Years ago, I watched a program that was talking about how wind speeds varied from planet to planet in our solar system. Eventually it saw a correlation between distance from the sun, and wind speeds.
Surprisingly, the further you got from the sun, the faster wind speeds became. My memory gets a little vague from here on out.
Basically, the program moved on to trying to model these speeds, and was succesful, but when it went to model earth in the same way, it showed that we should be having waaaay huger winds than we do experience.
At the end of the program, they showed that the solution to the progblem was that earth had it's ice caps, which for some reason I don't remember really cut down on our wind speeds.
i'd love to watch this program again if someone knows what it's called or where to find it.
Does anyone remember this one?
sounds like bullshit. mars has polar ice caps, too.
Well I looked up Venus's weather for the hell of it and apparently the winds on Venus will circle the planet 4 to 5 times in a single Earth day, whereas Earth's winds move at barely 10% to 20% of its rotational speed.
Lets contrast the atmospheric compositions of the two planets:
-Venus:
Surface pressure 93 bar (9.3 MPa) or 9300 kPa
Composition ~96.5% Carbon dioxide
~3.5% Nitrogen
0.015% Sulfur dioxide
0.007% Argon
0.002% Water vapor
0.001 7% Carbon monoxide
0.001 2% Helium
0.000 7% Neon
trace Carbonyl sulfide
trace Hydrogen chloride
trace Hydrogen fluoride
-Earth:
Surface pressure 101.325 kPa (MSL)
Composition 78.08% nitrogen (N2)
20.95% oxygen (O2)
0.93% argon
0.038% carbon dioxide
About 1% water vapor (varies with climate)
So you can see that the surface pressure on Venus is positively bone shattering, the equivalent of 91.8 atmospheres, in addition to this the atmosphere is swimming in toxic greenhouse gases. The surface heat of Venus is quite hot too, more than enough to turn lead molten very quickly.
So, armed with this information, why do you think that Venus's winds move so much more quickly than Earth's?
Not sure if this has something to do with but temperature and pressure differences between atmospheric layers maybe affect the wind speed, considering how tornados and such are formed here.
How fast does Venus spin on its axis? How fast is its revolution around the sun?
I'm thinking maybe since Venus is closer to the sun, the solar winds actually get to it? And by the time the solar winds reach Earth they're pretty much dissipated? I dunno. Astronomy and physics aren't really my thing.
Well, Skynet is supposed to take over April 21, 2011. The war is supposed to rage until 2029 when we destroy Skynet's master control. SO, you scientists and technogeeks need to stop posting random thoughts and GET BACK TO WORK! Be a part of the RESISTANCE, not the problem! ;)
>>6
Solar winds...? what?
Anyway, wind has to do with balancing the distribution of heat within an atmosphere. On earth, hurricanes/cyclones are basically heat energy flowing from the overheated tropics into temperate zones and tornadoes likewise spring from warm wet air meeting cold dry air. When two masses of air of varying temperature meet one another, bad things happen. Just bear this in mind briefly.
Every day, the earth rotates once. The surface will be exposed (on average) 12 hours a day over the course of the year. The other 12 hours a day (on average), we're in the shade. On Venus, things are quite different because the day there lasts 116 days. During this time, half of the planet is in daylight and the other half is in the shade. One half is having the worst summer day ever, the other half the worst winter day ever. You're going to get crazy wind as a result of the crazy temperature difference (relative temperature difference; Venus is on average hot as hell everywhere but moreso during the "day").
Turns out OP wanted the name of the program, not a discussion on this topic. Oops...