The Nightlife of Venus Nocturnals

these folks can see with nearly zilch worth of near UV starlight and, otherwise bask in Earthshine

by; Brad Guth /IEIS    updated: May 16, 2003

Over the past 2.5 years, I've learned about and come to fully appreciate something interesting, that of science and of physics and even as to biology as pertaining to just about everything I've been stipulating as being truth worthy about the potential of Venus nocturnals;

I've learned that as for decades there's apparently been no new physics laws nor of any new science discovered nor created that would not have otherwise sufficiently explained the very nature of whatever existed (pre-greenhouse) and just as likely as not, of their surviving on Venus, as for someone or something being responsible for what's subsequently represented itself as being more likely artificial than not and, I (seemingly alone) believe they're still alive and kicking. That's obviously referring to whatever life NOT as we know it, evolving in spite of the odds as well as in spite of our humanly pretentious arrogance and stupidity, as such surviving the continuation of their greenhouse environment as we know of today.

Surely this raw awareness of what established science and of so many well accepted laws of physics has to offer in support of my research, surely this concept is not something that's new to non village idiots, nor is it actually even astronomy, astrophysics nor of rocket science conjecturing. Yet the undying opposition seems to only exceed at their proving that I'm more than right, that I'm so freaking right that others having supposedly better education and all of the fanciest of words can't seem to express themselves without their opening up to a little friendly return fire, as with my lobbing back some of their own sanctimonious flak, as in my returning the warm and fuzzy bashing favor. Of course, whenever I received purely scientific references and/or an education into the laws of physics or even biology, there is no flak to return, just my gratitude for that of those willing to inform the likes of myself, informative knowledge of something I didn't already know about, that which applies to Venus as well as Earth or any other planet (no harm done, thereby no flak to return).

Basically, of what I'm looking for and, of what others should be at least interested in learning, is of what we obviously don't already know about Venus or evolution, as what's the point otherwise?

Here's some examples of old science as it relates to nocturnal biology and/or physiology as we've known about for decades and, don't get yourself all huffy about my sharing such information, as I'm not the one pretending as being "all knowing", just becoming aware that there's a great deal of biological evolution capability out there, as well as physiology that been quite capable of seeing in what mere humans would consider the pitch blackness of the otherwise hot and nasty Venus nighttime.


Old News about biological photon sensors

Rod cells are those most sensitive to small numbers of photons. Within humans it's been well established that it takes a rate of roughly 10 photon hits per second or of less time (100 ms) before any visual sensation results (make that at least 100 photons for what's left of my failing rod cells).

There are roughly a million of those rods per square millimeter in some owls while mere humans have roughly 200,000 per square millimeter. This factor alone is clearly indicating an established 5:1 ratio.

Humans may have 10,000 cones per square millimeter while some birds have up to 120,000 of those wide spectrum (color) photon detecting receptors per square millimeter and, of those nocturnal birds having extremely high concentration of rods will thus be having fewer cones. One way or another, this avenue represents another 12:1 ratio.

Nocturnal eyes generally offer a broad retinal surface, thus more room for those rod and cone cells. Obviously the larger the eye's retinal surface, the more area there is for those rods as well as cones, not to mention the improved light gathering area of the lens itself. Doubling each of the surface dimensions is creating 4 times the number of rods and cones, which is clearly another 4:1 advantage, thus if certain lizard folk eyes were to be twice the size of humans, that alone is a 4 fold improvement by itself and, 4 times size is obviously a 16 fold improvement.

Just for the raw math of it;  12 X 16 = 192 which is certainly greater than any magnitude 5 improvement over human sight, not to mention other nocturnal vision factors nor of the UV spectrum capability (300 to 400 nm), of which we humans have zilch worth of perception into.

For another example of life as we know it; the Tarsier
"The tarsier of Southeast Asia has the largest eyes relative to body size of any living creature. The eyes are so enormous that they cannot be moved in their sockets. To compensate, tarsiers can swivel their necks 180 degrees in either direction. Though most nocturnal primates eat insects, the tarsier likes meat and has the vision, speed and reflexes to catch small prey in pitch darkness."

