microns.
-The red curve shows the flux from a classic "blackbody" at
294°K (≈31°C≈69.5°F). Schmidt, G.A., 2010 J. Geophys. Res.,115, D20106, doi:10.1029/2010JD014287.
63

64. Artist's concept of a protoplanetary disk, where
particles of dust and grit collided and accreted by
gravitational attraction to form our planets.

65. Photograph by Ira Block When the Ocean Went Dark
National Geographic October 2011, vol 220. no 4. pg. 90
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/10/hothouse-earth/kunzig-text
Paleoceanographer James Zachos holds a replica of a sediment core that shows an abrupt
change in the Atlantic Ocean 51 -55 million years ago, at the onset of the Paleocene-
Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). White plankton shells vanished from the seafloor
mud, shifting its color from white to red. As planet-warming CO2 and CH4 clathrates
surged into the atmosphere, Zachos says, it also seeped into the seas, acidifying the
water and dissolving the shells.

66. LUNAR ECLIPSE 27 SEPT. 2015
9:41 PM
Diffraction through
earth’s atmosphere
10:24 PM
Near Total Eclipse