WEBVTT - From the Vault: Life on Venus 0:00:05.880 --> 0:00:08.080 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My name 0:00:08.160 --> 0:00:11.119 is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. 0:00:11.200 --> 0:00:14.079 Let's take a stroll into the Yellow Vault. Why is 0:00:14.120 --> 0:00:16.040 it yellow this time? It must be of all this 0:00:16.320 --> 0:00:20.360 dispersed stuff in the air. Oh goodness, I'm breathing an 0:00:20.400 --> 0:00:23.479 ind to Uh. This is an episode that we did 0:00:23.560 --> 0:00:28.200 on May seventeen about the possibility of life on Venus. 0:00:28.240 --> 0:00:30.760 We don't usually think about Venus, do we. That's right, 0:00:30.760 --> 0:00:32.960 that's one of the things that's that's that's pretty awesome 0:00:32.960 --> 0:00:35.240 about this episode. You know, all eyes are on Mars 0:00:35.880 --> 0:00:38.040 for a for a few different reasons, some that are 0:00:38.120 --> 0:00:41.559 very scientific, but others that are purely cultural and have 0:00:41.640 --> 0:00:44.160 to do with our history of gazing at the red 0:00:44.200 --> 0:00:47.680 planet and dreaming about what and misinterpreting what might be there. 0:00:47.920 --> 0:00:50.960 But meanwhile, we have Venus over here, which, yes, is 0:00:51.040 --> 0:00:54.440 an awful hell world, but that doesn't mean that it 0:00:54.680 --> 0:00:59.000 never had life or couldn't according to some experts, potentially 0:00:59.080 --> 0:01:02.120 have some form of life in certain areas. Let's jump 0:01:02.240 --> 0:01:08.160 right in. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from 0:01:08.160 --> 0:01:16.680 how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, you, welcome to Stuff 0:01:16.720 --> 0:01:18.800 to blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and 0:01:18.920 --> 0:01:21.000 I'm Joe McCormick and Robert. I've got a question for 0:01:21.040 --> 0:01:24.400 you today. Hit me in your opinion. What is the 0:01:24.520 --> 0:01:31.600 creepiest image photograph produced by human space exploration. Well, since 0:01:31.600 --> 0:01:36.080 we're talking about exploration, I imagine this rules out weapons tests. No, no, 0:01:36.080 --> 0:01:38.560 no, no no, I'm not interested in any clear bombs. Yeah, 0:01:38.560 --> 0:01:42.039 because we have some pretty creepy new test footage such 0:01:42.040 --> 0:01:47.040 as nineteen sixties Operation UH Dominique, which was involved the 0:01:47.120 --> 0:01:51.080 atmospheric sort of slash space detonation of nukes. I don't 0:01:51.080 --> 0:01:53.520 think I've ever seen that. Oh yeah, it's For instance, 0:01:53.560 --> 0:01:56.320 there was the Starfish Prime event in which a one 0:01:56.400 --> 0:01:59.840 point for megatun bomb detonated two fifty miles or four 0:02:00.000 --> 0:02:02.600 and two kilometers above the planet, and that's above the 0:02:03.080 --> 0:02:06.920 Carmen line. So like that's pretty disturbing when you when 0:02:06.920 --> 0:02:09.760 you think about it, like a Cold War UH space 0:02:09.800 --> 0:02:13.919 detonation test. But as far as like pure space exploration goes, 0:02:14.480 --> 0:02:16.600 I'm always a sucker for stuff like the you know, 0:02:16.639 --> 0:02:19.600 the so called Martian face, or even something like the 0:02:19.919 --> 0:02:23.360 hexagon of Saturn, something that just inspires this sense of 0:02:23.440 --> 0:02:26.919 mystery where you're asking, like, what what is this place? Really? Oh? 0:02:27.000 --> 0:02:29.280 The hexagon on the I believe it's the north pole 0:02:29.320 --> 0:02:31.160 of Saturn. It's either the north or the South pole. 0:02:31.200 --> 0:02:33.480 I can't recall believe it's north. We we talked about 0:02:33.480 --> 0:02:36.800 it in one of our previous episodes, Haunted Geography and 0:02:36.919 --> 0:02:41.480 Haunted Geometry, very love Craft in Yeah, I guess they're forbidden. 