WEBVTT - Life on Venus 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.840 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:05.840 --> 0:00:14.200 Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:14.240 --> 0:00:16.560 your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe 0:00:16.600 --> 0:00:18.759 McCormick and Robert. I've got a question for you today. 0:00:18.920 --> 0:00:23.079 Hit me in your opinion. What is the creepiest image 0:00:23.239 --> 0:00:29.360 photograph produced by human space exploration. Well, since we're talking 0:00:29.360 --> 0:00:33.280 about exploration, I imagine this rules out weapons tests. No, no, 0:00:33.280 --> 0:00:35.760 no, no no, I'm not interested in any clear bombs. Yeah, 0:00:35.800 --> 0:00:39.239 because we have some pretty creepy new test footage such 0:00:39.280 --> 0:00:44.240 as nineteen sixties Operation UH Dominique, which was involved the 0:00:44.320 --> 0:00:48.320 atmospheric sort of slash space detonation of nukes. I don't 0:00:48.320 --> 0:00:50.760 think I've ever seen that. Oh yeah, it's a For instance, 0:00:50.760 --> 0:00:53.479 there was the Starfish Prime event in which a one 0:00:53.600 --> 0:00:56.760 point for megatun bomb detonated two hundred and fifty miles 0:00:56.840 --> 0:00:59.720 or four two kilometers above the planet. And that's above 0:00:59.760 --> 0:01:03.880 the the Carmen line. So like that's pretty disturbing when 0:01:03.880 --> 0:01:05.680 you when you think about it, like a Cold War 0:01:06.240 --> 0:01:09.520 UH space detonation test. But as far as like pure 0:01:09.680 --> 0:01:13.440 space exploration goes, I'm always a sucker for stuff like 0:01:13.480 --> 0:01:16.039 the you know, the so called Martian face, or even 0:01:16.120 --> 0:01:20.040 something like the Hexagon of Saturn, something that just inspires 0:01:20.040 --> 0:01:22.560 this sense of mystery where you're asking, like, what what 0:01:22.840 --> 0:01:25.400 is this place? Really? Oh, the hexagon on the I 0:01:25.440 --> 0:01:27.480 believe it's the north pole of Saturn. It's either the 0:01:27.520 --> 0:01:29.199 north or the South pole. I can't recall. I believe 0:01:29.200 --> 0:01:30.880 I believe it's north. We we talked about it in 0:01:30.959 --> 0:01:35.200 one of our previous episodes, Haunted Geography and Haunted Geometry, 0:01:36.280 --> 0:01:39.240 very love craft in Yeah, I guess they're forbidden. Geometry 0:01:39.280 --> 0:01:41.600 is all through the Lovecraft cosmos, right, you know it. 0:01:41.800 --> 0:01:44.600 But I've got a different answer my and for a 0:01:44.640 --> 0:01:47.920 long time this has been my answer. My favorite creepy 0:01:47.960 --> 0:01:52.040 space images have got to be the photos taken by 0:01:52.080 --> 0:01:55.440 the Venera thirteen lander Robert. I've got them in the 0:01:55.480 --> 0:01:58.120 notes here. But have you ever looked at these before? Yes, 0:01:58.440 --> 0:02:01.120 you know, I'm not sure I've seen the color corrected ones, 0:02:01.200 --> 0:02:04.040 but but certainly I've seen the the the other ones 0:02:04.080 --> 0:02:06.880 that have that that deep kind of reddish orange tinge 0:02:06.960 --> 0:02:10.920 to them. Yeah. I mean, it's funny to try to 0:02:10.960 --> 0:02:13.960 explain what's disturbing about them, because they're just pictures of 0:02:14.000 --> 0:02:16.960 some rocks you know, it's just you're you're looking at 0:02:16.960 --> 0:02:19.720 some rocks and soil. Now what the Venera Landers were. 0:02:20.080 --> 0:02:23.000 It was a series of space missions to the planet 0:02:23.080 --> 0:02:26.480 Venus that was done by the Soviet Space Program. They 0:02:26.800 --> 0:02:31.080 launched these missions to put landers down on the surface 0:02:31.120 --> 0:02:33.240 of Venus for the first time. There had mid Landers 0:02:33.280 --> 0:02:35.840 sending things back from Venus or the surface of Venus 0:02:35.919 --> 0:02:37.920 before this, but they sent a bunch of missions in 0:02:37.960 --> 0:02:40.400 the seventies and the eighties. And one of the things 0:02:40.480 --> 0:02:43.119 about landing on Venus, and we'll definitely get more into 0:02:43.160 --> 0:02:45.240 this in the episode, is that you've got a very 0:02:45.240 --> 0:02:48.800 short window of time to send stuff back because Venus 0:02:48.880 --> 0:02:51.680 is a death trap. Yeah, it will destroy you, even 0:02:51.760 --> 0:02:55.480 for highly shielded, powerful machines. You put a machine down 0:02:55.520 --> 0:02:58.360 there and it's a suicide mission. The machine is gonna 0:02:58.360 --> 0:03:00.799 gather some data and transmit as long as it can, 0:03:01.080 --> 0:03:05.640 but eventually the crushing heat and pressure of the atmosphere 0:03:05.639 --> 0:03:09.360 of Venus will kill that robot and it will only 0:03:09.400 --> 0:03:12.240 have this last sort of death note to send back 0:03:12.280 --> 0:03:15.919 to Earth. And one of these missions managed to send 0:03:16.040 --> 0:03:20.200 some really striking pictures as that last death note. Specifically, 0:03:20.200 --> 0:03:23.080 it was the Venera thirteen lander, which was launched on 0:03:23.160 --> 0:03:28.560 October one, and it landed on Venus on March first night. 0:03:29.440 --> 0:03:32.360 So even the idea of a lander setting down on Venus, 0:03:32.639 --> 0:03:35.680 if you know anything about the Venusian atmosphere, is kind 0:03:35.720 --> 0:03:39.120 of creepy to imagine, because first you're going into this 0:03:39.280 --> 0:03:42.400 haze of sulfurous clouds. But as you go further and 0:03:42.440 --> 0:03:45.040 further down, the atmospheric pressure gets so much and so 0:03:45.120 --> 0:03:48.280 dense and so thick that it's almost more like sinking 0:03:48.320 --> 0:03:51.400 into a liquid uh. And so you've got to imagine 0:03:51.400 --> 0:03:55.960 this lander sinking down into this atmospheric ocean surrounding Venus, 0:03:56.080 --> 0:04:01.280 this boiling hot, lead melting atmospheric ocean of of carbon 0:04:01.320 --> 0:04:04.760 dioxide and nitrogen, with all this sulfur everywhere. And then 0:04:04.800 --> 0:04:07.400 finally it sets down on the surface and takes these 0:04:07.440 --> 0:04:09.960 images and sends them back to Earth. And there's almost 0:04:10.040 --> 0:04:12.920 nothing in the images. You just see the edge of 0:04:12.920 --> 0:04:16.080 the lander in the foreground, and it has some appropriately 0:04:16.080 --> 0:04:20.360 creepy looking triangular teeth all around it, and then beyond 0:04:20.400 --> 0:04:24.000 that there's some soil and some flat rocks. But nevertheless, 0:04:24.600 --> 0:04:27.760 something about these images messes with me. I find them 0:04:27.800 --> 0:04:32.640 absolutely creepy. And haunting. They have this dirty grindhouse kind 0:04:32.680 --> 0:04:35.760 of yellow film effect to them. Uh. And that's of 0:04:35.760 --> 0:04:38.640 course the atmospheric effects that we see from from the 0:04:38.680 --> 0:04:41.760 glow of Venus. Uh. It's almost as if we're looking 0:04:41.800 --> 0:04:44.640 at everything through an evil haze. For me, I think 0:04:44.680 --> 0:04:48.040 it's because it's the it's like the last known photograph 0:04:48.080 --> 0:04:51.359 from from from the from the very you know, borders 0:04:51.760 --> 0:04:54.840 of the known world. Yea. Um. It's like if somebody 0:04:54.880 --> 0:04:57.800 went to the Texas Chainsaw mascre house and took a 0:04:57.800 --> 0:05:00.320 picture of their feet by accident, and then that's all 0:05:00.360 --> 0:05:02.120 you had to go on, right, so you know, do 0:05:02.120 --> 0:05:05.040 you know something terrible happened afterwards? You don't have a 0:05:05.040 --> 0:05:07.279 lot of details, but you have this picture of somebody's 0:05:07.320 --> 0:05:10.520 feet on a front porch in Texas. That's exactly right. Yeah, 0:05:10.720 --> 0:05:14.440 it feels like that. And another creepy thing about them 0:05:14.600 --> 0:05:18.480 is that you notice a difference that unlike Mars, where 0:05:18.480 --> 0:05:20.280 if you see images back from the surface of Mars, 0:05:20.320 --> 0:05:22.000 they can sometimes look kind of creepy, but it can 0:05:22.040 --> 0:05:24.599 also just look kind of like, I don't know, a 0:05:24.640 --> 0:05:27.719 desert on kind of an overcast day, it was just 0:05:27.800 --> 0:05:30.400 a very bare in area with sand and rocks and 0:05:30.480 --> 0:05:33.840 kind of a gray white sky. But unlike on Mars, 0:05:33.920 --> 0:05:36.159 one thing you'll notice is the effects of sunlight and 0:05:36.160 --> 0:05:38.960 the directionality of the sunlight, where if there's a thing 0:05:39.120 --> 0:05:41.320 sticking out of the rover, you can see it casting 0:05:41.320 --> 0:05:44.640 a shadow on the ground. These these pictures have no 0:05:44.720 --> 0:05:49.440 indication of shadows really, you know, looking at them again, 0:05:49.480 --> 0:05:51.800 as we podcast here, I do think there is a 0:05:51.800 --> 0:05:54.680 sense of one taking a picture of one's own feet here, 0:05:54.839 --> 0:05:57.520 So there's an incompleteness to it. No, it's that just 0:05:57.760 --> 0:05:59.880 that just gets at you. Whereas at least with it 0:05:59.920 --> 0:06:02.200 with the Mars images, we have more of a true, 0:06:02.720 --> 0:06:06.000 uh you know, panoramic vision of what's going on there. Well, 0:06:06.040 --> 0:06:09.080 Mars has been thoroughly explored on the surface at this point. 0:06:09.120 --> 0:06:11.440 I mean, we have all kinds of pictures of what 0:06:11.800 --> 0:06:14.400 Mars looks like at different times of day, different times 0:06:14.400 --> 0:06:17.440 of the year, you know, from multiple different landers and rovers. 0:06:17.920 --> 0:06:21.080 Mars almost feels like, I don't mean to pooh pooh Mars. 0:06:21.120 --> 0:06:23.640 I mean, Mars is still fascinating and mysterious and wonderful, 0:06:23.839 --> 0:06:27.200 but it's it's very much more explored territory at this point. Yeah, 0:06:27.240 --> 0:06:29.520 we know As we've mentioned before, we have more detailed 0:06:29.520 --> 0:06:31.599 information about the surface of Mars than we have about 0:06:31.680 --> 0:06:33.599 the bottom of the ocean. In some ways, that is 0:06:33.640 --> 0:06:37.640 definitely true. Um, but the surface of Venus is like, 0:06:37.920 --> 0:06:41.440 it's this mystery hell, you know, it's this hazy mystery 0:06:41.560 --> 0:06:44.560 that's beyond the gate. And because it feels like this 0:06:44.680 --> 0:06:47.520 hazy mystery that's beyond the gate, for some reason, the 0:06:47.560 --> 0:06:51.960 idea of life on Venus has always seemed more creepy 0:06:52.080 --> 0:06:55.960 and interesting and tantalizing a possibility to me than the 0:06:56.000 --> 0:06:58.240 idea of life on Mars. I don't know if you 0:06:58.279 --> 0:07:00.919 feel the same way. Yeah, I definitely think so. I 0:07:00.920 --> 0:07:04.039 think it's kind of a shame that Venus doesn't get 0:07:04.120 --> 0:07:09.040 more attention, especially in terms of our our science fiction, 0:07:09.600 --> 0:07:11.960 because when you think of life on another planet within 0:07:12.000 --> 0:07:15.080 our Solar system, you think of really the rich history 0:07:15.080 --> 0:07:17.560 of imagining life on Mars, both in the future and 0:07:17.600 --> 0:07:19.960 the past, because you have everything from of course the 0:07:20.000 --> 0:07:24.720 old Edgar Rice Burrows novels to uh Total to Total Recall. 0:07:25.080 --> 0:07:27.840 I mean, there's there's so much great stuff there. But 0:07:27.880 --> 0:07:30.880 when you start looking for really cool examples of life 0:07:30.880 --> 0:07:34.640 on Venus, there are some great examples, but there there 0:07:34.640 --> 0:07:37.000 aren't as many. It's not it's not the place that 0:07:37.000 --> 0:07:39.960 the human imagination instantly goes to. But as we'll discuss 0:07:40.000 --> 0:07:42.880 in this episode, we really should because there's a there. 0:07:42.880 --> 0:07:46.080 There are some strong cases to be made for life 0:07:46.080 --> 0:07:48.880 on Venus, either now or in the past. Yeah, and 0:07:48.920 --> 0:07:51.320 so that's going to be the main subject of today's episode. 0:07:51.720 --> 0:07:55.280 If there are, or if there have been, creatures of Venus, 0:07:55.320 --> 0:07:58.160 what are they like and how would we know about them? Now? 0:07:58.160 --> 0:08:01.360 If we just turn to fiction for if you examples? Uh, 0:08:01.480 --> 0:08:04.000 we don't have time to catalog everything, but I wanted 0:08:04.040 --> 0:08:07.080 to mention a few that came to my mind. Anyway. 