History of scholarly study

History of scholarly study

Carl Saga, an astronomer, proposed the planetary engineering of Venus in an pc817a article published in the journal Science in 1961.Sagan imagined seeding the atmosphere of Venus with algae, which would convert water, nitrogen and carbon dioxide into organic compounds. As this process removed carbon pc817c dioxide from the atmosphere, the greenhouse effect would be reduced until surface temperatures dropped to "comfortable" levels. The resulting carbon, Saga supposed, would be incinerated by the high surface temperatures of Venus, and thus pc888 be sequestered in the form of graphite or some inviolately form of carbon on the planet's surface. However, later discoveries about the conditions on Venus made this particular approach impossible. One problem is that the clouds of Venus are composed of a highly concentrated pc929 sulfuric acid solution. Even if atmospheric algae could thrive in the hostile environment of Venus' upper atmosphere, an even more insurmountable problem is that its atmosphere is simply far too thick-the high atmospheric pressure would result in an atmosphere of nearly pure molecular oxygen" and cause pca9554 the planet's surface to be thickly covered in fine graphite powder. This volatile combination could not be sustained through time. Any carbon that was fixed in organic form would be liberated as carbon dioxide again through combustion, short-circuiting" the terra forming process.