Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Speaker 1: Clark and there's Charles w Chuck Bryan over there, and
Speaker 1: Jerry's lurking in the background like a total creep, which
Speaker 1: is super appropriate for Jerry. And this is stuff you
Speaker 1: should know. Have you been singing the song all day?
Speaker 1: Venus as a boy? How can you not sing that song?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, I guess you could be
Speaker 1: singing that um shocking blue song Venus that Banana Rama covered.
Speaker 1: Oh no, that's the one that I was talking about. Oh,
Speaker 1: I was talking about the b York song Venus as
Speaker 1: a boy. Oh no, no, no, sorry, I was thinking
Speaker 1: of It's a good one. I'm mel Venus actually funny enough, Like, honestly,
Speaker 1: that had not popped into my head and now I
Speaker 1: won't be able to get it out. So thanks a lot.
Speaker 1: I thought of you yesterday. I was someone some don't
Speaker 1: even know who it was. It was just one of
Speaker 1: those Facebook posts that comes into your feed said. All
Speaker 1: it said was now the final countdown by Europe is
Speaker 1: in your head. That's all it was like, is that? Josh, Wow,
Speaker 1: that's amazing that's the catchiest song of all time. It
Speaker 1: was pretty funny. That's great. So, um, chuck, we're doing Venus.
Speaker 1: And I was like skimming the House of Work site
Speaker 1: looking for articles and I started to see I saw
Speaker 1: this one article about how Venus is um starting to
Speaker 1: get some love again from the space agencies, and um,
Speaker 1: how little we actually know about it. And so I
Speaker 1: was like this, you know, we've never done one on Venus.
Speaker 1: We don't usually do planet yet. Maybe we should eventually
Speaker 1: do all the planets over time. Um, but this is
Speaker 1: a pretty good place to start. Because the more I
Speaker 1: dug into Venus, the more I was like, this is
Speaker 1: one of the most interesting planets of all time. Actually, yeah, like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know it's described in this article that you put
Speaker 1: together as a hell escape, and when you start reading
Speaker 1: get to it, it's like, wow, you will melt and
Speaker 1: boil if you get near it, or be destroyed. You
Speaker 1: won't even get near it because the sulphuric acid in
Speaker 1: the clouds will destroy you, yeah, and your teeth. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's like, yeah, not not a hospitable place, but
Speaker 1: possibly once was, yeah, which makes the whole thing even
Speaker 1: more compelling. It wasn't always like this, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: it's like the mom and what's eating Gilbert grape when
Speaker 1: she sees um is it? Juliette Lewis and says I
Speaker 1: wasn't always like this? And Juliet Lewis says, I wasn't
Speaker 1: always like this. It's just like that it is, basically,
Speaker 1: except on a planetary scale. Yeah, And I think the
Speaker 1: cool thing about Venus to which we can put a
Speaker 1: pin in this but um, we're starting to gain more
Speaker 1: interest in Venus now because it could offer a peak
Speaker 1: into our own bleak future as a planet. Yes, just
Speaker 1: like you said, put a pin in that and smoke
Speaker 1: it in your hat. Um. So it's weird that Venus
Speaker 1: is this hellscape now that we understand it, because it's
Speaker 1: a it's a very ancient planet as far as human
Speaker 1: consciousness of it goes, because it is so bright. It's
Speaker 1: actually the third brightest object in the sky after the
Speaker 1: Sun and the moon, thanks comes Venus. Um. So like
Speaker 1: humans have been able to see it long before we
Speaker 1: had anything like telescopes or anything like that. And in fact,
Speaker 1: as far back as I think sixteen sixty BC or
Speaker 1: the six hundred BC, um, the Babylonians were tracking it,
Speaker 1: and they called the Ishtar after the goddess of love
Speaker 1: and war after the movie. And then yeah, then they
Speaker 1: would say it Ishtar black, and then some would go, hey,
Speaker 1: it's not as bad as everyone says, that's right, and
Speaker 1: then that person would get shouted down, and then the
Speaker 1: whole cycle would start over again. Yeah, it went by
Speaker 1: quite a few different names. It was Ishtar, uh they
Speaker 1: you know, before the Hellenistic Greeks came along, they thought
Speaker 1: it was actually two different stars, so it was known
Speaker 1: as both Vesper the evening star, and Lucifer or Phosphorus
Speaker 1: the morning star. That's right. And then eventually Pythagoras said,
Speaker 1: it's just one star everyone, and can we settle on
Speaker 1: a name? And the Hellenstic Greek said, how about Aphrodite,
Speaker 1: And then of course the Romans came along said no,
Speaker 1: we call it Venus. That's right, and that's where we've
Speaker 1: settled because the the Western world is modeled on the
Speaker 1: Roman world. I guess. But Venus, the idea that it
Speaker 1: is this feminine planet, that it has to do with
Speaker 1: love and beauty, Uh, it really isn't start contrast to
Speaker 1: how we understand it today. Since we we did start
Speaker 1: really exploring it in the nineteen sixties. But even still,
Speaker 1: if you if you look at um some of the
Speaker 1: details of Venus that have been named by people. Apparently
Speaker 1: almost all of the features on Venus are named after women,
Speaker 1: Like there's a crater named after Chicago Way, there's a
Speaker 1: canyon named after Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt,
Speaker 1: so it's it's all about feminine beauty. But it's also
Speaker 1: like this crazy health gape that will make your teeth
Speaker 1: fall out and burn you alive. So it's a real
Speaker 1: paradox in terms, you know what I mean totally. Uh.