0:08:07.520 --> 0:08:11.040 There is an HP Lovecraft story from ninety nine that 0:08:11.080 --> 0:08:14.880 he wrote with Kenneth Sterling titled In the Walls of Erics, 0:08:15.320 --> 0:08:18.920 which features a muddy jungle Venus and a maze with 0:08:18.960 --> 0:08:22.240 invisible walls. That feels about right. Yeah, it's pretty good. 0:08:22.280 --> 0:08:25.680 I remember I remember dating that story when I read it. Uh. C. S. 0:08:25.800 --> 0:08:31.600 Lewis took us to Venusian Paradise in his novel Peralandra. Uh. 0:08:31.720 --> 0:08:34.800 This involves an alien Adam and Eve and there and 0:08:34.880 --> 0:08:36.640 then of course you have the Devil Show up as well, 0:08:36.679 --> 0:08:39.000 possessing the body of a character by the name of 0:08:39.040 --> 0:08:42.240 Professor Weston. Professor Weston, I wonder if that's named after 0:08:42.320 --> 0:08:44.920 Jesse Weston, who wrote the book about the Grail legend 0:08:44.960 --> 0:08:47.840 that was so popular in the early twentieth century. You know, 0:08:47.880 --> 0:08:50.760 I don't, I don't remember, but U but it's a 0:08:50.840 --> 0:08:53.640 Paralalandro was was a book I really loved when I 0:08:53.679 --> 0:08:56.160 was younger, and we'll probably read again at some at 0:08:56.160 --> 0:08:59.160 some point. I've never read it, but that seems interesting 0:08:59.160 --> 0:09:01.720 to explore, especially because you've got, I mean, you've got 0:09:01.800 --> 0:09:05.280 multiple mythic associations with Venus throughout history. You know, you've 0:09:05.320 --> 0:09:07.040 got the god of love and the Eros and the 0:09:07.120 --> 0:09:10.679 Venus aphrodite kind of association. But you've also got the 0:09:10.720 --> 0:09:14.520 lucifer association. Yeah, yeah, and both are explored in Peralandra. 0:09:15.320 --> 0:09:18.319 In Perilandro, Venus is also a water world. They're like 0:09:18.360 --> 0:09:21.960 these kind of floating wraths of land that everyone is everyone. 0:09:22.000 --> 0:09:24.720 It's like three or four people, three or four individuals 0:09:24.760 --> 0:09:27.839 anyway they lived there. But yeah, it's it's a it 0:09:28.800 --> 0:09:31.760 is an interesting take on Venus as well. Stephen King 0:09:32.120 --> 0:09:35.839 took us to Venus twice as it turns out once 0:09:35.880 --> 0:09:38.960 in a nineteen sixties self published short story titled The 0:09:38.960 --> 0:09:41.480 Cursed Expedition, which I have not read. I'm not sure 0:09:41.520 --> 0:09:43.720 that's one that's actually readily available or it's kind of 0:09:43.760 --> 0:09:47.120 like a you know, a vault story of kings. Uh. 0:09:47.160 --> 0:09:50.360 And then there's of course his short story I Am 0:09:50.440 --> 0:09:53.920 the Doorway, which doesn't actually visit the planet, but a 0:09:54.040 --> 0:09:57.880 character is takes part in a manned Venus fly by 0:09:58.360 --> 0:10:02.800 and comes back in centially infected with an alien organism. Well, 0:10:02.840 --> 0:10:04.800 it's interesting to think about that this is a time 0:10:04.800 --> 0:10:08.600 period at which the Venera missions were underway. Yeah, there's 0:10:08.600 --> 0:10:12.120 also a similar Outer Limits episode from nineteen four titled 0:10:12.160 --> 0:10:16.880 Cold Hands, Warm Heart that actually stars William Shatner. So 0:10:16.920 --> 0:10:19.040 Shot goes to Venus or he's from Venus or what. 0:10:19.480 --> 0:10:21.960 I haven't seen this episode, but he is involved in 0:10:22.000 --> 0:10:25.560 some sort of space mission involving Venus. So you can't 0:10:25.559 --> 0:10:29.320 give me the deets on the chat. I mean, things go, 0:10:29.960 --> 0:10:33.280 you know, weird. That's that's the Again, this is not 0:10:33.360 --> 0:10:36.280 an Outer Limits episode that I've seen, but perhaps we 0:10:36.320 --> 0:10:38.320 have listeners you can chime in on it. And then, 0:10:38.320 --> 0:10:41.160 of course Venus plays an important role in the expanse 0:10:41.600 --> 0:10:46.760 uh TV series adaptation of the novels. No spoilers, but 