To read this post please scroll down.

 

Readers! A November fund-raising drive!

 

It is unfortunately time for another November fund-raising campaign to support my work here at Behind the Black. I really dislike doing these, but 2025 is so far turning out to be a very poor year for donations and subscriptions, the worst since 2020. I very much need your support for this webpage to survive.

 

And I think I provide real value. Fifteen years ago I said SLS was garbage and should be cancelled. Almost a decade ago I said Orion was a lie and a bad idea. As early as 1998, long before almost anyone else, I predicted in my first book, Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, that private enterprise and freedom would conquer the solar system, not government. Very early in the COVID panic and continuing throughout I noted that every policy put forth by the government (masks, social distancing, lockdowns, jab mandates) was wrong, misguided, and did more harm than good. In planetary science, while everyone else in the media still thinks Mars has no water, I have been reporting the real results from the orbiters now for more than five years, that Mars is in fact a planet largely covered with ice.

 

I could continue with numerous other examples. If you want to know what others will discover a decade hence, read what I write here at Behind the Black. And if you read my most recent book, Conscious Choice, you will find out what is going to happen in space in the next century.

 

 

This last claim might sound like hubris on my part, but I base it on my overall track record.

 

So please consider donating or subscribing to Behind the Black, either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. I could really use the support at this time. There are five ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation. Takes about a 10% cut.
 

3. A Paypal Donation or subscription, which takes about a 15% cut:

 

4. Donate by check. I get whatever you donate. Make the check payable to Robert Zimmerman and mail it to
 
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652

 

You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.


Scientists fine tune the cause of the super-rotation of Venus’ atmosphere

Scientists using data collected from the Japanese Venus orbiter Akatsuki have now refined their theories on the atmospheric processes that cause that atmosphere to rotate sixty times faster than the planet.

This super-rotation increases with altitude, taking only four Earth days to circulate around the entire planet towards the top of the cloud cover. The fast-moving atmosphere transports heat from the planet’s dayside to nightside, reducing the temperature differences between the two hemispheres.

What they found was that at equatorial latitudes the heat transfer is generated by what they call “atmospheric tidal waves”, generated by the dayside solar heat. At high latitudes the transfer is instead caused by atmospheric turbulence.

From what I can gather, they are calling these tidal waves because the Sun’s heat causes the atmosphere to expand upward on the day side, much as the Moon’s gravity pulls the ocean upward on Earth. It then is quickly drawn to the colder night side, driven I think in one direction because of the planet’s slow rotation.

As always, we must recognize the uncertainties. The data here is somewhat limited because there have been so few atmospheric orbiters so far sent to study Venus. While several future missions are under study in the U.S. and Russia, only India appears to have one targeted for launch, though the date has been pushed back from 2020 to 2023.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

3 comments

  • Max

    I am skeptical of this report.

    No, it’s just blatantly poor science.
    It seems they have a conclusion from cherry pick models that will result in the confirmation of the theory.
    If you leave out large vital factors, it makes a big difference in The outcome of the equation. There’s no way you can come up with the correct answer.
    Sure, it sounds nice, it seams a plausible theory, but the facts do not support it.
    First of all, no heat or much sunlight can penetrate the upper atmosphere. The clouds are just too shiny to allow any light through. Only radar has been successful in mapping the surface which is in perpetual darkness.
    Is the sun heating Venusian atmosphere?
    https://www.space.com/17850-venus-atmosphere-cold-layer.html
    “The strangely cold region lies about 78 miles (125 kilometers) above the planet’s surface, and appears to host temperatures around minus 283 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 175 degrees Celsius). It’s sandwiched between warmer layers on both sides.”

    If the sun is responsible for causing the winds from heating, it would have to violate the laws of thermodynamics.
    Unless there is a loophole in the law that science has not identified or guessed at, allowing energy to bypass ultra cold layer in the upper atmosphere to heat Venus directly.
    Perhaps Alfian waves using hyper dimensional physics and quantum flux moving through the ether acting upon the atmosphere directly???
    Or maybe it is something else?

    Here are a couple of quotes from Wikipedia.
    “Altitude is one of the few factors that affect Venusian temperature. The highest point on Venus, Maxwell Montes (near 7 miles high), is therefore the coolest point on Venus, with a temperature of about 655 K (380 °C; 715 °F) and an atmospheric pressure of about 4.5 MPa (45 bar).”

    The deepest crevices are near 900°F proving that the further/deeper you get from the sun the hotter it gets.
    The odd part is there is no “air moving from convection”, because there is no difference in temperature between the day side and the night side.(or the polar locations, they’re all the same temperature at the same altitude)

    “Sun’s heat causes the atmosphere to expand upward on the day side, much as the Moon’s gravity pulls the ocean upward on Earth. It then is quickly drawn to the colder night side,”

    This is also inconsistent with observation, the suns solar wind compresses the dayside and expands the nightside hundreds of miles like a comet.

    Another curious influence noted, but not considered. Wikipedia again;
    “Although Venus has no seasons as such, in 2019 astronomers identified a cyclical variation in sunlight absorption by the atmosphere, possibly caused by opaque, absorbing particles suspended in the upper clouds. The variation causes observed changes in the speed of Venus’s zonal winds, and appears to rise and fall in time with the Sun’s 11-year sunspot cycle.[83]”

    Imagine that, the sunspot cycle changes the wind speeds on Venus. A “cause and affect”
    The atmosphere is highly acidic giving it a polarization or charge. The magnetic field is induced on Venus by the Sun causing charged particles to move or spin. The stronger the magnetic field the faster the the wind blows.

    I know Wikipedia is not the best source of information. I noticed mistakes they also made. They keep kept calling Venus the “hottest planet” when it’s the fifth hottest planet in our solar system. They also referred to it as a runaway greenhouse effect which again is an unproven model. They can’t even explain how Venus is hotter than mercury…
    Or how Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune then Uranus are all hotter under their atmospheres than the surface of the sun. I guess it’s just another runaway greenhouse effect…

  • Max

    Darn, I was hoping for argument or confirmation from the actual scientists in Zimmerman’s intellectual readership.

    Someday, along with the postings on the sunspot cycle, perhaps we can get the seasonal wind speed on Venus as well. Since they are linked together, it’ll be an interesting planetary climate phenomenon just as the expansion and contraction of the polar ice caps on Mars and the seasonal dust storms.

  • Cotour

    Something, not nothing:

    https://www.newsmax.com/thewire/harry-reid-pentagon-ufos/2020/04/28/id/964999/?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=mixi&utm_campaign=newsmax

    What say all of the high IQ science and rocket scientist nerds here on BTB?

    As far as I understand we do not have anything near the technology that has been demonstrated in the several Navy gun camera videos. And these are not some air / atmosphere “phenomenon” that has been observed and recorded, these are machines of some shape or form and are clearly operating outside of the physics that we understand and in ways that we can only dream of.

    Any comments? Nerds?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *