Okay, lots of questions for a sci-fi book I'm writing.?

Question

I'm writing a d@mned book, and I've been asking individual questions regarding it for too long, so here is an explanation. An Alien race with technology capable of moving and manipulating entire planets has moved into our solar system, chosen Venus to terraform, and Io as the moon. This is what I have so far. They use this currently unnamed technology to basically spin the f*ck out of Venus, while containing it so it doesn't rip apart in the process. My idiotic brain has rationalized that this will reactivate the internal dynamo of Venus, give a strong magnetic field, and give it geological activity to enrich the atmosphere. The aliens then tilt the planet at a neat 25 degree angle, and put Io in a nice orbit around it to stabilize this axis. I imagine that Io's geological activity will calm down, and it will cool rather quickly being out of Jupiter's gravity. This is where it gets stupid. The aliens use Europa as a nice prepackaged water source, seeing as Venus is an irradiated rock of silicate with no water. Putting Europa in a comparatively low orbit. Europa would then go apesh!t giant comet due to it's new temporary home closer to the sun, and the water ice would be blasted off of the poor thing, resulting in said water being caught in Venus' influence, resulting in enough water for some oceans. Europa get's chucked. Now..I want anyone who is willing to help me patch the holes, and suggest other things to make Venus the perfect planet for these aliens. Just please help.

Answer 1

You have an interesting scenario. The biggest problem with terraforming Venus is getting rid of all that CO2. On Earth, much of the CO2 got dissolved into the primitive ocean, and subsequently got deposited into carbonate rock, such as limestone (CaCO3), dolomite(CaMg(CO3)2), and marble, to name a few. The best strategy I have read about is going to Mercury and using the abundant solar energy there to manufacture Calcium and magnesium metal, and sending it to Venus, where it will react with the CO2 to make carbonate rock. Once the atmospheric CO2 is gone, Venus will be left with a 3Bar Nitrogen atmosphere, and once 0.21Bar of Oxygen is added, it becomes totally breathable. The north and south poles will then be habitable by humans, even without a magnetic field and the other things that you are referring to.

If Venus were to receive a glancing blow from Europa, the resulting interaction would spin up Venus enormously, and much of Europa's water would likely transfer to the much more massive Venus. I also agree that using a Plutoid such as Eris would be easier and better in so many ways.

It is fun to think about.

Answer 2

I think you meant Europa instead of Io in the first line. You are believable up to Europa goes ape, and that is maybe. Possibly Europa will have a minor explosion due to internal heating from being much closer to the Sun. Even slimmer, most of ejected water hits Venus or is swept up by Venus over the next few centuries. What you have not explained is where does the 90 bar of carbon dioxide go? Several not very believable ideas have been suggested. The science fiction writer Paul Birch suggested that carbon dioxide is a liquid at several bar, and cooler than about 90 f. My conclusion is sunshades cool the surface of Venus below 90f and lakes of liquid carbon dioxide form until the pressure falls to several bars. That is still too much carbon dioxide, but it is an improvement. Another problems with this strategy, is liquid carbon dioxide is an excellent solvent, so we need put pool liners or equivelent in the places where lakes will form when it starts to rain carbon dioxide.

The liquid carbon dioxide that falls elsewhere will evaporate a few feet below the surface which will remain hot for centuries even with the cooling by the liquid carbon dioxide. We may want to cool the air enough to snow dry ice to hurry the cooling just below the surface. When the air pressure is as low as we can get by this method, there will be no more carbon dioxide rain, so your aliens need to put an air tight pool cover on each of the liquid carbon dioxide ponds and lakes = possibly a billion of them, otherwise the water that falls later will dissolve in the liquid carbon dioxide. The aliens and humans can likely adapt to the several bar atmosphere, with the help of a breathing mask with perhaps 90% nitrogen and less than ten percent oxygen. Otherwise they should be comfortable completely naked or wearing conventional clothing. The sunshades will need to keep the surface of Venus cooler than 90f forever to keep the liquid carbon dioxide sequestered. Sorry, I have not found the triple point for carbon dioxide, but it is about 90f and a few atmospheres.

Answer 3

I'm not sure why it needs to be the way you have described, as the previous answerer says - it's science fiction so the science part doesn't need to be accurate. However since you asked... There are some things that you've said that are going to be less believable for those of us with a science background. For example; There's actually quite a bit of water on Venus, just not any that is in liquid form due to the average ambient temperature being more than 800 degrees Fahrenheit. As a consequence the water is all in the form of water vapour, or combined into compounds like sulphuric acid or nastier things.



Europa is actually thought to be composed of a lot of hydrocarbons as well as water ice. Also I am not certain I understand why you think that a moon is necessary to "stabilize" the axial tilt.



If your aliens have some sort of super-space-magic that can move moons around like used cars and can modify an entire planet's rotational velocity, then they should be able to stabilize the axis without using anything as cumbersome as a moon, so why bother?



Also If they are aliens from some distant star why presume they need to change Venus at all in order to be comfortable or would want it to be like Earth? I mean, if they did not evolve on Earth then maybe to them Venus already looks just like home.



Presumably you have some reason for wanting them to make Venus into a second Earth, but why bother? As I said, if they can travel between stars and move planets and moons they obviously do not need a planet, so either it's a kind of art or maybe a science experiment, or they are very silly - in either case why limit your imagination to such a pedestrian form of alien weirdness?

Answer 4

Don't use Europa, but rather a Plutoid object - Eris, say, or maybe a couple of them - and *crash* them into a calmer Venus. The heat of impact will liquefy the partial surface and core, then put Io in a very elliptical orbit - the varying tidal forces will *keep* Venus' core liquid, and keep Io active - but not as much.

The impact of the Plutoids will eject a lot of Venus' atmosphere as well - making it easier to terraform.

Answer 5

I'd try Ceres instead of Europa. It's apparently got more fresh water than Earth. If they've got the technology to throw around planemos, it wouldn't be that hard to just smack Ceres into Venus' surface. Voila! Instant ocean. And enormous impact winter and supervolcanic pushback, but hey, they're xenoforming it anyway.

Answer 6

I hope that when you write your book that you break your text into readable paragraphs rather than type every page as a long unbroken block of text. Otherwise you won't get published, period.



Trust me, when you get older you will find reading an unbroken block of text to be extremely laborious and tiring on the eyes.

Answer 7

Wow :) true story if you think about it or fiction or theory :) Venus "Earth" :) Comet/lo"moon" cold as ice ( a tail to tell ) but were as it gone :) a balance "radiator/equator" were life will form and inhabit or from the stars one will come :) watch an obvserve they will but this is lost, 40 yrs has past ,from where we were we will still remain unclaimed from what was, once before but never forgotten "A" :)

Answer 8

Don't worry about accuracy when writing a science fiction novel. They are never accurate, i.e, spaceships having to dodge asteroids when asteroids are actually mathematically predicted to each be 84*10^4 kilometers apart (assuming the volume of each asteroid belt is 589,000*10^18c cubic kilometers and it holds approximately one million asteroids). So essentially what I am trying to say is, when you are writing a science fiction novel just be creative in what you write. If everything in the novel is scientifically correct then that is essentially contradicting the FICTION part in science fiction.