0:10:46.840 --> 0:10:49.520 it does have a pretty cool plot line involving Life 0:10:49.640 --> 0:10:53.880 and Venus. And there's also early mentioned in the books 0:10:53.880 --> 0:10:56.120 and perhaps the TV series as well, about a failed 0:10:56.120 --> 0:10:59.280 attempt by humans to establish cloud colonies there. Oh yeah, 0:10:59.320 --> 0:11:01.080 that is an intra sting idea. I've read about the 0:11:01.120 --> 0:11:03.320 idea of trying to create um I don't know whether 0:11:03.600 --> 0:11:08.440 you call them aerostatic or hydrostatic, basically floating colonies. That 0:11:08.520 --> 0:11:10.800 would be not too hard to do, actually, because of 0:11:10.840 --> 0:11:13.800 how dense the atmosphere is. Yeah, cloud City right out 0:11:13.840 --> 0:11:16.959 of Empire. Yeah, except I don't know, best Bin didn't 0:11:16.960 --> 0:11:19.679 look all that cloudy compared to Venus. Yeah, well, I 0:11:19.679 --> 0:11:21.720 mean they were up there, right, It's been a long 0:11:21.760 --> 0:11:23.840 time since they've seen Empires. I don't remember how cloudy 0:11:23.960 --> 0:11:26.800 was or if it became more cloudy in the special 0:11:26.960 --> 0:11:29.240 editions that came out. Who knows. Oh yeah, they're really 0:11:29.280 --> 0:11:31.679 cged some more clouds in there. It's uh, it was 0:11:31.720 --> 0:11:35.640 worth it. Uh No. I think it's interesting that Venus 0:11:35.800 --> 0:11:39.520 doesn't get as much attention as Mars does in terms 0:11:39.600 --> 0:11:43.360 of the possibility of finding microbial life forms. I mean, 0:11:43.480 --> 0:11:45.440 you know, way back in the day, people used to think, 0:11:45.480 --> 0:11:48.080 before we'd explored Mars that there, you know, there might 0:11:48.080 --> 0:11:51.200 be whole civilizations there. People would look through telescopes and 0:11:51.200 --> 0:11:54.320 see what looked like canals on Mars, and they'd say, oh, 0:11:54.440 --> 0:11:56.520 you know, there are people on Mars, just like there 0:11:56.520 --> 0:11:59.080 are people here. Now we pretty much can rule that out. 0:11:59.360 --> 0:12:01.960 I wonder of part of it is because we went 0:12:02.080 --> 0:12:05.679 from being so geocentric, the idea that the Earth is 0:12:05.720 --> 0:12:08.840 the center of all things, and then we went to 0:12:09.760 --> 0:12:13.400 a heliocentric model, and then of course we expanded beyond that. 0:12:13.679 --> 0:12:17.199 But if if we're still kind of thinking heliocentrically, so 0:12:17.600 --> 0:12:20.920 the Sun is the center of of our solar system, 0:12:20.960 --> 0:12:23.880 and therefore it's kind of a center of order and 0:12:23.880 --> 0:12:27.440 and the known. And this is not doesn't something not 0:12:27.520 --> 0:12:29.840 not something that actually matches up necessarily with our our 0:12:29.840 --> 0:12:32.800 scientific understanding of everything. But it is. It is a center. 0:12:33.200 --> 0:12:36.000 And therefore Venus is closer to the center. It's closer 0:12:36.040 --> 0:12:38.600 to the center of the known, whereas Mars is a 0:12:38.640 --> 0:12:42.600 little beyondest, like Mars is a little more on the outskirts. 0:12:42.600 --> 0:12:45.760 And therefore it makes this more it makes more sense 0:12:45.800 --> 0:12:49.480 that it would have more mystery to it. That's where 0:12:49.480 --> 0:12:51.600 the that's where the ghosts and goblins are going to live, right, 0:12:51.640 --> 0:12:52.839 They're not gonna live in the middle of the city. 0:12:52.880 --> 0:12:55.240 They're gonna live on the outskirts of town. Well, yeah, 0:12:55.240 --> 0:12:57.360 it's the outer limits. You don't talk about the inner 0:12:57.400 --> 0:13:01.240 limits though, I do. Really eno always science fiction that 0:13:01.240 --> 0:13:03.839 that goes inward instead of goes outward. Actually, I mean, 0:13:04.000 --> 0:13:06.520 this is something I really liked about that movie Sunshine 0:13:06.600 --> 0:13:09.280 that came out, which you know, I had a lot 0:13:09.280 --> 0:13:11.040 of problems. I think some of the writing kind of 0:13:11.040 --> 0:13:12.920 fell apart in the third part of the movie, but 0:13:13.280 --> 