0:02:41.480 --> 0:02:44.400 Geometry is all through the Lovecraft Cosmos, right, you know it. 0:02:44.600 --> 0:02:47.400 But I've got a different answer my and for a 0:02:47.440 --> 0:02:50.680 long time this has been my answer. My favorite creepy 0:02:50.760 --> 0:02:54.840 space images have got to be the photos taken by 0:02:54.880 --> 0:02:58.240 the Venera thirteen lander, Robert, I've got them in the 0:02:58.280 --> 0:03:00.920 notes here, But have you ever looked at these? For yes, 0:03:01.240 --> 0:03:03.920 you know, I'm not sure i've seen the color corrected ones, 0:03:04.000 --> 0:03:06.839 but but certainly i've seen the the the other ones 0:03:06.880 --> 0:03:09.680 that have that that deep kind of reddish orange tinge 0:03:09.760 --> 0:03:13.680 to them. Yeah. I mean, it's funny to try to 0:03:13.760 --> 0:03:16.760 explain what's disturbing about them, because they're just pictures of 0:03:16.800 --> 0:03:19.720 some rocks. You know, it's just you're you're looking at 0:03:19.760 --> 0:03:22.520 some rocks and soil. Now, what the Venera Landers were, 0:03:22.880 --> 0:03:25.800 it was a series of space missions to the planet 0:03:25.880 --> 0:03:29.280 Venus that was done by the Soviet Space Program. They 0:03:29.600 --> 0:03:33.880 launched these missions to put landers down on the surface 0:03:33.880 --> 0:03:36.040 of Venus for the first time. There had mid Landers 0:03:36.040 --> 0:03:38.680 sending things back from Venus or the surface of Venus 0:03:38.720 --> 0:03:40.720 before this, but they sent a bunch of missions in 0:03:40.720 --> 0:03:43.200 the seventies and the eighties. And one of the things 0:03:43.240 --> 0:03:45.920 about landing on Venus, and we'll definitely get more into 0:03:45.960 --> 0:03:48.000 this in the episode, is that you've got a very 0:03:48.040 --> 0:03:51.520 short window of time to send stuff back because Venus 0:03:51.680 --> 0:03:54.640 is a death trap. It will destroy you, even for 0:03:55.080 --> 0:03:58.520 highly shielded powerful machines. You put a machine down there 0:03:58.840 --> 0:04:01.080 and it's a suicide mission. The machine is going to 0:04:01.160 --> 0:04:03.600 gather some data and transmit as long as it can, 0:04:03.880 --> 0:04:08.400 but eventually the crushing heat and pressure of the atmosphere 0:04:08.440 --> 0:04:12.160 of Venus will kill that robot and it will only 0:04:12.160 --> 0:04:15.000 have this last sort of death note to send back 0:04:15.040 --> 0:04:18.719 to Earth. And one of these missions managed to send 0:04:18.839 --> 0:04:22.920 some really striking pictures as that last death note. Specifically, 0:04:23.000 --> 0:04:25.880 it was the Venera thirteen lander, which was launched on 0:04:25.960 --> 0:04:30.440 October one, and it landed on Venus on March first. 