Cloud 9: Arriving (Floating on Clouds)

The expression On Cloud Nine with the saying's origins and meaning included. Example: After coming home from a hard day of work, Bob's wife announced that Bob was very happy, or as one might put it, he was floating 'on cloud nine.' come from meteorologists, who sometimes classify different types of clouds by.
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The atmospheric pressure on the surface is also at least ninety times greater than on Earth, which is equivalent to the pressure experienced under a kilometer of water. These conditions have caused missions to the surface to be extremely brief: Furthermore, water , in any form, is almost entirely absent from Venus. The atmosphere is devoid of molecular oxygen and is primarily carbon dioxide. In addition, the visible clouds are composed of corrosive sulfuric acid and sulfur dioxide vapor.

Over 20 successful space missions have visited Venus since A Japanese probe, Akatsuki , failed in its first attempt to orbit Venus, but successfully reinserted itself into orbit on 7 December At least as early as [5] Soviet scientists have suggested that rather than attempting to colonize Venus' hostile surface, humans might attempt to colonize the Venerian atmosphere.

Landis of NASA's Glenn Research Center has summarized the perceived difficulties in colonizing Venus as being merely from the assumption that a colony would need to be based on the surface of a planet:. Landis has proposed aerostat habitats followed by floating cities , based on the concept that breathable air Protection against cosmic radiation would be provided by the atmosphere above, with shielding mass equivalent to Earth's.

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Allowing a colony to move freely would also reduce structural stress from the wind. Because there is not a significant pressure difference between the inside and the outside of the breathable-air balloon, any rips or tears would cause gases to diffuse at normal atmospheric mixing rates rather than an explosive decompression , giving time to repair any such damages. Alternatively, two-part domes could contain a lifting gas like hydrogen or helium extractable from the atmosphere to allow a higher mass density. Also working outside the vehicle in non pressurized suits would be easier.

The sulfuric acid itself poses a further challenge in that the colony would need to be constructed of or coated in materials resistant to corrosion by the acid, such as PTFE a compound consisting wholly of carbon and fluorine. Such a structure could be build using autonomous robotic bulldozers and excavators that have been hardened against the extreme temperature and pressure of the Venus atmosphere. Such robotic machines would be covered in a layer of heat and pressure shielding ceramics, with internal helium-based heat pumps inside of the machines to cool both an internal nuclear power plant and to keep the internal electronics and motor actuators of the machine cooled to within operating temperature.

Such a machine could be designed to operate for years without external intervention for the purpose of building colossal mountains on Venus to serve as islands of colonization in the skies of Venus. Venus has been the subject of a number of terraforming proposals. Many proposals involve deployment of a solar shade or a system of orbital mirrors, for the purpose of reducing insolation and providing light to the dark side of Venus. Another common thread in most proposals involves some introduction of large quantities of hydrogen or water. Proposals also involve either freezing most of Venus's atmospheric CO 2 , or converting it to carbonates , [15] urea [ citation needed ] or other forms.

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What's the meaning of the phrase 'On cloud nine'?

Observations and explorations of Venus. Retrieved 20 March Portree, Humans to Mars: Prospective Energy and Material Resources. Retrieved 4 July Journal of the British Interplanetary Society. Retrieved 1 December As it flows upwards and cools, the moisture in the air condenses to form clouds at the crests of the standing wave.

Lenticular clouds are eerie because they seem to hover in place, even in a steady wind. In fact the water droplets are racing through the cloud , carried by the wind. It's just the points where they condense and evaporate that are fixed, creating a well-defined cloud that hangs motionless in the sky.

On Cloud Nine - The Meaning of This Phrase and its Origins

View image of A nacreous cloud at sunset Credit: They are some of the highest and rarest clouds on Earth, but these iridescent specimens are both beauty and beast. As a type of polar stratospheric cloud , they play a central role in the chemical destruction of the ozone layer.

Because the clouds form at altitudes of over 15,m, the Sun keeps illuminating them even when — from the point of view of people on Earth's surface — it is just below the horizon. The ice crystals scatter and diffract light, making the clouds glow with iridescent colours against the dark pre-dawn or post-dusk skies. Nacreous clouds accelerate the chemical reactions that convert benign chlorofluorocarbons CFCs into ozone-destroying chlorine. During the coldest winters they can last well into the spring, trashing the ozone layer all the while. View image of Asperitas clouds Credit: Asperitas clouds are so unusual, they weren't officially recognised until June They are the first new type of cloud to be identified in over half a century.

They consist of dark, chaotic waves that seem to swirl and tumble haphazardly across the sky.

Our language of clouds dates back to , when amateur scientist and earnest sky watcher Luke Howard delivered a lecture tntitled " On the Modifications of Clouds ". Howard classified clouds in terms that remain familiar today: Since then, a sprinkling of variations and sub-classifications has been added to Howard's work, leaving us with a rich nomenclature that has remained unchanged since That is, until now. Members of the Society had been sending in photographs of "the cloud with no name": Pretor-Pinney proposed the name asperatus, meaning "roughened" or "agitated".

In June , the name — slightly modified to its noun form, asperitas — was officially accepted into the World Meteorological Organisation's International Cloud Atlas, the reference system used by meteorologists across the globe. Scientists now want to find out how asperitas clouds form. They are most commonly spotted rolling across the North American plains, chasing convective thunderstorms.

Despite their ominous appearance, they tend to dissipate without turning into storms themselves. View image of Kelvin-Helmholtz waves Credit: One of the rarest and most fleeting formations, this cartoon-like breaking wave is the Holy Grail for many cloud-spotters. It occurs almost everywhere in the world and at all levels of the atmosphere. But it only lasts a few minutes before dispersing without a trace. The crashing wave pattern is caused when swift, warm air flows over a colder, denser, more sluggish layer. As physicists William Kelvin and Hermann von Helmholtz discovered, the difference in the speeds and densities of these fluids creates a shearing force where they meet , producing undulations in the boundary between the two.

If the speed difference is just right, the tops of the denser ripples can roll up, surge forwards, and tip over in a series of vortices, just like a breaking ocean wave.


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When clouds happen to form at the horizontal boundary, this invisible air process is briefly made visible. Though beautiful, these turbulent atmospheric waves are a sign that the air is extremely unstable and may be dangerous to aircraft.


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View image of A supercell thunderstorm over Nebraska Credit: Supercells are the least common kind of thunderstorm. Their destructive might is second only to hurricanes. What sets them apart from regular violent storms is a persistent rotating updraft called a mesocyclone, which allows the storm to sustain itself over many hours.

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Typical thunderstorms develop from cumulonimbus clouds. These begin as dense, billowing white towers, formed when warm, moist air is carried swiftly upwards by powerful convection currents.

Dove Cameron And Luke Benward - Cloud 9 - Music Video - Official Disney Channel UK HD

As the humid air bubbles up into cooler parts of the atmosphere, the moisture condenses, transforming fluffy cotton-wool clouds into a massive, lumbering rain cloud. Given enough instability, moisture, and lift, the hefty cloud becomes electrified. When the cloud reaches the top of the troposphere — the bottom layer of Earth's atmosphere, which contains all the weather — a distinctive anvil-shaped thunderhead forms.

However, once rain starts falling, it causes a downdraft of cool, dense air. This sinks and flows out of the base of the cloud, smothering the updraft and starving the storm of energy. As a result, these storms typically dissipate within about 30 minutes of starting. In a supercell, vertical wind shear creates huge horizontal tubes of spinning air.

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These tubes get caught in the updraft and tilt upwards into the storm. This sets up a system where the up- and downdrafts become separated , allowing the storm to maintain its rage for hours. Supercells can produce treacherous winds, tennis-ball-sized hailstones and flash floods. All tornadoes are associated with supercells, although not all supercells produce tornadoes.