0:13:16.640 it explored the idea that there was this deep, kind 0:13:16.720 --> 0:13:20.640 of ghostly mystery to the sun, and as you come 0:13:20.679 --> 0:13:23.360 closer and closer to the Sun, it's sort of activates 0:13:23.400 --> 0:13:27.160 these instincts within you that are sort of borderline supernatural, 0:13:27.240 --> 0:13:29.960 but at least seemed to go deeper than the human 0:13:30.080 --> 0:13:32.640 or mammalian parts of your nervous system. Where you know, 0:13:32.679 --> 0:13:35.760 where the Sun is the closest thing to a literal 0:13:35.920 --> 0:13:38.520 god there is in the physical universe, right, it's the 0:13:38.559 --> 0:13:42.560 creator of us. Yeah, yeah, I think that ye coupled 0:13:42.600 --> 0:13:44.800 with the fact that every humans just want to keep 0:13:44.800 --> 0:13:47.240 going out. It's one of the reasons probably that more 0:13:47.240 --> 0:13:49.200 people have been to the Moon than to the bottom 0:13:49.240 --> 0:13:51.800 of than to the deepest portions of the ocean. Well, 0:13:51.840 --> 0:13:54.480 I think we should ignore this impulse to go out 0:13:54.520 --> 0:13:57.240 and we should go in. Let's go in towards Venus, 0:13:57.280 --> 0:13:59.760 get closer to the Sun, move one orbit in and 0:14:00.000 --> 0:14:03.280 are looking at this hothouse planet. Yeah, why go to 0:14:03.480 --> 0:14:06.440 a planet that doesn't have enough atmosphere when instead you 0:14:06.440 --> 0:14:08.680 can take your your dreams and your imagination to a 0:14:08.720 --> 0:14:11.360 place that has more atmosphere than you can handle. Let's 0:14:11.400 --> 0:14:12.960 take a quick break and when we come back, we 0:14:13.000 --> 0:14:17.839 will explore the surface of Venus. Thank you, thank you. Alright, 0:14:17.840 --> 0:14:20.800 we're back now. You're probably familiar with some of the 0:14:20.800 --> 0:14:23.480 most basic features of Venus as a planet, right that 0:14:23.600 --> 0:14:26.720 it's very much known as an Earth analog, and that 0:14:26.920 --> 0:14:29.640 is a fair way to characterize it. It's very close 0:14:29.720 --> 0:14:32.720 to the size and mass of the Earth. It's gonna 0:14:33.000 --> 0:14:35.040 you know, it was created around the same time and 0:14:35.040 --> 0:14:38.560 the accretion disk of the inner rocky planets um so 0:14:38.640 --> 0:14:40.960 in many ways it is a lot like the Earth 0:14:41.400 --> 0:14:44.800 until you get down into the atmosphere. So, Robert, can 0:14:44.840 --> 0:14:48.000 you take me on a tour of the surface of Venus. Yeah. 0:14:48.040 --> 0:14:52.120 Actually chatted with astrobiologist David Grinspoon about the surface of 0:14:52.240 --> 0:14:55.760 Venus several years back, as well as with JPL scientists 0:14:55.800 --> 0:14:58.680 Susanne smrit Car. So I want to run through some 0:14:58.720 --> 0:15:00.760 of the attributes of the planet ended here that they 0:15:00.800 --> 0:15:03.320 stressed to me. All right, let's take a stroll through 0:15:03.320 --> 0:15:06.640 the toxic soup. Alright. So, so Grinspoon pointed out that 0:15:06.760 --> 0:15:09.560 first and foremost, this is a planet that's very rich 0:15:09.600 --> 0:15:14.800 and volcanoes and mountains and tech tonic features. Now not 0:15:14.840 --> 0:15:17.720 to be confused with tectonic activity. We'll get back to that. 0:15:18.440 --> 0:15:22.600 You won't find signs of a water erosion. Uh, probably 0:15:22.680 --> 0:15:25.200 unless they're very very ancient. And a lot of the 0:15:25.200 --> 0:15:29.320 topography is dominated by a sort of low aligning rolling 0:15:29.400 --> 0:15:33.360 planes that are largely ash. And this is punctuated by 0:15:33.400 --> 0:15:37.280 some high volcanic mountains and some other sort of high 0:15:37.320 --> 0:15:42.560 plateaus of titanically disrupted areas with with flows of ash. 0:15:43.040 --> 0:15:45.720 So this is a planet surface that has been sort 0:15:45.760 --> 0:15:50.880 of like hit and paved by volcanic activity. Yes, yeah, 0:15:50.920 --> 0:15:54.560 they're also he says they're seemingly steady slow winds, always 0:15:54.560 --> 0:15:57.640 blowing east to west, and uh as we've already touched