Speaker 1: It is the second planet from the sun um, which
Speaker 1: is makes Venus our little neighbor, and which also means
Speaker 1: that if Venus is getting sunlight, it's getting that light
Speaker 1: a couple of minutes before we do. Uh. It is terrestrial,
Speaker 1: so it's made of rocks and solid things as opposed
Speaker 1: to being like a gas planet like Jupiter and Saturn.
Speaker 1: And there's also a boundary between the surface of the
Speaker 1: planet in the atmosphere, so you know, it is like
Speaker 1: Earth in some ways, but also not like Earth in
Speaker 1: a whole lot of ways. Well it, I mean, it
Speaker 1: is often called Earth's twin and then sometimes Earth's toxic twin.
Speaker 1: I think that's an Aerosmith reference. But um, because it
Speaker 1: is closer to the Sun than we are, it's one
Speaker 1: one planet in it's orbit actually is between us and
Speaker 1: the Sun. It falls within our orbit around the Sun,
Speaker 1: which means that to us here on Earth, Venus seems
Speaker 1: to have phases like the Moon does, which is pretty cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think Galilee figure that out in sixteen ten Galileo. Yeah, Oh,
Speaker 1: you're on a first name basis. Yeah, and I go
Speaker 1: away back. I can veil him out of jail once.
Speaker 1: He's just call him Galley, yeah, the gal or Gigi.
Speaker 1: Uh so. Yeah, when Venus is on the opposite side
Speaker 1: of the Sun, it's in full phase, and then it's
Speaker 1: looks like it's in the new phase when it's between
Speaker 1: the Earth and the Sun. Yeah, and every once in
Speaker 1: a while, our alignment with Venus and the Sun is
Speaker 1: like a perfect line. And it just happened in two twelve,
Speaker 1: and I don't think I bothered to look, because I
Speaker 1: don't remember looking. But the next time it's gonna happen
Speaker 1: is seen. And unless aging researchers really have some sort
Speaker 1: of breakthrough, I'm not gonna be around to see that
Speaker 1: you didn't look, and you call yourself a friend of
Speaker 1: Gali of Gigi. Yeah, I know you would be so disappointed.
Speaker 1: It'd be is so disappointed into me. Come on, the
Speaker 1: jos just look into the sky, right, Uh? So, Venus
Speaker 1: is they call it the Earth's twin for the similarities,
Speaker 1: um and not the differences obviously, even though like you said,
Speaker 1: it's an evil twin. It's about about the same size.
Speaker 1: It has about of our mass, but is almost a
Speaker 1: perfect sphere because it is a slow roller. The Earth spins, obviously,
Speaker 1: everyone knows, very quickly, revolving once every day every twenty
Speaker 1: almost every twenty four hours, exactly twenty hours and fifty
Speaker 1: six minutes, which means of course that that centrifical centrifugal
Speaker 1: motion is going to bulge the equator. So we're technically
Speaker 1: an ellipsoid in shape. But Venus spins the very very
Speaker 1: slowly once every two dred and forty three days earth days.
Speaker 1: That is, it spends on its axis. It's the slowest
Speaker 1: spinner in our solar system and a really kind of
Speaker 1: perfect little sphere because of that. Yeah, it doesn't produce
Speaker 1: that bulge because it's so unsightly. And also because of
Speaker 1: that same slow spin, it has an iron core and
Speaker 1: molten mantle a lot like Earth does UM and through
Speaker 1: that that that's that rocky core, that metallic core UM.
Speaker 1: Earth's magnetic field is produced. But it's also produced because
Speaker 1: it's spin so fast. Well, even though it has the
Speaker 1: same kind of core and mantle that the Earth does,
Speaker 1: Venus spin so slowly, it can't produce a magnetic field,
Speaker 1: at least one that's not very strong. UM. I think
Speaker 1: venus Is magnetic field is fift ten thousands of a
Speaker 1: percent the strength of Earth's magnetic field. Nothing like you
Speaker 1: try to use a magnet up there, it's just gonna
Speaker 1: it'll just melt in your hand, You dummy, don't even
Speaker 1: try it, and you're dead anyway. Yeah, exactly. Uh. There's
Speaker 1: some pretty cool theories about some interesting aspects of Venus. UM.
Speaker 1: One is, and this is in a theory. It is
Speaker 1: a fact Venus has no moon. But one of the
Speaker 1: theories is that Earth's moon used to orbit Venus, but
Speaker 1: our gravity was so strong we just came in and
Speaker 1: said that's ours. Now, we'll be taking that moon. I know,
Speaker 1: imagine seeing that moon approach out of nowhere to would
Speaker 1: be like melancholy. You know, Oh my god, that movie.
Speaker 1: I love that movie to just see recently, uh not
Speaker 1: too recently. I mean I loved it too. I'm glad
Speaker 1: you didn't say I enjoyed it, because that's the movie enjoyed,
Speaker 1: right exactly. I read this article once it called it
Speaker 1: was um I think it was titled like Lars von
Speaker 1: Trier is campy, and they were basically like everybody's taking
Speaker 1: Lars von Trier incorrectly, like this is all He's like
Speaker 1: a huge joke, sir, Like this is all in jest.
