Word: carbon
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Mariner 5's findings, released last week, agree generally with data sent back by Russia's Venus 4 and its landing capsule. Neither spacecraft found evidence of Van Allen-like radiation belts around Venus, both reported hydrogen coronas and found that carbon dioxide was the principal constituent of the Venusian atmosphere. Mariner's finding that the atmosphere was "at least" 7 to 8 times as dense as the earth's does not contradict more precise Russian data showing densities 15 to 22 times as great...
...Russians did not detect a Venusian magnetic field, Mariner discovered slight magnetic activity that could have come either from a field less than 1/300th the strength of earth's or simply from the interaction between the solar wind and the Venusian ionosphere. The Russians at first reported that carbon dioxide comprised 98% of the Venusian atmosphere, but later revised the figure down to between 90% and 95%, closer to Mariner's reported 72% to 87%. And while Mariner could find no evidence of oxygen in the atmosphere, the Venus 4 capsule reported a trace...
...Soviet capsule also measured Venusian atmospheric pressures up to 15 times as great as the earth's and determined that the atmosphere consists almost entirely of carbon dioxide, which, scientists believe, is spewed out by volcanic activity. No trace of nitrogen (which constitutes 78% of the earth's atmosphere) and only 1.5% of oxygen and water vapor were detected. In readings made before Venus 4 entered the atmosphere, the Russians could find no evidence of a Venusian magnetic field and radiation belt...
These scenes, flashed into the living rooms of more than 30 million Americans last week, were notable for the fact that they could be seen in near carbon-copy similarity on any one of the three TV networks' newscasts. The tendency to cover the news in triplicate is less attributable to a lack of imagination than it is to the limitations unique to TV journalism. Since TV is so much a visual medium, the networks are prone to judge a news story solely on its pictorial value. Thus, in covering fires, wars and riots, all the cameras point...
...critics who point out that it would be difficult for life to arise spontaneously in the atmosphere, Morowitz and Sagan have a ready answer: it did not. Instead, they postulate, ancient Venus had a much thinner atmosphere; its surface, now superheated by the greenhouse effect of a thick carbon-dioxide-filled atmosphere, was once cool enough to spawn life. As more gas was spewed into the atmosphere by volcanic action, however, the surface temperatures gradually became unbearable and could have driven the more buoyant organisms into the clouds, where they evolved and may well exist today...