Okay.

mollwollfumble said:

Something to do with solar wind?

molly, are you still alive???

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqgh1BPCaYc

Try again, third time lucky.
ESA Finds a Frigid Surprise Hiding at Venus’ Poles

Thanks to a thick layer of cloud cover trapping in heat, Venus is the hottest planet in our solar system, with temperatures boiling over at 850 degrees Fahrenheit (454 C). But in a study published last week in Nature Physics, the European Space Agency found something surprising at the planet’s poles: temperatures more frigid than anywhere on Earth.

Even though ESA lost contact with the Venus Express probe two years ago after it ran out of fuel, the agency is still working through the data it returned.

mollwollfumble said:

Try again, third time lucky.
ESA Finds a Frigid Surprise Hiding at Venus’ Poles

Thanks to a thick layer of cloud cover trapping in heat, Venus is the hottest planet in our solar system, with temperatures boiling over at 850 degrees Fahrenheit (454 C). But in a study published last week in Nature Physics, the European Space Agency found something surprising at the planet’s poles: temperatures more frigid than anywhere on Earth.

Even though ESA lost contact with the Venus Express probe two years ago after it ran out of fuel, the agency is still working through the data it returned.

Are they talking surface temperature or certain layers of the atmosphere?

mollwollfumble said:

Try again, third time lucky.
ESA Finds a Frigid Surprise Hiding at Venus’ Poles

Thanks to a thick layer of cloud cover trapping in heat, Venus is the hottest planet in our solar system, with temperatures boiling over at 850 degrees Fahrenheit (454 C). But in a study published last week in Nature Physics, the European Space Agency found something surprising at the planet’s poles: temperatures more frigid than anywhere on Earth.

Even though ESA lost contact with the Venus Express probe two years ago after it ran out of fuel, the agency is still working through the data it returned.

Maybe the planets spin at the poles funnels heat away from the planet?

That’s pretty fucking interesting but I will wait until it is confirmed by a second instrument before I have the t-shirts printed.

dv said:

That’s pretty fucking interesting but I will wait until it is confirmed by a second instrument before I have the t-shirts printed.

A cello or violin?

monkey skipper said:

dv said:

That’s pretty fucking interesting but I will wait until it is confirmed by a second instrument before I have the t-shirts printed.

A cello or violin?

I think they’re planning on using drums.

Who knows, it might mean that astronauts can actually land on Venus, and go stomping around in fur-lined space boots.

can a magnetic field channel heat?

CrazyNeutrino said:

monkey skipper said:

dv said:

That’s pretty fucking interesting but I will wait until it is confirmed by a second instrument before I have the t-shirts printed.

A cello or violin?

I think they’re planning on using drums.

sings

“And…the sounds of silence” in no atmosphere.

I think the news article is misinterpreting the paper. The technical article includes: " atmospheric waves in Venus’s thermosphere (130–140 km) at high latitudes (71.5°–79.0°). These measurements were made by the Venus Express Atmospheric Drag Experiment (VExADE)5 during aerobraking from 24 June to 11 July 2014. As the spacecraft flew through Venus’s atmosphere, deceleration by atmospheric drag was sufficient to obtain from accelerometer readings a total of 18 vertical density profiles. We infer an average temperature of T = 114 ± 23 K ". I suspect they mean that the temperature of 114 Kelvin was measured high in the atmosphere in Venus. It's already well known that at high altitudes in the atmosphere, Venus is colder than Earth. More at " http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nphys3733.html":http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nphys3733.html

[quote=mollwollfumble] I think the news article is misinterpreting the paper. The technical article includes: " atmospheric waves in Venus’s thermosphere (130–140 km) at high latitudes (71.5°–79.0°). These measurements were made by the Venus Express Atmospheric Drag Experiment (VExADE)5 during aerobraking from 24 June to 11 July 2014. As the spacecraft flew through Venus’s atmosphere, deceleration by atmospheric drag was sufficient to obtain from accelerometer readings a total of 18 vertical density profiles. We infer an average temperature of T = 114 ± 23 K ". I suspect they mean that the temperature of 114 Kelvin was measured high in the atmosphere in Venus. It's already well known that at high altitudes in the atmosphere, Venus is colder than Earth. More at " http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nphys3733.html":http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nphys3733.html [/quote] This is what I'm suspecting.

atmospheric waves in Venus’s thermosphere…

rossby waves?

would it be measuring its own atmospheric drag which would heat up the craft?

the yanks had a manned flyby of Venus on the nasa whiteboard but it got canned – Vietnam war and the space race had been won

they would have lived in an empty Saturn v stage for three months each way

JudgeMental said:

atmospheric waves in Venus’s thermosphere…

rossby waves?

LOL. That would be interesting! But I strongly suspect not.

Rossby waves occur through an interaction between mountain topography and coriolis. But Venus spins slowly, so coriolis there is much less than on Earth.

I suspect they’re talking about gravity-generated waves in a thermally stratified atmosphere. Or, to put it another way, Kelvin-Helmholtz waves. wikipedia Kelvin Helmholtz

> would it be measuring its own atmospheric drag which would heat up the craft?

Yes, but that heating would be known well enough to be subtracted off to get the ambient temperature. I suspect that part of the two year delay in publishing these results was in figuring out exactly how much frictional heating to subtract off.

wookiemeister said:

the yanks had a manned flyby of Venus on the nasa whiteboard but it got canned – Vietnam war and the space race had been won

they would have lived in an empty Saturn v stage for three months each way

That’s news to me. Is this on the web somewhere? Let’s see, the part of the Saturn V capable of travelling this far would be the S-IVB rocket stage. eg. http://www.space.com/31503-apollo-16-moon-rocket-crash-site-photo.html

That was the bit used in the skylab flight. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-IVB

Diameter 6.6 metres, height 17.8 metres. You could fit some quite decent living quarters in that.