Speaker 1: And once since I read that, I was like, I
Speaker 1: really started to appreciate his stuff a lot differently. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean those are a lot of his films are
Speaker 1: tough to get through. Yeah, Dad, what you what a
Speaker 1: part that is once you realize that it's like a joke,
Speaker 1: or at least as far as large von Trier is concerned,
Speaker 1: it's a joke, like it definitely, it's just easier to
Speaker 1: take and watch and it's actually kind of funny and something.
Speaker 1: But is that true or were they just sort of
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know that they They had him
Speaker 1: quoted as saying like, yeah, you got me, but they
Speaker 1: made such a strong case that it's tough to tough
Speaker 1: to not see it that way. I'll see if I
Speaker 1: can dig it up and send it to you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that sounds really interesting. Alright, so no moon. Earth perhaps
Speaker 1: took the moon. Another really interesting thing that has sprung
Speaker 1: a few different theories is that the backwards spin of
Speaker 1: Venus relative to Earth. And this is interesting and that
Speaker 1: some scientists say, yeah, it's backwards because it used to
Speaker 1: spend relative to us the same then it slowed down
Speaker 1: and stopped and started spending the other way. And we
Speaker 1: can tell this because it's slowing down again. They measured
Speaker 1: it sixteen years apart, and at the end of that
Speaker 1: run it spuns six point five minutes slower, which is
Speaker 1: a lot considering the Earth's rotation slows only by about
Speaker 1: one point eight milliseconds every hundred years. So that's the
Speaker 1: one theory. Others said it's not and never did quote
Speaker 1: unquote spin backwards. It just got knocked a d and
Speaker 1: eighty degrees on its axis. So it looks backwards. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like the planet got flipped upside down somehow, and so
Speaker 1: to us it looks like it's spinning backwards, but it's
Speaker 1: spinning the same way it always has, And they're like, well,
Speaker 1: how would the planet get knocked upside down? Obvious idea
Speaker 1: is a planetoid or a meteor or something like that
Speaker 1: striking it in just the right spot, which is the
Speaker 1: right force that it flipped the planet upside down. Another
Speaker 1: one is that the um that Venus's atmosphere so thick.
Speaker 1: How thick is it? It's so thick it's possible the
Speaker 1: Sun can create gravitational tides like tides in this atmosphere,
Speaker 1: and that these tides started slashing back and forth at
Speaker 1: some point and got so um forceful and strong that
Speaker 1: they eventually flipped the planet over. I think this is
Speaker 1: a really good start. How do you feel? I think
Speaker 1: it's pretty great actually, And I have one more fact
Speaker 1: I want to give out chuck um about the the
Speaker 1: day relative to the year. So you know how the
Speaker 1: day of Venus is two d forty three earth days. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this one's a little bit of a head twister. Well,
Speaker 1: it turns out that Venus orbits the Sun in two
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty five earth days, which means that the
Speaker 1: Venusian day is longer than the Venusian year. Which is
Speaker 1: a pretty amazing fact in and of itself. Because Venus
Speaker 1: spins backward relative to the direction it orbits the sun
Speaker 1: sunrise to like a day night cycle from sunrise to
Speaker 1: sunrise is actually only a hundred and seventeen earth days
Speaker 1: because the sun kind of catches up with vn Us
Speaker 1: in its spin, So it's not a two dtree three
Speaker 1: days stretch between sunrise. It's actually a hundred and seventeen.
Speaker 1: So there's three big numbers you need to remember for
Speaker 1: Venus day night cycles. A hundred and seventeen days, the
Speaker 1: year is two D five days, but the day is
Speaker 1: two hundred forty three days, all relative to us, of course.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, I mean what else counts nothing? So a
Speaker 1: minute ago and I said, I think we're off to
Speaker 1: a good start. I was kind of lying something felt missing.
Speaker 1: But now we're really off to a good start. I
Speaker 1: think so too. So we'll take a break and we'll
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the surface of this weird healthscape.
Speaker 1: Right after this all right, surface of Venus A lot
Speaker 1: of clues because you know, we're we're still trying to
Speaker 1: figure out Venus, and like you said, it's getting more
Speaker 1: interesting to us more recently, which is kind of cool.
Speaker 1: But there are clues kind of everywhere. The surface of
Speaker 1: Venus is one clue that maybe something pretty big did happen,
Speaker 1: and it's sort of recent past because Venus is about
Speaker 1: the same age as Earth is um somewhere in the
Speaker 1: neighborhood of four point eight billion years old, And they
Speaker 1: look at impact craters to sort of gauge how old
Speaker 1: a planet might be, like how many things have hit
Speaker 1: it over time, because they know about how often that
Speaker 1: might happen, and you know, these are good rough estimates.
Speaker 1: But when you look at Venus, the crust of Venus
Speaker 1: basically looks like it's only a few hundred million years old,
Speaker 1: so like maybe up to eight hundred million, maybe as
Speaker 1: little as a hundred and eighty million years old. So
Speaker 1: that is a big clue that like, yeah, something happened
Speaker 1: to kind of remake the surface of Venus at some point,
Speaker 1: which is really really interesting. Yeah, And I mean Earth's
Speaker 1: crust is much younger than the planet itself, but Earth
Speaker 1: has plate tectonics, which you know basically is crust recycling.
