Jun05
The Transit Of Venus
on June 5, 2012 at 7:11 amHow to watch it this afternoon.
You know, if we were a true spacefaring civilization, we’d move the planet to get it in the same orbital plane as earth so we could do this every few months instead of once a century or so.
“We need to know if we can distinguish between a Venus-like planet and an Earth-like planet before sending part of the human race there.”
I suspect we have time to figure this out before we go.
The next transit of Earth as seen from Mars is in 2084.
Taking any bets whether we will be in position on mars by 2084?
What happens to the Earth if it obstructs the Martians’ view of Venus?
“There was supposed to be an Earth-shattering kabooom!”
If we were a truly space faring society, we could take cruises to see transits of Venus on a regular basis. Shifting the planet’s orbit sounds a couple orders of magnitude harder.
I’d like to photograph it with a digital camera. Is there anything other than #14 welding glass that I can use to image it directly?
Sure, go to an astronomy store and buy either a mylar solar filter or a glass one. They make brackets that clamp onto the front of your camera lens or telescope. Probably a bit late for the transit but sunspots are fun to image. And Mercury will transit fairly soon as well.
“The Earth? I’m going to blow it up. It obstructs my view of Venus…”
In a “true space-faring society” Venus would be swapped with Mars to provide us with three habitable planets. Or mined out of existence.
I’d settle for making the rotational period of Venus more Earth/Mars like, stripping enough of its atmosphere to get its surface down to one Bar, and transfer enough of it to Mars to bring its surface *up* to one Bar.
Now, where’s that ‘Indistinguishable From Magic’ technology…?
if we were a true spacefaring civilization, we’d move the planet
If we were a true ocean-faring civilization, we’d move the continents so that everyone could witness the full transit.
It’s been hot, clear and sunny here for a few weeks. With the exception of thunder storms. Today, it’s cloudy and overcast.
Gonna watch it online.
I’m on an emergency business trip for a couple of days. It was supposed to be raining at home but it’s pouring here in northern B.C. Oh well, just have to live to be 160 or so to catch the next one. I bet it’s more likely that we’ll observe the next one from a spacecraft before then.
Moving planets in a human-lifetime timeframe is more like the sort of thing a type II, maybe even type III, civilisation might do. Unless, of course, we develop some sort of Clarketech that allows us to teleport planets at an appropriate time and/or place in orbit using very little energy – something like the tech in Greg Bear’s “Moving Mars”.
A=F/M
Using a NSWR F =12.9 meganewtons
Mass of Earth M = 6E24 kilograms
A = 2.15E-18 m/(s^2) per engine (Isp = 7000s.)
Might take a while, but seems doable at current Tech. Level.
Does Venus seem awfully large relative to the sun to anyone but me?
Well, it’s much closer than the sun. It’s currently less than 27 million miles away, compared to 94 million (per XEphem).
Ken – One engine like that – 5E17 seconds (roughly) to alter Earth’s velocity by 1m/s. 5E17 seconds is around 15 billion years. Venus won’t exist by then. Probably, neither will Earth.
To alter Earth’s velocity by that much in 150 years (which in any case wouldn’t do the originally posited job) one would need 1E8 (100 million) such motors. Can’t help thinking that might have a few unwanted environmental effects!