Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsSimulations So Real it's hard to tell actual camera images from artistic images
Reviewed in the United States on January 25, 2020
Simulations are so realistic today that it is sometimes hard for me, with 40 yrs of space experience, to tell which are real videos versus artistic license. The general public will be greatly misled. They should have added a caption at the bottom to identify which scenes are "Simulations" or "Artist Renditions" vs "Cassini Photographs" vs "Juno Photographs", etc. Even in the 1960s, Walter Cronkite had captions on Apollo missions to the moon that would say "Simulations" even though it was obvious to most viewers which were actual TV videos vs simulations.
And I would agree that there was way too much speculation about the conditions on the planets billions of years ago. It should be made clear that much of this is a few persons theory of planet evolution rather than having it come across as factual. It is unlikely that Jupiter has much influence on protecting us from impacts - very low probability. Oceans of water on Venus in early history?
Venus is most likely hot not just because of greenhouse gases, as suggested by Carl Sagan in the 1960s, but because the surface itself is hot, and volcanic gas clouds in the atmosphere prevent heat from escaping from the surface (much like a cloud layer on Earth at night prevents nights from getting too cold). CO2 absorption actually saturates the 14-16 micron, 4.3 micron and 2.7 micron absorption bands at low concentrations, and remains transparent at most other wavelengths. And its hot surface temperature cannot be due to being closer to the sun, as the volcanic clouds reflect most of the sunlight making Venus the brightest object in the sky next to the sun, and absorbing less sunlight than does the Earth. It's hot surface temperature is most likely due to a hotter interior and volcanic activity that dominates heating of its atmosphere, with its volcanic clouds greatly reducing heat escape to space.
