Flooding May Be A Side Effect Of Venus' Move

IOL ^ | 6-20-2004

[blam]

Thanks...makes sense.

[null and void]

OTOH, aren't the Commies looking for an event to use as an excuse to hit Taiwan? Is the muttering about the Three Rivers Gorge a prelude to a planned failure of the dam?

Yup. Just yeaterday wasn't it?

[null and void]

There are people who study planet configuration and movements to predict commodity prices - and they are dead serious.

I don't make fun of them - what if there is something to it? However ridiculous it sounds to me...

No reason it wouldn't work, IF enough other investors are basing their portfolio on astrology.

The Allies hired astrologers to tell them what Hitler's astrologers were telling him...

[atomic conspiracy]

"Guo, a researcher at the Special Committee on Natural Calamities Forecasting under the China Geophysics Society."

He should be kicked out the front door and forced to wear a dunce cap in public for the next ten years. It's one thing for brain-dead media-droids and New-Age doofusses to promulgate this idiocy, quite something else for an associate of a respected scientific insitution to do it. Sheesh.

[Arthur McGowan]

You mean, of course, the apparent size of the Sun. Which means that when transiting the Sun, Venus blocks just a little less than one percent of the Sun's energy from the Earth. That's a significant amount.

[null and void]

China told to use nukes if Taiwan hits dam

[SengirV]

I think you are missing some orders of magnitude in your comparisons

Sun's mass is 1.989 x 10^30 kg
Sun's Diameter is 1,391,940 km

Venus' mass is 4.869 x 10^24 kg
Venus' Diameter is 12,104 km

While the sun is close to 104 times greater in Diameter(115 times to be precise) the Mass difference is what's important when dealing with gravitational effects. And frankly there is no comparison between the two.

[GSlob]

"I don't make fun of them - what if there is something to it? "
If they were successful in predicting anything (versus doing their con job), they would be successful (extremely successful!) in commodities market, stock market, playing lotteries and so on. Human history knows very few of spectacular successes in investing, apart from frauds and flukes. As far as is known, Warren Buffett has never practiced Feng Shui, and it is always good to emulate Warren Buffett.

[muawiyah]

OK, Sun = 104 * Venus.

Or, another way to look at it, Venus is not quite 1% of the Sun's disk as seen from Earth.

So, what does it mean if 1% of that disk is occluded?

Does anyone know what a 1% variation, up or down, in the Sun's energy does on Earth?

It's gotta' do something, but exactly what is it? If the Chinese have a couple of thousand years worth of records on floods, and they correlate with the Transit of Venus, quite possibly we are looking at that 1% in action.

[fourdeuce82d]

I don't make fun of them

I do.

- what if there is something to it?

There isn't.

[megatherium]

The effects of the gravity of Venus on Earth are miniscule. And the gravity effects of Venus have absolutely nothing to do with the transit. Every couple of years, Venus passes between the Earth and the Sun. (Not exactly between, which causes a transit; that happens twice every century so so.)

But the article indicated that the Chinese claimed that the reduction in the sunlight caused by the transit could be the source of the climate disturbances. So, OK, let's see how much of a difference in the Sun's output the Venus transit made. Venus had an apparent diameter of about 1 arc minute (1/60th of a degree) as it transited the Sun; the Sun has an apparent diameter of 1/2 degree, or 30 times greater. So Venus covered 1/(30^2) fraction of the Sun's disc, or 1/900th of the Sun's disc. This means the Sun's output was reduced by about 1/10th of one percent, for all of 6 hours. That's all.

[struwwelpeter]

I.P.Freeley's book, The Yellow River, claims that it's not Venus, but Uranus that's to blame.

[Sefton]

The damming of the Yellow River is a disaster waiting to happen. This is the governments attempt to cast blame on forces outside its control.

[fourdeuce82d]

it's not Venus, but Uranus that's to blame.

I think it's the Klingons in orbit around Uranus that cause problems...*grin*

[RadioAstronomer]

Pure codswallop IMHO!

[RadioAstronomer]

There are people who study planet configuration and movements to predict commodity prices - and they are dead serious.

I don't make fun of them - what if there is something to it?

I would! LOL!

[inquest]

The sun's diameter is 104 times that of Venus (actually I think it's a little more). It's surface area would then be 104-squared, or 10,816 times the surface area of Venus.

In reality for us, the ratio's going to be smaller than that. Venus is much closer to us than the sun is, so from our perspective, Venus will appear to have about 1/30 the diameter of the sun, which would correspond to about 1/900 the apparent surface area. But that small of a drop in light, for a just a few hours, can't possibly have any noticeable effect on the weather.

[bert]

I doubt it.

[bert]

Does anyone know what a 1% variation, up or down, in the Sun's energy does on Earth?....

I'm rather confident in saying that it is insignificantly small when compared to a total eclipse of the sun by our own moon.

[boris]

"Strikes me as pure unadulterated idiocy."

You are correct, sir.