I've learned that mere starlight is all that certain moths need to navigate by and, of deep sea creatures there's apparently no simple record as to how little illumination can be generated and subsequently detected because, it's generally been below what most field instruments are capable of detecting and, according to Peter Kevan's thesis upon insects, insect eyes see quite well in the 300-400 nm range, for such insects the range is 254 nm to 700 nm (Borrer & DeLong, 'An Introduction to the Study of Insects', 1971)." I can't be all that certain but, I believe that knowledge is nearly 33 years old.

I've since learned that pigment change in the dark-adapted compound eye can increase its light sensitivity (in at least one Noctuid moth) by a factor of 1000 and, that basically a dark eye is considered a nocturnal eye.

The human's neural network filters seem to only allow a signal to pass to the brain to trigger a conscious response when at least five to nine photons arrive within less than 100 ms, of which I'm fairly certain that's at least ten fold better off than I can do, which places my inferior visual receptors and dyslexic neural interface at roughly 100 photons/100 ms. According to yet another expertise ( http://swiki.hfbk-hamburg.de:8888/MusicTechnology/374 ) over a sufficient period of darkness time there are chemical adaptations which make rod cells sensitive to light at roughly a 10,000th the level required for a cone cell to function (this is scotopic vision).

I've come to understand that human vision has the ability to differentiate the color of light down to roughly per nm, lets say that the bulk of that spectrum coverage is 256 bits worth from 419 to 675, with our peak sensitivity being roughly 555 nm. Within those 256 bits worth of nm color we have roughly 128 million photon receptors that can take in a 1.0 ms burst or pulse of illumination and subsequently record that. When there's a series of such illuminations and/or a pattern of dots, our vision can further discriminate 64 bits worth of contrast or variations per nm. That's 256 X 64 per ms, or a binary factor of potentially 16,384 bits/ms. Even if we needed 25 ms as to reset between each illumination or pattern thereof, that's still 16,384 X 40 = 655,360 bits/sec, a great deal of information that our brains must record and compute upon and, as you must realize that video motion pictures are of just such photon data packets that resets their pattern every 30th to a 25th of a second (33 ms US and 40 ms). Any way you care to cut it, that's a great deal of communications throughput going on and, we're nowhere as capable as many animals that host densities of at least ten fold more of these rods and cones, nor of the nocturnals that can do even better perception down to 300 nm, at perhaps a peak sensitivity of 450 nm that's performing at a magnitude 5 above humans, where at that evolutionary level of sight, starlight of whatever's getting through those nighttime clouds is sufficient and, of Earthshine is going to be downright illuminating, especially about the 450 nm spectrum.

Here's another terrific guy with obviously far more brain cells than either you nor myself combined and, he even seems to know a thing or two about eyesight: by Robert A. Freitas Jr.

"4.7.3 Optical Sensing
In biosystems and nanosystems alike, the detection of an optical photon is a high-energy event. A single photon of red light at l = 700 nm carries an energy of 280 zJ, a blue photon at 400 nm conveys 500 zJ, and an ultraviolet (UV) photon at 200 nm transmits 1000 zJ to its receptor. These energies, ranging from 65-234 kT, exceed thermal noise by a wide margin, hence are all easily detectable reliably by suitable nanosensors. Note that optical photon detection does not require a nanosensor the size of one wavelength or larger -- for example, 1-nm chlorophyll molecules have no difficulty absorbing 660-nm photons.

Artificial "bioelectronic" cyanine-quinone chromophore molecules ~1 nm in size can detect optical photons of wavelengths l = 580-630 nm, and can trigger and reset in 1-3 picosec (governed by the tunneling times associated with reformation of the zwitterionic states of the inputs 21,480), in theory emitting ~100 GHz modulations to be received. Exciton-generating poly(p-phenylene vinylene) polymer switches have the potential to achieve ~THz switching speed; 733 a birefringent Kerr medium also switches in a few picoseconds. Chalcogenide glass has viscosity >1013 kg/m-sec in darkness, but ~5 x 1011 kg/m-sec under illumination. 1306 Proposals for specific implementations of photoergic transducers (Section 6.3.6) and optical cables (Sections 6.4.3.2 and 7.2.5.2) are elsewhere."