on. 0:15:57.720 --> 0:16:01.120 The atmospheric pressure is very high. Now. One interesting thing 0:16:01.120 --> 0:16:04.640 about the directionality of the movement of the atmosphere there 0:16:04.680 --> 0:16:08.560 is that Venus rotates opposite of the way that most 0:16:08.600 --> 0:16:12.400 of the planets in our Solar system rotate. It rotates 0:16:12.440 --> 0:16:15.160 in a retrograde way to its orbit. So the sun 0:16:15.240 --> 0:16:18.400 actually rises in the west and sets in the east 0:16:18.440 --> 0:16:21.040 on Venus. Yeah, it's it's interesting. It has also has 0:16:21.040 --> 0:16:24.920 an extremely slow rotation two forty three terrestrial days, that's 0:16:24.920 --> 0:16:28.240 how long it takes, but its atmosphere only needs four 0:16:28.320 --> 0:16:31.560 days to write to rotate. So yeah, there's already you 0:16:31.560 --> 0:16:33.640 can tell there's a lot of a lot of by 0:16:33.640 --> 0:16:36.080 the from a terrestrial standpoint, a lot of screwy things 0:16:36.120 --> 0:16:38.960 going on with Venus. If you were approaching the this 0:16:39.040 --> 0:16:41.640 is like approaching the Texas chainsaw mask er house and 0:16:41.680 --> 0:16:45.680 finding all sorts of bone based you know, voodoo doo, 0:16:45.760 --> 0:16:49.080 Dad's hanging in trees and bushes, right, some skull furniture. 0:16:49.840 --> 0:16:53.720 So the pressure is high, roughly ninety times the pressure 0:16:54.160 --> 0:16:56.480 at sea level on Earth. That's a lot of pressure. 0:16:56.720 --> 0:16:58.720 Of of course it's going to vary though depending on 0:16:59.080 --> 0:17:02.680 you know exactly what al to you're at Venus. We've 0:17:02.680 --> 0:17:04.320 already touched on the light a little bit. You'd find 0:17:04.440 --> 0:17:07.320 very dull light. Grinsman says that if you were suddenly 0:17:07.320 --> 0:17:10.680 transported to Venus, you would notice that the light is 0:17:10.800 --> 0:17:15.560 very different. It's always cloudy, and there's a very thick uh, 0:17:15.680 --> 0:17:18.800 the very thick atmosphere. So light is, he says, is 0:17:18.880 --> 0:17:21.600 kind of diffused and gathered so so much that it's 0:17:21.640 --> 0:17:24.480 a it's kind of reddish, and there are, as you said, 0:17:24.520 --> 0:17:27.359 no shadows because there's no direct sunlight. It's all just 0:17:27.480 --> 0:17:30.439 clouds and scattered light. He says that there would be 0:17:30.560 --> 0:17:32.720 enough daylight to see, but it will be like a 0:17:32.800 --> 0:17:35.639 heavily overcast day on Earth. And of course on the 0:17:35.760 --> 0:17:38.160 night side it would be dark. Aside from whatever kind 0:17:38.160 --> 0:17:40.560 of like you, you would probably notice the dull red 0:17:40.600 --> 0:17:43.800 glow of the red hot rocks in the ground lighting 0:17:43.840 --> 0:17:47.080 things a bit creepy. And he pointed out that it 0:17:47.240 --> 0:17:50.120 is pretty much Earth's alter ego. It's the only Earth 0:17:50.200 --> 0:17:53.840 sized planet in our Solar system only uh, and the 0:17:53.880 --> 0:17:57.000 only other roughly Earth sized planet that we can send 0:17:57.000 --> 0:18:00.360 a spacecraft too and study in detail. Uh, that will 0:18:00.480 --> 0:18:02.720 and that's going to be true for a long long time. 0:18:03.520 --> 0:18:07.520 And Uh, indeed, Earth and Venus probably had similar origins. Uh, 0:18:08.000 --> 0:18:09.720 it could have been and they could have been a 0:18:09.720 --> 0:18:13.520 nearly identical states in the beginning, and yet we have 0:18:13.680 --> 0:18:17.600 gone down very difficent routes in terms of how our 0:18:17.640 --> 0:18:20.760 climates and surface conditions have turned out. So, yeah, if 0:18:20.800 --> 0:18:23.760 we started in similar states, what happened to Venus to 0:18:23.760 --> 0:18:27.480 make it so different from us? Well, runaway greenhouse effect 0:18:28.520 --> 0:18:31.800 boiled away the oceans long ago and they were lost 0:18:31.800 --> 0:18:34.399 to space, and then it it became essentially stuck with 0:18:34.440 --> 0:18:37.359 its present climate. It's so it's it's often touted as 0:18:37.400 --> 0:18:40.000 kind of a worse case example of what climate change 0:18:40.000 --> 0:18:42.199 on Earth could amount to. Yeah, now you might have 0:18:42.280 --> 0:18:45.600 heard of this idea of the runaway greenhouse effect invoked. 