Speaker 1: Venus doesn't have that, so it is significant that the
Speaker 1: crust is that much younger than the rest of the planet.
Speaker 1: And it's also made up mostly of basalt um, which
Speaker 1: I think in the history of stuff you should know
Speaker 1: the thirteen year history. It's the first time I said
Speaker 1: it correctly right off the bat instead of what we
Speaker 1: used to say basalt or basil, basalt, basalt. I love
Speaker 1: little sprinkle of basalt cream. Yeah, it's old bay mixed
Speaker 1: with salt man um so uh, which is volcanic rock,
Speaker 1: which makes sense because Venus has the most volcanoes of
Speaker 1: any planet in the Solar System, something like six hundred.
Speaker 1: That's they might even still be active right now. So so,
Speaker 1: but it's weird that the crust would be that old,
Speaker 1: because it's like, why would have you know, all the
Speaker 1: volcano has been erupting at around the same time in
Speaker 1: such measure that it would have remade the entire crust
Speaker 1: of the planet. It's a it's a head scratcher, as
Speaker 1: you say it is. The surface of Venus has some
Speaker 1: huge mountain ranges, some as high as Everest. They have
Speaker 1: a couple of gigantic highlands um the size of Australia
Speaker 1: and South America. You mentioned all those volcanoes, which is
Speaker 1: just remarkable, Like the most volcanic planet in our Solar
Speaker 1: system for sure, right, Yeah, by far, I mean I
Speaker 1: think Earth only has like nine seven. Uh. They have
Speaker 1: about the same gravity as we do here on Earth,
Speaker 1: so you'd feel about the same weight. But there's a
Speaker 1: little caveat there because of their dense atmosphere, which we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about a little bit more in a menu
Speaker 1: it here, there's tons of surface pressure, so if you
Speaker 1: were there's no way you would be alive on Venus.
Speaker 1: But if you happen to be, let's just say, it's
Speaker 1: about ninety times the pressure that we have here on Earth,
Speaker 1: So it would be like you're about a full kilometer
Speaker 1: down underwater into the ocean, yeah, which is kind of crushing.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, you'd be crushed like a tin can,
Speaker 1: And actually that's not entirely true. I think the diving
Speaker 1: record is a little deeper than one kilometer, so a
Speaker 1: human can withstand it, but it's not the kind of
Speaker 1: thing you want to do. And when you combine it
Speaker 1: with all the other issues that you've got going on
Speaker 1: now that you're standing on Venus, somehow that pressure would
Speaker 1: probably actually be the least of your worries before it
Speaker 1: would be the heat. Yeah, you would have a lot
Speaker 1: of trouble with the heat because, Um, here's another fun
Speaker 1: fact for you. Mercury is the planet that's closest to
Speaker 1: the Sun. It's twenty three million miles closer to the
Speaker 1: Sun than Venus is. But Venus is the hottest planet
Speaker 1: in our solar system. Want that for a second. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that'll all be clear here in a second. Um,
Speaker 1: we're kind of dancing around it. But it's it's gonna
Speaker 1: be fun, so just wait. But in the nineteen sixties, uh,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk also talk about the various sort of
Speaker 1: spacecraft that the USSR and NASA has kind of sent
Speaker 1: up to explore. But the Mariner too recorded did a
Speaker 1: little fly by and recorded surface temperatures, temperatures between three
Speaker 1: d and four hundred degrees uh. And it turns out
Speaker 1: that maybe about half I think recently they calculated it's
Speaker 1: probably more like eight hundred and eighty degrees fahrenheit, which
Speaker 1: basically will melt almost anything. M well, definitely aluminum, zinc,
Speaker 1: and lead for sure. Yeah. So, um, it's super hot,
Speaker 1: and it's there's a tremendous amount of pressure at surface level.
Speaker 1: And I read this article from I think it might
Speaker 1: have been space dot Com or NASA. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: where you see Boulder Astronomer Planetary scientists named Kevin McKay
Speaker 1: drake said, you can feel what it's like. I'm Venus
Speaker 1: here on Earth. Heat a hot plate until it glows red,
Speaker 1: place your palm on its surface, and then run over
Speaker 1: that hand with the truck. I didn't get that quote.
Speaker 1: He was saying, it's very hot and there's a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of pressure. I think degrees so is it no?
Speaker 1: But I mean really, I think once you reach a
Speaker 1: certain temperature and you're placing your hand, I think red hot?
Speaker 1: Is that that that line where it's like after that?
Speaker 1: Doesn't really think he was trying to be you know,
Speaker 1: he's trying to appeal to the common person. I think
Speaker 1: so they take an extra class or two now in
Speaker 1: planetary science speak, their yeah you know, all right. So
Speaker 1: I guess we've been dancing around like why is it
Speaker 1: so hot? If it's not as close to the sun
Speaker 1: as mercury, how can it be that much hotter than mercury?
Speaker 1: And it is because Venus is a an environmental nightmare basically,
Speaker 1: and which is one reason why we're a little more
Speaker 1: interested now because it gives us a peek, like I said,
Speaker 1: to what could happen to us in a very long time.