0:04:32.240 --> 0:04:35.159 So even the idea of a lander setting down on Venus, 0:04:35.440 --> 0:04:38.479 if you know anything about the Venusian atmosphere, is kind 0:04:38.520 --> 0:04:41.880 of creepy to imagine, because first you're going into this 0:04:42.080 --> 0:04:45.200 haze of sulfurous clouds, but as you go further and 0:04:45.240 --> 0:04:47.800 further down, the atmospheric pressure gets so much and so 0:04:47.920 --> 0:04:51.080 dense and so thick that it's almost more like sinking 0:04:51.120 --> 0:04:54.159 into a liquid uh. And so you've got to imagine 0:04:54.200 --> 0:04:58.800 this lander sinking down into this atmospheric ocean surrounding Venus, 0:04:58.839 --> 0:05:04.080 this boiling hot, lead melting atmospheric ocean of of carbon 0:05:04.120 --> 0:05:07.520 dioxide and nitrogen, with all this sulfur everywhere. And then 0:05:07.600 --> 0:05:10.200 finally it sets down on the surface and takes these 0:05:10.240 --> 0:05:12.760 images and sends them back to Earth. And there's almost 0:05:12.800 --> 0:05:15.680 nothing in the images. You just see the edge of 0:05:15.720 --> 0:05:18.839 the lander in the foreground, and it has some appropriately 0:05:18.880 --> 0:05:23.159 creepy looking triangular teeth all around it, and then beyond 0:05:23.200 --> 0:05:26.800 that there's some soil and some flat rocks. But nevertheless, 0:05:27.360 --> 0:05:30.520 something about these images messes with me. I find them 0:05:30.600 --> 0:05:35.440 absolutely creepy and haunting. They have this dirty grindhouse kind 0:05:35.440 --> 0:05:38.520 of yellow film effect to them. Uh. And that's of 0:05:38.560 --> 0:05:41.440 course the atmospheric effects that we see from from the 0:05:41.480 --> 0:05:44.559 glow of Venus. Uh, it's almost as if we're looking 0:05:44.560 --> 0:05:47.480 at everything through an evil haze. For me, I think 0:05:47.480 --> 0:05:50.839 it's because it's the It's like the last known photograph 0:05:50.839 --> 0:05:54.120 from from from the from the very you know, borders 0:05:54.520 --> 0:05:57.640 of the known world. Yeah. Um, it's like if somebody 0:05:57.680 --> 0:06:00.560 went to the Texas Chainsaw Mascre house and took a 0:06:00.600 --> 0:06:03.080 picture of their feet by accident, and then that's all 0:06:03.120 --> 0:06:05.000 you had to go on. So, you know, do you 0:06:05.040 --> 0:06:08.000 know something terrible happened afterwards? You don't have a lot 0:06:08.000 --> 0:06:10.400 of details, but you have this picture of somebody's feet 0:06:10.440 --> 0:06:13.320 on a front porch in Texas. That's exactly right. Yeah, 0:06:13.520 --> 0:06:17.240 it feels like that. And another creepy thing about them 0:06:17.400 --> 0:06:21.240 is that you notice a difference that unlike Mars, where 0:06:21.240 --> 0:06:23.040 if you see images back from the surface of Mars, 0:06:23.120 --> 0:06:24.800 they can sometimes look kind of creepy, but it can 0:06:24.839 --> 0:06:27.400 also just look kind of like, I don't know, a 0:06:27.440 --> 0:06:30.520 desert on kind of an overcast day, it was just 0:06:30.600 --> 0:06:33.200 a very bare in area with sand and rocks and 0:06:33.279 --> 0:06:36.640 kind of a gray white sky. But unlike on Mars, 0:06:36.680 --> 0:06:38.919 one thing you'll notice is the effects of sunlight and 0:06:38.960 --> 0:06:42.279 the directionality of the sunlight. Where there's a thing sticking 0:06:42.320 --> 0:06:44.160 out of the rover, you can see it casting a 0:06:44.240 --> 0:06:48.039 shadow on the ground. These these pictures have no indication 0:06:48.120 --> 0:06:52.400 of shadows really, you know, looking at them again, as 0:06:52.400 --> 0:06:54.880 we podcast here, I do think there is a sense 0:06:54.920 --> 0:06:57.400 of one taking a picture of one's own feet here. 0:06:57.640 --> 0:07:00.040 So there's an incompleteness to it, you know, it's it 0:07:00.200 --> 0:07:02.640 just it just gets at you. Whereas at least with 0:07:02.640 --> 0:07:04.960 it with the Mars images, we have more of a true, 0:07:05.480 --> 0:07:08.800 uh you know, panoramic vision of what's going on there. Well, 0:07:08.839 --> 0:07:11.880 Mars has been thoroughly explored on the surface at this point. 