0:18:45.640 --> 0:18:48.679 But if you're wondering exactly how that works, Basically, what 0:18:48.760 --> 0:18:51.800 happens is you've got some liquid on the surface of 0:18:51.840 --> 0:18:55.320 your planet. You've got like liquid water oceans, and if 0:18:55.320 --> 0:18:58.040 you heat the oceans up too much, they begin to 0:18:58.080 --> 0:19:01.280 evaporate a lot of water very bur into the atmosphere. 0:19:01.600 --> 0:19:04.800 But of course, water vapor is an excellent greenhouse gas. 0:19:05.280 --> 0:19:07.280 And then when there's a lot of water vapor in 0:19:07.280 --> 0:19:10.480 the atmosphere, because it's a greenhouse gas, sunlight can pass 0:19:10.640 --> 0:19:13.160 through it one way, coming in to heat the Earth 0:19:13.280 --> 0:19:15.560 or heat the planet, but then it does not allow 0:19:15.560 --> 0:19:18.320 as much energy to reflect back off of the planet 0:19:18.320 --> 0:19:22.280 and radiate back out into space. So like other greenhouse gases, 0:19:22.520 --> 0:19:25.560 this water vapor let's energy in but not back out, 0:19:25.920 --> 0:19:29.360 and this warms the planet even more. As the planet warms, 0:19:29.680 --> 0:19:32.800 the water vapor just keeps evaporating even more because it's 0:19:32.840 --> 0:19:35.760 getting hotter and hotter, making the effect worse and worse 0:19:35.760 --> 0:19:38.760 in this net positive feedback loop. So there's sort of 0:19:38.800 --> 0:19:43.040 these tipping points for planets with liquid on the surface. 0:19:43.119 --> 0:19:45.280 You don't want to get the water hotter than a 0:19:45.280 --> 0:19:47.800 certain level because if you do, it's just going to 0:19:47.840 --> 0:19:51.720 create this runaway effect that you kind of can't stop. Now. 0:19:52.000 --> 0:19:56.200 I mentioned plate tectonics earlier. There are no plate tectonics 0:19:56.200 --> 0:19:59.199 that we know of on Venus of all, but the 0:19:59.359 --> 0:20:02.280 certainly there's a lot of volcanic activity. The volcanoes, though, 0:20:02.320 --> 0:20:05.000 don't spring up along plate borders like they do on Earth. 0:20:05.160 --> 0:20:07.720 They just pop up all over. So there's just kind 0:20:07.720 --> 0:20:11.399 of surprise volcano. Yeah. So yeah, it's it's a different 0:20:11.400 --> 0:20:16.000 pattern of convection. Uh, or so it seems according to Grinspoon. Now, 0:20:16.040 --> 0:20:21.240 in addition to the greenhouse gas issue, uh, he did 0:20:21.320 --> 0:20:23.760 drive home that a lot of the differences may also 0:20:23.800 --> 0:20:27.240 just be due to orbit. You know, obviously Venus is 0:20:27.640 --> 0:20:30.320 more of an inner planet than Earth, and and they're 0:20:30.359 --> 0:20:33.159 just going to be uh, certain differences in place just 0:20:33.280 --> 0:20:37.200 on where you are in relation to the Sun. Right, 0:20:37.240 --> 0:20:39.320 So it is closer to the Sun than Us, but 0:20:39.440 --> 0:20:41.520 that's that's not the only thing that plays a role, because, 0:20:41.520 --> 0:20:44.560 for example, the surface of Venus is hotter than the 0:20:44.600 --> 0:20:47.080 surface of Mercury, which is closer to the Sun than 0:20:47.160 --> 0:20:51.200 Venus is. Uh So, definitely the atmosphere plays a huge 0:20:51.359 --> 0:20:54.399 role in what surface conditions are like. Right, and uh 0:20:54.560 --> 0:20:56.639 we already hit on the fact that the the atmosphere 0:20:56.640 --> 0:21:00.000 of Venus is pretty incredible. The clouds of Venus uh 0:21:00.040 --> 0:21:04.080 are concentrated sulfuric acid. Yeah. Uh yeah. Now that's not 0:21:04.160 --> 0:21:07.200 to say that the atmosphere is concentrated sulfuric acid. The 0:21:07.240 --> 0:21:11.800 atmosphere is about ninety eight point five carbon dioxide five 0:21:11.840 --> 0:21:15.480 percent carbon dioxide with like three point five percent nitrogen 0:21:15.560 --> 0:21:19.480 or so, and then it's got these aerosol ized sulfuric 0:21:19.520 --> 0:21:24.240