Speaker 1: But it is. It is a a CEO two nightmare
Speaker 1: on Venus. Yes, so UM, Venus is locked into a
Speaker 1: run what's called a runaway greenhouse effect UM, and I
Speaker 1: actually talked about it in the End of the World
Speaker 1: with Josh Clark Um in the Natural Existential Risks episode. UM.
Speaker 1: But the kind of the broad strokes of it is
Speaker 1: that the greenhouse effect. You you want to have some
Speaker 1: degree of the greenhouse effect where you have um visible
Speaker 1: light coming in from the sun warming the planet, and
Speaker 1: then the planet re releases some of that heat back
Speaker 1: through the atmosphere as infrared heat, and not all of
Speaker 1: it gets re emitted. Some of it is captured by
Speaker 1: greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And this is actually, like
Speaker 1: I was saying, you want to have this. This is
Speaker 1: a beneficial thing because it prevents wild temperature swing between
Speaker 1: day and night. There's like a nice average temperature that
Speaker 1: you're going to keep throughout the day and throughout the
Speaker 1: night because the atmosphere is acting like a blanket preventing
Speaker 1: all of the heat from re escaping, So you do
Speaker 1: want some greenhouse gas. But what Venus is teaching us
Speaker 1: is that there's a there's a point where you can
Speaker 1: where you can reach this this point of no return
Speaker 1: where your greenhouse gas greenhouse effect. Um, it just goes
Speaker 1: hey wire and becomes it gets locked into a positive
Speaker 1: feedback loop that is positive only in the most academic
Speaker 1: sense of that term. In no way is it a
Speaker 1: good thing at least as far as life or habitability goes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Venus hit this tipping point a few hundred million
Speaker 1: years ago. Um, the atmosphere got really hot. They basically
Speaker 1: think the oceans literally boiled off. And you know, because
Speaker 1: there used to be make oceans and rivers and it
Speaker 1: used to be a lot more earth like. But these
Speaker 1: oceans boiled off turned the atmosphere into water vapor, which
Speaker 1: just made the problem a lot worse because that's another
Speaker 1: greenhouse gas. And it just sort of accelerated this thing.
Speaker 1: And then eventually that water vapor was broken apart by
Speaker 1: radiation from the sun, by this ultra violet radiation, and
Speaker 1: all this hydrogen escaped into space, left behind oxygen combining
Speaker 1: with that carbon, and what you've got is, oh, what
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide and no water vapor in the atmosphere. No,
Speaker 1: and so Earth has I think point zero four carbon
Speaker 1: dioxide in our atmosphere and we still are able to
Speaker 1: maintain like a healthy greenhouse gas effect. So so the
Speaker 1: fact that that it's a runaway greenhouse effect that seems
Speaker 1: to have made um Venus into this hell escape that
Speaker 1: it is, that's what kind of makes it a cautionary
Speaker 1: tail or at least something that's worth investigating much more
Speaker 1: deeply to find out, like how did it reach this point?
Speaker 1: Like where was that tipping point? Because you know, here
Speaker 1: on Earth we're contributing atmospheric CEO two more and more
Speaker 1: frequently thanks to the burning of fossil fuels. So it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: you know, did it hit that point when it reached
Speaker 1: like uh an atmosphere carbon dioxide or point zero zero eight?
Speaker 1: You know what's the what's the difference? And it really
Speaker 1: matters to us here on Earth because at some point
Speaker 1: that the the atmospheric concentration of c O two or
Speaker 1: other greenhouse gases becomes enough that visible I can come in,
Speaker 1: infrared heat won't go back out, and you've got that
Speaker 1: that runaway effect that just locks it in and you're
Speaker 1: in big trouble. So we need to find that out.
Speaker 1: And it's a good thing that people are starting to
Speaker 1: talk about exploring Venus now again for the first time
Speaker 1: in a while. Let me ask you a question. The
Speaker 1: End of the World with cho Josh Clark. Is that
Speaker 1: available on Apple podcast or wherever you find your podcasts?
Speaker 1: You know, Chuck, as far as I know, wherever you
Speaker 1: find podcasts, you can find The End of the World
Speaker 1: with Josh Clark. Attend part series. They don't pull it
Speaker 1: like Netflix after they're done with you. I don't think.
Speaker 1: So I haven't checked something in a little while, I'd
Speaker 1: be very dismayed. Now it's an excellent series, And if
Speaker 1: this kind of thing turns you on, then you can
Speaker 1: listen to that and then quite a few other ways
Speaker 1: that we might all become extinct. Or if me just
Speaker 1: speaking for forty five minutes in a monotone turns you
Speaker 1: on and you're gonna la that's right. Uh So, that's
Speaker 1: why it's hot on Venus. That's why you know you
Speaker 1: would just melt if you've managed to reach the surface
Speaker 1: of Venus. But you wouldn't even manage to reach the
Speaker 1: surface of Venus. Because of that atmosphere that we're talking about.
Speaker 1: You talked about our teeth. Along with nitrogen, the biggest
Speaker 1: component of the atmosphere of Venus is sulfuric acid, which
Speaker 1: we call battery acid. And uh yeah, it would uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, your teeth would be the least of your problems,
Speaker 1: because you would your skin would burn, your lungs would explode.
