Investigation: Venus — From Saturnian Cosmology to Venera

Summary

Scope: Trace Venus from Saturnian / catastrophist narratives (comet phase, divine succession) through ancient and medieval testimony, to modern measurements and landers. Cross-reference Immanuel Velikovsky’s published expectations with later results. Record a working list of space missions. Flag open physical questions: cometary “head” morphology in ancient reports, possible late accretion of a rocky core, and how gas giants might retain condensed material.

Status: Open. Mixed confidence: orbital mechanics and probe engineering are well documented in mainstream sources; catastrophist and accretion theses here are investigative hypotheses, not established fact.

1. Saturnian framework and “comet Venus”

• In Saturnian / electric-universe adjacent readings, Venus is often treated as a late intruder into the inner solar system: a plasmoid or cometary body in antiquity that later settled into a nearly circular orbit. That picture is developed at book length in Velikovsky’s Worlds in Collision (comet Venus, encounters with Earth and Mars) and in Alfred de Grazia’s divine succession (Saturn → Jupiter → Venus → Mars as visible hierarchy). See in-repo text: cosmos/cosmology/Immanuel-Velikovsky-Worlds-in-Collision.txt (Part 2, Venus; sections include “The Comet Venus,” “The Gases of Venus,” “The Thermal Balance of Venus”).
• Timeline-aligned material on Venus as element “water” among the five planets appears in Wuxing and the Five Planets.
• Comet-Venus as narrative correlate for dragon / fire / tribute motifs is argued (with a project conclusion on “one” fire-dragon event) in Griffins and myth fauna….

2. Speculative thesis: rocky core accretion in BCE times

Hypothesis (for investigation, not asserted as proven): Venus may have grown or substantially modified a solid core during late catastrophic epochs by capturing debris shed from Mars and Earth during close approaches (electrical sputtering, tidal breakup, or impact chains as catastrophists describe). If so, the present terrestrial-like bulk density and slow retrograde rotation could partly reflect mass gain and torque from those events, not only primordial formation.

Corollary (highly speculative): Gas giants might retain rocky or refractory cores (or deep metallic-hydrogen shells behaving like a “kernel”) that stabilize them against dispersal into the solar wind or complete plasma-like redistribution—an analogy to “something solid must remain” for long-lived structure. Mainstream planetary science already posits rocky/icy cores inside Jupiter and Saturn; this investigation asks whether catastrophist or EU narratives add time-dependent or interaction-driven nuance (open).

3. Ancient testimony: was there always a “ball” at the head of the comet?

• Velikovsky’s method: He collates worldwide motifs of bearded stars, horns, wings, serpents, and swords in the sky, meteoritic falls tied to Astarte / Athene / Venus, and texts such as Joel / Isaiah compared to Vedic Maruts (interpreted as a host of cometary bodies associated with Mars–Venus interaction). See Worlds in Collision sections on “Samples from the Planets,” Soochow chart reference to comets born from planets, Pliny on comets from planets, etc. (same in-repo .txt as above).
• Open iconographic question: Ancient comet glyphs often show coma + tail without a resolved disk; planet Venus in calm epochs is a steady point or crescent (phases). Testimony of a “head” may mean nucleus visibility, plasma sheath, or cultural stylization (horns = coma). No single ancient image proves continuous solid sphericity through all reported apparitions; the investigation treats head morphology as underdetermined by texts alone.

4. Citations located under ~/dev/wget (local mirror)

Paths are relative to the user’s ~/dev/wget tree on this machine; they are not shipped inside paradigm-threat-files.

Note: A full-text mirror of Worlds in Collision lives in this repo as cosmos/cosmology/Immanuel-Velikovsky-Worlds-in-Collision.txt (not only under wget).

5. Velikovsky: predictions and temperature cross-check

Primary source: Worlds in Collision, closing chapters “The Gases of Venus” and “The Thermal Balance of Venus” (in-repo .txt).