0:07:11.920 --> 0:07:14.240 I mean, we have all kinds of pictures of what 0:07:14.600 --> 0:07:17.160 Mars looks like at different times of day, different times 0:07:17.160 --> 0:07:20.240 of the year, you know, from multiple different landers and rovers. 0:07:20.720 --> 0:07:23.880 Mars almost feels like, I don't mean to pooh pooh Mars. 0:07:23.920 --> 0:07:26.440 I mean, Mars is still fascinating and mysterious and wonderful, 0:07:26.640 --> 0:07:30.000 but it's it's very much more explored territory at this point. Yeah. 0:07:30.040 --> 0:07:32.320 We know, as we've mentioned before, we have more detailed 0:07:32.320 --> 0:07:34.400 information about the surface of Mars than we have about 0:07:34.480 --> 0:07:36.400 the bottom of the ocean. In some ways, that is 0:07:36.400 --> 0:07:40.400 definitely true, um, but the surface of Venus is like, 0:07:40.720 --> 0:07:44.240 it's this mystery hell, you know, it's this hazy mystery 0:07:44.320 --> 0:07:47.400 that's beyond the gate. And because it feels like this 0:07:47.440 --> 0:07:50.280 hazy mystery that's beyond the gate, for some reason, the 0:07:50.360 --> 0:07:54.720 idea of life on Venus has always seemed more creepy 0:07:54.880 --> 0:07:58.720 and interesting and tantalizing a possibility to me than the 0:07:58.760 --> 0:08:00.960 idea of life on Mars RS. I don't know if 0:08:01.000 --> 0:08:03.600 you feel the same way. Yeah, I definitely think so. 0:08:03.640 --> 0:08:06.280 I think v it's kind of a shame that Venus 0:08:06.320 --> 0:08:11.080 doesn't get more attention, especially in terms of our our 0:08:11.120 --> 0:08:14.120 science fiction, because when you think of life on another 0:08:14.200 --> 0:08:16.800 planet within our Solar system, you think of really the 0:08:17.200 --> 0:08:19.920 rich history of imagining life on Mars, both in the 0:08:19.960 --> 0:08:22.480 future and the past, because you have everything from of 0:08:22.480 --> 0:08:26.400 course the old Edgar Rice Burrows novels to uh total 0:08:26.520 --> 0:08:29.600 to Total Recall. I mean, you have just there's there's 0:08:29.600 --> 0:08:31.480 so much great stuff there. But when you start looking 0:08:31.520 --> 0:08:35.280 for really cool examples of life on Venus, there are 0:08:35.320 --> 0:08:38.280 some great examples, but there there aren't as many. It's 0:08:38.320 --> 0:08:41.280 not it's not the place that the human imagination instantly 0:08:41.320 --> 0:08:44.000 goes to, but as we'll discuss in this episode. We 0:08:44.080 --> 0:08:46.400 really should, because there's a there there are some strong 0:08:46.440 --> 0:08:50.000 cases to be made for life on Venus, either now 0:08:50.280 --> 0:08:52.240 or in the past. Yeah, and so that's going to 0:08:52.320 --> 0:08:55.160 be the main subject of today's episode. If there are, 0:08:55.440 --> 0:08:58.440 or if there have been, creatures of Venus, what are 0:08:58.480 --> 0:09:00.959 they like and how would we know about them now? 0:09:00.960 --> 0:09:03.840 If we just turned to fiction for a few examples. Uh, 0:09:04.280 --> 0:09:06.800 we don't have time to catalog everything, but I wanted 0:09:06.840 --> 0:09:09.840 to mention a few that came to my mind. Anyway, 0:09:10.320 --> 0:09:13.800 there is an HP Lovecraft