Speaker 1: Just these massive clouds blanket Venus, full of these lightning
Speaker 1: storms in sulfuric acid. And it's it's literally like something
Speaker 1: out of a sci fi movie, right, And if up
Speaker 1: to this point you're like prepare for this. The Venus
Speaker 1: member spins on its axis once every two and forty
Speaker 1: three days, it's a Venutian day. But the upper atmosphere
Speaker 1: is so um uh yes, that the clouds that make
Speaker 1: up the upper atmosphere spin around the planet once every
Speaker 1: four days. They're moving that fast, faster than any tornado
Speaker 1: here on Earth. I saw. Um. But then down below,
Speaker 1: towards the surface, the winds are just like a few
Speaker 1: miles an hour, So that difference in wind speed creates
Speaker 1: huge vortices. Apparently there's a vortex that has not fallen
Speaker 1: apart that stayed raging for a very long time now
Speaker 1: at the south pole of Venus, and they don't foresee
Speaker 1: any time when it's going to stop. So there's huge
Speaker 1: lightning storms, clouds of surf sulfuric acid that formed vortices
Speaker 1: in this atmosphere that at surface level is the same
Speaker 1: surface pressure for the same pressure that you would find
Speaker 1: one kilometer down in Earth's oceans. Yeah, and then consider
Speaker 1: that for you know, several billion years. Venus was a
Speaker 1: lot like us. Like I said, it was habitable, it
Speaker 1: had you know, it was fairly temperate, had oceans and
Speaker 1: rivers and streams, and was kind of balmy, and it
Speaker 1: was this greenhouse runaway greenhouse gas effect that uh, that
Speaker 1: kind of made it into this hell escape And like
Speaker 1: I said, it's a big reason we're going maybe we
Speaker 1: should look into Mars, but also look into Venus. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I didn't know this, but um there was another
Speaker 1: space dot com article that did a good job kind
Speaker 1: of chronicling some of the like the history of exploring Venus.
Speaker 1: You know, growing up as a Cold War school kid,
Speaker 1: they didn't tell us like, oh, by the way, the
Speaker 1: Soviets just had a great breakthrough on Venus. The other
Speaker 1: let's tell you all about it. I don't remember hearing
Speaker 1: any of this stuff to you, no, but I think
Speaker 1: that's a great little dramatic teaser. Okay, so let's take
Speaker 1: a little message break and we'll tell you what the
Speaker 1: what the Rooskys were doing in the nineties sixties right
Speaker 1: after this. Okay, Chuck, I can't take it any longer.
Speaker 1: My teeth are falling out from from the suspense. Is
Speaker 1: that Bob Newhart thing again? Uh? Yeah, So I didn't
Speaker 1: learn about this since well either, But in the nineteen
Speaker 1: from like the sixties to the eighties, the USSR was, uh,
Speaker 1: they were into Venus. They were they were checking it
Speaker 1: out with pretty decent regularity through their Venera and Vega programs.
Speaker 1: And some of these milestones that they hit are some
Speaker 1: of the like first milestones in just space exploration period UM,
Speaker 1: not only for Venus UM and sixties. Seven October sixty seven,
Speaker 1: Venera four was the first probe to ever beam data
Speaker 1: back from another planet from the atmosphere of another planet.
Speaker 1: And that's when they said, whoa super hot, very thick.
Speaker 1: It was that good? No, yeah, okay, uh they I
Speaker 1: think the Veneera for technically did make a hard landing.
Speaker 1: The parachutes of course melted and this thing actually transmitted
Speaker 1: data for about twenty minutes with photographs before you know,
Speaker 1: it melted into nothing. And then I think a few
Speaker 1: years after that, the Nara seven had the first soft
Speaker 1: landing on any planet other than Earth. Another first in
Speaker 1: in visiting our Solar system, like before we did stuff
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, well I did not realize it, but
Speaker 1: apparently Venus is the first planet humanity has ever visited,
Speaker 1: which is pretty cool. I mean not personally, but you know,
Speaker 1: we sent some some machines up there as our emissaries,
Speaker 1: you know. UM in n Venera thirteen recorded the first
Speaker 1: ever audio on the service of another planet, which is
Speaker 1: pretty cool. UM. Vega one and two missions in the
Speaker 1: mid eighties deployed balloons into the atmosphere to make measurements.
Speaker 1: So a lot of what we know about Venus came
Speaker 1: from these early Soviet explorations. UM. But it's not like
Speaker 1: the you know, the United States just completely ignored Venus.
Speaker 1: We did have some interest in and I think we
Speaker 1: had the first ever um I buy of Venus with
Speaker 1: our Mariner two probe back in nineteen sixty two, I believe, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was the one I mentioned earlier that recorded um
Speaker 1: what what seems like half accurate temperature the Venus. But
Speaker 1: there was also the Mariner five and the Mariner ten
Speaker 1: in sixty seven and seventy four, and then we started
Speaker 1: to get a little more intense with it, and seventy
Speaker 1: eight we launched uh an orbiter and a and a multiprobe,
Speaker 1: the Pioneer Venus orbiter and the the PV multiprobe, and
Speaker 1: I think the multiprobe sent four different things for entry
Speaker 1: craft into the atmosphere in December, and then the orbiter
Speaker 1: you know, did its thing. It orbited, kind of studied,
Speaker 1: studied things from a safer distance until nine. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: we're getting some stuff on Venus, but then it just
Speaker 1: kind of went away. We stopped. We stopped researching it
Speaker 1: actually after Magellan, which has launched from the Space Shuttle UM,
Speaker 1: which by the way, I was reading like the official
Speaker 1: accident report on the Columbia UM crash, and it is
Speaker 1: just it's jarring, but it's amazing what this just you know,
Speaker 1: scientific explanation of it. Really dry technical stuff still can
Speaker 1: like really jog your imagination and kind of put you,
Speaker 1: like in in the catastrophe. Even though they don't seem
Speaker 1: to be trying to. It's just for some reason, it
Speaker 1: really kind of gets you in the right way online. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like just you know, four page document about what
Speaker 1: exactly went wrong, exactly when down to you know, I
Speaker 1: think maybe the the deaths of Second if not the milliseconds. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: they really, they really dug into it. Documentary. It's still
Speaker 1: out there. It's kinna just it's stirring. It's gonna just
Speaker 1: knock you on your But have you seen twelve years
Speaker 1: of slave yet? No? You're gonna ask you that like
Speaker 1: once a year. You have you have homework this this weekend.