Once again, as for merely being the observation-ologist responsible for the basic discovery of what I've named "GUTH Venus", it looks as though I'm not the one stipulating that evolved nocturnals can essentially see just fine and dandy under those bitch black nighttime clouds of Venus, as others far more intelligent than myself have been accomplishing or call it forecasting this level of visual expertise in their knowledge base for decades.

Equally, I'm not being the wizard of Oz by stipulating that this thermal environment is that sufficiently tempered by pressure and, being furthermore augmented towards sustaining other life, by that of an extended season of nighttime along with elevated sites, where those domains being cooler and thus more livable than not, as others smarter than myself have already essentially stipulated upon this principle for decades. I'm also not the inventor of any new airship physics nor of CO2-->CO/O2 conversions as for creating rocket/turbine engine fuel and oxidiser. Certainly there's nothing in science nor of physics that prohibits alloy steel bridge building in such an environment nor that of structures constructed out of massive rock and, certainly there's nothing radio required of any of this. At least that's what the consensus is of those far smarter than this village idiot can muster.

New Ideas and of "What If's" and perhaps "Don't Ask"

Hopefully, I have introduced a good number of perfectly rational and positive things regarding the viable production of energy from entirely natural resources, as well as for the utilization of such energy as for much needed CO2-->CO/O2, then of good old air conditioning via CO2 heat exchanging as well as for what all those rigid airship applications can utilize from their extracting and then combusting CO/O2. Because I'm bored with all the "doom and gloom" of what mostly our nation and of NASA as been through lately, I've also introduced a fair number of my village idiot class pages upon interplanetary communications.

Of course, in spite of best intentions of my informing and then expecting NASA to run with this opportunity, as of two+ years ago, instead those battle lines were being drawn behind my back, as of shortly past January 2001, along with the mounting counter offensive of "spin" and subsequent "disinformation" and/or of those unexpected "information voids" and, then of ongoing "damage control" which is certainly remains in full force. It has become as though everything is at stake, as in whatever it takes in "dog wagging" is going to proceed in spite of killing off fido and/or of the collateral carnage, without ever accommodating the facts (somewhat like the Pope and of their systematic extermination of those Cathars), even if that includes extended cold-wars, USS LIBERTY's, 9/11's, flight-800's, shuttles and even a few grudge wars against essentially unarmed dictators (as far as WMD's are concerned) that are being replaced by far worse conditions than of what an open marketplace would have possibly created.

It's a darn good thing I'm not much more or less than a mere village idiot, as otherwise I might have gotten the wrong idea about certain warlords, about the morality of our cold-wars, about a whole lot of other history. As it stands, I don't seem to understand all that much and, that I certainly don't have a clue anymore as to how the hell our undocumented lunar landers ever performed their task, part of which was sustaining our apparently radiation proof astronauts and, I certainly don't have the foggiest of idea as to those lunar photographs taken of what was supposedly an asphalt like reflective surface having such unusually high reflectance (in some instances 50%) background illumination along with even brighter "hot spots", yet without never capturing those vibrant stars in an otherwise absolutely crystal clear but pitch black lunar non-sky and, of those photos taken there's absolutely nothing indicating the slightest hint of thermal +/- 250°F stress nor of radiation fogging from 0.1 Sv to an overall mission dosage of potentially 10 Sv's (according to my interpretation of a more recent NASA study/report on the TBI dosage of space travel, nearly 5 hours worth of to/from Van Allen zone travel alone [given the limited shielding of the Apollo mission] should have managed a survivable accumulation of 95 rems or nearly 1 Sv).

I've always realized that our astronauts and all those of NASA folks are damn good (even if that's pulling off the cold-war sting or ruse of the century or that of utilizing a shuttle as a thermal sensor array drone on behalf of Phantom Works) but, give me a break. If we're that good we obviously ott to be ruling this entire world and, perhaps that's exactly what our resident warlord has in mind, even if you and I have to die first or go broke trying to survive (at this point in my ongoing education, I'm just damn glad I'm not a Cathar).


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