What Velikovsky argued (paraphrase):

• Venus’s bright clouds are tied to a cometary tail legacy; atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide, dust, petroleum / hydrocarbon gases (he expected infrared spectroscopy eventually to show hydrocarbon bands if they sit high enough for sunlight to reach). He engaged R. Wildt’s formaldehyde suggestion and Arrhenius / albedo numbers for Venus.
• Thermal puzzle (1950): Radiometry (Pettit & Nicholson; Coblentz & Lampland) found substantial heat from the night side and nearly uniform disk temperatures—hard to square with a 225-day locked rotation implied by some spectroscopic arguments. Velikovsky’s resolution: the planet is hot on its own—recent violent birth, cometary path, close encounters with Earth and Mars, internal heat still escaping; optional petroleum fires if oxygen were present (he notes oxygen is not seen spectroscopically to the depth analyzed).

Cross-reference to modern consensus:

• Surface: ~464–467 °C (735 K), ~92 bar CO₂-dominated atmosphere, sulfuric acid clouds—consistent with Mariner 2, Venera–Vega landers, Magellan, Venus Express, etc.
• Velikovsky did not publish a single “460 °C” surface prediction in the same form as modern greenhouse models; his emphasis was internal / recent heat and hydrocarbon-rich clouds. Critics count high surface temperature as anti-Velikovsky (greenhouse from massive CO₂ was already debated before 1962; Mariner 2 confirmed very hot cloud tops / IR brightness). Supporters sometimes cite night-side heat and anomalous rotation as qualitative hits. This file records both without resolving the debate.

Upper atmosphere vs surface (mainstream): The thermosphere has very high kinetic temperatures (thin gas; hundreds of °C to much higher in exospheric components), while the dense surface is extremely hot due to thick CO₂ and pressure broadening. So “hotter aloft than at the surface” is true in one sense (thermosphere vs mesospheric cold layer) and false in another (surface remains the dominant hostile environment for bulk heat transfer to a lander). The investigation keeps this distinction explicit.

6. Soviet landings: Venera 13 and Venera 14 (1982)

• Program: Venera (Венера), Lavochkin design bureau; apex of survival-lander engineering.
• Venera 13: Launched 1981-10-30, landed 1982-03-01; ~127 minutes on surface (reports vary slightly by source); first color panorama and sound (drilling noise).
• Venera 14: Launched 1981-11-04, landed 1982-03-05; shorter surface lifetime (~57 minutes commonly cited).
• Measured conditions (typical citations): ~457 °C surface temperature, ~89.5 bar pressure—aligned with the global ~460 °C / ~90 bar picture.
• Why this is not a logical contradiction: Landers were purpose-built pressure vessels (e.g. titanium hulls, thermal insulation, refrigeration in some designs) for limited duration. Lead melting (~327 °C) is irrelevant if structures avoid lead. Sulfuric acid clouds affect descent more than sealed interiors. The psychological contrast remains: humanity operated cameras on that surface—a feat often eclipsed by Apollo in public memory.

7. Mission list to Venus (consolidated)

Counts differ depending on whether gravity-assist flybys (Parker Solar Probe, BepiColombo, Solar Orbiter, etc.) are included. Wikipedia’s List of missions to Venus enumerated on the order of 40+ dedicated or Venus-targeting launches; with assists, mid-40s is common.

Representative entries (not exhaustive):

Future (announced / in development): NASA DAVINCI + VERITAS, ESA EnVision, ISRO Venus Orbiter Mission, others—dates slip; verify against agency press kits.

Authoritative tabular history: NASA Science, Venus exploration timeline (draws on Siddiqi, Beyond Earth, and NSSDC).

8. Open questions (for follow-up)

• Extract primary ancient passages (Chinese annals, Mesopotamian omen texts, Greek comet records) into a dated appendix with translator citations.
• Quantify mass-flux feasibility for “Venus ate Mars/Earth ejecta” against angular momentum and isotope constraints (mainstream and alternative literature).
• Reconcile Velikovsky hydrocarbon atmosphere with in situ and spectroscopic limits on organics vs H₂SO₄ clouds.
• Map EU / SAFIRE-adjacent predictions on Venus surface electrical environment vs Venera lightning and Pioneer / Express plasma data.

9. Related site material

• Wuxing — Venus as water element
• Myth fauna / comet Venus (concluded)
• In-repo Velikovsky: cosmos/cosmology/Immanuel-Velikovsky-Worlds-in-Collision.txt

Keywords: #Venus #Venera #Velikovsky #Comet #Saturnian #1982 #Temperature