From: Billy Brown (bbrown@conemsco.com)
Date: Wed Feb 17 1999 - 08:17:15 MST
EvMick@aol.com wrote:
> So how did the "thermodynamicist George R.Talbott " manage to go so far
> wrong? Methinks that a molten glob would give off lots of gas...perhaps
from
> which an atmosphere formed? How long would it take for the "thousands of
> degree" surface to crust over? ( Isn't earths center molten)? How long
does
> it take for a crust to form on lava? Isn't that crust then an insulator?
What
> are the relative thicknesses of Earth and Venus's crusts?
So far as we can tell, Venus is completely dead in a geological sense.
There is no molten core, no tectonic activity, and no recent volcanism. It
looks like it once had the same kind of geological activity as Earth, but
the internal heat that drives the system ran out many millions of years ago.
The calculations I've seen on cooling rates for planet-sized objects suggest
that it should take several billion years for a molten globe to reach this
state. A contrarian might argue that we can't be sure there is no molten
core (although circumstantial evidence argues against this view). Even
then, you need at least a few hundred million years worth of cooling time.
The Velikovsky scenario would yield a world with an extremely thin crust
(maybe a few hundred meters), constant volcanism, no mountains, and
occasional expanses of exposed magma. I don't see any way to reconcile that
with the terrain maps we've made of the surface (with large highlands and
basins, weathered mountain ranges, and no sign of recent volcanic activity).
Billy Brown, MCSE+I
bbrown@conemsco.com
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