Speaker 1: But oh I know. Um. But anyway, as I was saying,
Speaker 1: Magellan was launched from the space shut in and it
Speaker 1: was kind of hanging out monitoring Venus until and then
Speaker 1: after that, and even kind of a little bit before that. Um,
Speaker 1: just the focus on Venus kind of started to die,
Speaker 1: in no small part because of the collapse of the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union, right yeah, I mean they were they were
Speaker 1: way more into it, into it than we were, and
Speaker 1: then you know, that collapsed and so a lot of
Speaker 1: that stuff stopped. Um NASA said, you know what, you
Speaker 1: get a lot more out of your exploration dollar by
Speaker 1: going to Mars because it's it's way more hospitable than
Speaker 1: Venus is, and so we can use these robots and
Speaker 1: now you know with Mars landers and it's just amazing,
Speaker 1: like the stuff that we're bringing back from Mars. But
Speaker 1: as Yeah, but as a result, Venus was sort of
Speaker 1: like cast aside because it's just it's tough. I think
Speaker 1: that Venera thirteen and a T two has the record
Speaker 1: for the longest man made object ever on Venus, and
Speaker 1: that was two hours before it melted. Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1: And that's a lot of dough to sink into something
Speaker 1: that you know, like and you know that was when
Speaker 1: a T two we could I'm sure we could get
Speaker 1: something up there for for more hours than that now,
Speaker 1: but I'm not sure how much longer. No, but we
Speaker 1: need to figure it out. And the only way to
Speaker 1: figure it out it is to start going back there.
Speaker 1: And so so we are I think this, uh, this
Speaker 1: month June NASA said, hey, everybody, get this. We've got
Speaker 1: two visits planned, two missions planned for Venus. By um
Speaker 1: there's the Veritas mission, which has a bunch of different
Speaker 1: scientific instruments named in its name. It's a big acronym.
Speaker 1: There's also Da Vinci Plus, which sounds like a new
Speaker 1: streaming service for maybe PBS, and they're both gonna be
Speaker 1: going by. But it's not just the United States who
Speaker 1: has it's it's UM eyes trained on our sites, trained
Speaker 1: on on Venus, Europe UM, the E s A has
Speaker 1: a Venus program in the works, India does as well,
Speaker 1: Russia does as well. And there's a private company called
Speaker 1: rocket Lab that's going to be sending something up there
Speaker 1: by three. Actually, Venus is literally hot right now. It is.
Speaker 1: I have seen it in the news and I think, uh,
Speaker 1: did you mention how the old house stuff works? Website
Speaker 1: that we worked for had a really recent article on
Speaker 1: on this right like why we were poking around? That's
Speaker 1: what initially caught my attention about did you see the thing? Though? Also, um,
Speaker 1: there was a big big to do. I think in
Speaker 1: June of or at least sometime in there was a
Speaker 1: bunch of press on Venus because some British researchers said, hey,
Speaker 1: we were examining the Venusian atmosphere with radio telescope and
Speaker 1: we found a bio signature phosphine, and everybody said, what
Speaker 1: are you talking about and they said, no, really check
Speaker 1: it out. So they wrote this paper, and um, it
Speaker 1: does make kind of sense to an extent that that
Speaker 1: you might find life at some port, some like point
Speaker 1: in the Venetian atmosphere, because parts of it are you know,
Speaker 1: the same temperature and in air pressure as you'd find
Speaker 1: on Earth. But it also just makes zero sense because
Speaker 1: it's just so inhospitable too, you know, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it would have to have really evolved to be able
Speaker 1: to survive. And again, maybe possible. But then some other
Speaker 1: scientists came along because they, you know, they smelled something
Speaker 1: rotten and they said, let me see those papers. And
Speaker 1: they looked him over and they said, you know what,
Speaker 1: we're not gonna say this is We're not going to
Speaker 1: falsify this and say this is definitely wrong. But maybe
Speaker 1: you might have gotten this confused with sulfur dioxide instead
Speaker 1: of phosphine because they these chemicals both absorb radio waves
Speaker 1: that are similar frequency, and everyone sort of has made
Speaker 1: this mistake at some point. Guys, he shouldn't feel too bad,
Speaker 1: but it's probably sulfur dioxide. It makes a lot more sense. Um,
Speaker 1: But like like I said, they didn't definitely shoot it down,
Speaker 1: and I think it just sort of piqued everyone's interest
Speaker 1: to kind of get going again. And with these you know,
Speaker 1: with these radio telescopes, we can finally you know, I
Speaker 1: think for a long time we couldn't even see anything
Speaker 1: at all because of the telescopes that we had, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just blanketed by the super thick atmosphere that light
Speaker 1: can't even penetrate any longer. It's so um. Now that
Speaker 1: we have radio telescopes, we can see a lot more
Speaker 1: clearly into it. But yeah, we're just on the very
