Talk:Venus

Statements regarding etymology, mythology, or culture are overemphasized

For instance, the second sentence of the first section's first paragraph reads: "It is named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty." The etymology of the planet's name is less important than its physical characteristics, and therefore should be placed after the physical characteristics have been introduced, such as in the third paragraph. But even this paragraph is problematic, as the language used in it is unjustifiably strong and broad. Also, the proper nouns morning star and evening star should not be in bold.

SO2 vs. SO3

Regarding:

"...formed by sulfur dioxide and water through a chemical reaction resulting in sulfuric acid hydrate"

Sulfur dioxide + water is sulfurous acid (H2SO3), not sulfuric acid (H2SO4 - sulfur trioxide + water).

Also, why is it necessary to talk about hydrate? Aren't they chemical compounds?

--Mortense (talk) 22:02, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

I want to cancel in advance a potential Matilda effect about Venus habitability

In 2019, during her doctoral thesis, Yeon Joo Lee discovered that the light absorbance of the upper cloud layers was consistent with the presence of microorganisms. A few months later, in September 2020, and inspired by her work (and the 1967 work by Carl Sagan and Harold J. Morowitz), an article in Nature Astronomy announced the detection of phosphine gas, a biomarker, in concentrations higher than can be explained by any known abiotic source.

I believe that in time this will become one of the most influenced discoveries in our times. Since Yeon Joo Lee was the first to find evidence, and since in all major sources only the last research is mentioned, I think we must stop a historic mistake, a huge Matilda / Mathew effect, an injustice before it's too late. Only proper mention of Yeon Joo Lee here and in all other major articles in the Britannica of the modern age can prevent. I'll be grateful for any kind of help to mention and edit paragraphs in all Wikipedia (especially the Russian one), for the sake of history. עידו כ.ש. (talk) 11:00, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

Whether this is a major discovery, further research will need to determine. If there does turn out to be native life on Venus, this conversation will change. In the meantime, if you want Yeon Joo Lee's work to be acknowledged, I agree, and my advice is: don't blow it out of proportion prematurely, because other editors will just revert your edits. To allay your fears, tomorrow's popular knowledge comes from today's scholarship, and I can assure you that no scholar uses Wikipedia as a source. Sometimes they use it as a source of sources; the most important part of any new information added to Wikipedia is therefore the citations. —VeryRarelyStable 00:49, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Let's also be clear that there is no evidence that the discovery by the team at Cardiff led by Jane Greaves was inspired by Yeon Joo Lee's discovery. They appear to be separate pieces of evidence. The Cardiff project was already ongoing in 2017 (that's when the observations on JCMT were taken) so it is hardly possible that it could have been inspired by something published in 2019. this is not to say that Yeon Joo Lee shouldn't be credited for what she did discover - but she did not discover the phosphine biomarker and we should not say otherwise. All of this should also be governed by the overriding fact that life itself has not been discovered on Venus, and that the prime importance of the phosphine is at present we do not know of any abiotic explanation for it being there - in comparison, for other discoveries (including Yeon Joo Lee's) potential abiotic explanations have been offered. It may well be that there is also an abiotic origin for the phosphine and we just don't know what it is. FOARP (talk) 07:43, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Featured article review

This article no longer meets Wikipedia:Featured article criteria. Unsourced statements and unreliable sources should be cited, removed or replaced. DrKay (talk) 11:12, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

"closeness" to earth

This statement

"However, it spends a large amount of its time away from Earth, meaning that it is the closest planet to Earth for only a minority of the time. This means that Mercury is actually the planet that is closest to Earth a plurality of the time.[117]"

is quite misleading as it depends on what "closest" means. Basically, the usual definition (if there is one) means that the entire orbit (of Venus is this case) is closest to the entire orbit of the Earth. In that sense, Venus is closer the Mercury. The definition of closest as "which planets closest to Earth on average" is essentially (mathematically) equivalent to "which planet is closest to the sun" and yes, Mercury is closer to the sun than Venus - of course, and - therefore - in that definition, Mercury is closest to the Earth. However, as the definition of ;closeness to Earth' is equivalent to 'closest to the sun' it's better to just use the latter. Conversely, it makes sense to use "orbital closeness" as the measure of closeness to Earth. For the article, I propose to remove the statement, but insert a footnote to clarify. Any objections? Bjohas (talk) 00:02, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

I think I understand your comments but there are so many spelling errors and typing errors that readers can’t be certain. Before editing the article please closely check your work immediately above and fix the errors. Thanks. Dolphin (t) 00:10, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Thank you. I had typed this quickly from my phone and hadn't checked - I've now revised the comment in the talk thread, and will carefully adjust the text on the article - thanks! Bjohas (talk) 14:54, 22 November 2020 (UTC)