Speaker 1: beginning cusp of starting to study it. And it is
Speaker 1: possible that there is that there was a biosignature and
Speaker 1: the Bridge didn't get it wrong, um, because it would
Speaker 1: have to be a low oxygen um like anaerobic type
Speaker 1: of life, and that that's exactly the kind of um
Speaker 1: organism that produces phosphine. So it's not like it's been settled,
Speaker 1: like you were saying. But um, the it's just tantalizing,
Speaker 1: you know. It's just in in addition to learning more
Speaker 1: about Venus and maybe the lessons it can teach us
Speaker 1: about what we need to do or not do here
Speaker 1: on Earth, the idea that maybe there's some weird rando
Speaker 1: life swirling around at hundreds of miles an hour in
Speaker 1: the Venusian atmosphere. Just it's like, yeah, let's let's go
Speaker 1: check Venus out now. Yeah, I feel like I never
Speaker 1: hear about space programs from many other countries except for
Speaker 1: like China, the US and in the old Soviet Union. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I never hear about the Brits exploring space. Well there
Speaker 1: with the E s A, I believe, so they just
Speaker 1: all got together, I think so. And then um, yeah,
Speaker 1: India has its own program now too. That's pretty ambitious
Speaker 1: as well. So what about Japan? Did they have a
Speaker 1: space program? Yeah, they have a space program. I don't
Speaker 1: remember what it's called, but they definitely do. Um. There's
Speaker 1: a lot more collaboration than there used to be during
Speaker 1: the Cold War from understand Yeah, sure, yeah, yeah, because
Speaker 1: we're trying to solve global problems here, and you know,
Speaker 1: Venus might hold the key to some of those. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's our Venus, it's our fire, what's our desire?
Speaker 1: That's right. You gotta go listen to Venus as a
Speaker 1: boy too. You're gonna love it. Uh. There's also Venus
Speaker 1: in fur velvet underground and then uh, Venus, I can't
Speaker 1: come up with a good joke, let's just forget about
Speaker 1: it and really beat it out Bob Newhart style. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if Bob Newhart would have finished the joke, that's why
Speaker 1: I'll never fill his shoes. Uh. If you want to
Speaker 1: know more about Venus, well, then just look skyword and
Speaker 1: see what you think, and maybe do a little research
Speaker 1: to while you're at it. And since I said look Skyword,
Speaker 1: that means it's time for listener mayoel. I'm gonna call
Speaker 1: this Pug's Military follow up because we heard from uh
Speaker 1: quite a few military members already and that was in
Speaker 1: our real time. It was just released earlier today from
Speaker 1: US service people who we're quite fond of the little
Speaker 1: pog currency that they had over there. A long time
Speaker 1: listener guys love the show. Just listen to the episode
Speaker 1: and thought i'd write in. I was in the Air
Speaker 1: Force for just shy of a decade when you mentioned
Speaker 1: the Army and Air Force exchange services POGs, and it
Speaker 1: brought me back. Instead of using coins, they would give
Speaker 1: you these pods as changed. So if you bought something
Speaker 1: for oh nine cents, the cashier would give you a
Speaker 1: five cent pog. Subsequently, if you bought something for ninety
Speaker 1: three cents, they would still give you a five cent
Speaker 1: pog because there were no one cent POGs, so they
Speaker 1: rounded down. I guess it's gonna cheap, uh, So you
Speaker 1: would frequently lose money on those transactions. I remember being
Speaker 1: frustrated when my first experienced this. If I remember correctly,
Speaker 1: there being only five, ten and twenty five cent POGs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: five tents and twenties. I remember having stacks and stacks
Speaker 1: of these POGs all overseas, and I rendered them completely worthless.
Speaker 1: Looking back, I'm sure it could have bought a dollar
Speaker 1: worth of POGs and exchange them for real US currency,
Speaker 1: but the thought never crossed my mind. I think they
Speaker 1: owe me some money. I wish I would have remembered
Speaker 1: my pog days. I was also way into POGs in
Speaker 1: the nineties because that would have been a good way
Speaker 1: to pass the time while over there. Thanks for aways
Speaker 1: being there on my hour commute to work, I look
Speaker 1: forward to Tuesdays and Thursdays every week p s. My
Speaker 1: family was moving recently and I was going through an
Speaker 1: old box of my things and found a loan pog
Speaker 1: with Maggie Simpson on it. I'm not sure why I
Speaker 1: decided to keep that one after all these years, but
Speaker 1: I did, and that is from Jeff. That's an awesome email, Jeff,
Speaker 1: thanks a lot for that one, agreed. Uh. If you
Speaker 1: want to get in touch with this like Jeff did
Speaker 1: and tell us about the pog you found, or what
Speaker 1: your tour of duty was like, or anything like that,
Speaker 1: you can get in touch with us via e mail
Speaker 1: at stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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