story from ninety nine that 0:09:13.880 --> 0:09:17.679 he wrote with Kenneth Sterling titled in the Walls of Rics, 0:09:18.120 --> 0:09:21.680 which features a muddy jungle Venus and a maze with 0:09:21.720 --> 0:09:25.040 invisible walls. That feels about right. Yeah, it's pretty good. 0:09:25.040 --> 0:09:28.480 I remember I remember dating that story when I read it. Uh. C. S. 0:09:28.559 --> 0:09:34.360 Lewis took us to a Venusian paradise in his novel Paralandra. Uh. 0:09:34.520 --> 0:09:37.599 This involves an alien Adam and Eve and there and 0:09:37.640 --> 0:09:39.440 then of course you have the devil show up as well, 0:09:39.480 --> 0:09:41.760 possessing the body of a character by the name of 0:09:41.800 --> 0:09:45.040 Professor Weston. Professor Weston, I wonder if that's named after 0:09:45.120 --> 0:09:47.679 Jesse Weston, who wrote the book about the Grail legend 0:09:47.760 --> 0:09:50.640 that was so popular in the early twentieth century. You know, 0:09:50.679 --> 0:09:54.920 I don't I don't remember, but that it's a Paralandro was. 0:09:54.800 --> 0:09:56.880 It was a book I really loved when I was younger, 0:09:56.960 --> 0:09:59.360 and we'll probably read again at some at some point 0:09:59.679 --> 0:10:02.400 I ever read it. But that seems interesting to explore, 0:10:02.520 --> 0:10:05.680 especially because you've got, I mean, you've got multiple mythic 0:10:05.679 --> 0:10:08.320 associations with Venus throughout history. You know, you've got the 0:10:08.360 --> 0:10:11.559 god of love and the arrows in the Venus aphrodite 0:10:11.679 --> 0:10:15.480 kind of association, but you've also got the Lucifer association. Yeah, yeah, 0:10:15.520 --> 0:10:19.240 and both are explored in Peralandra. In Perilandro, Venus is 0:10:19.280 --> 0:10:21.640 also a water world, and they're like these kind of 0:10:21.679 --> 0:10:25.080 floating wraths of land that everyone is everyone it's like 0:10:25.200 --> 0:10:28.040 three or four people, three or four individuals, anyway they 0:10:28.040 --> 0:10:31.920 lived there. But yeah, it's it's a It is an 0:10:31.960 --> 0:10:35.280 interesting take on Venus as well. Stephen King took us 0:10:35.280 --> 0:10:38.800 to Venus twice, as it turns out, once in a 0:10:38.960 --> 0:10:42.679 nineteen sixties self published short story titled The Cursed Expedition, 0:10:42.720 --> 0:10:44.600 which I have not read. I'm not sure that's one 0:10:44.640 --> 0:10:46.760 that's actually readily available, or it's kind of like a 0:10:47.200 --> 0:10:50.720 you know, a vault story of kings uh. And then there's, 0:10:50.760 --> 0:10:53.880 of course, is one short story, I Am the Doorway, 0:10:54.280 --> 0:10:57.560 which doesn't actually visit the planet, but a character is 0:10:58.120 --> 0:11:01.200 It takes part in a manned Vena fly by and 0:11:01.320 --> 0:11:05.600 comes back and essentially infected with an alien organism. Well, 0:11:05.600 --> 0:11:07.560 it's interesting to think about that this is a time 0:11:07.600 --> 0:11:11.400 period at which the Venera missions were underway. Yeah, there's 0:11:11.400 --> 0:11:14.920 also a similar Outer Limits episode from nineteen four titled 0:11:14.920 --> 0:11:19.680 Cold Hands, Warm Heart that actually stars William Shatner. So 0:11:19.720 --> 0:11:21.880 Shot goes to Venus or he's from Venus or what. 0:11:22.240 --> 0:11:24.760 I haven't seen this episode, but he is involved in 0:11:24.800 --> 0:11:28.360 some sort of space mission involving Venus. So you can't 0:11:28.360 --> 0:11:32.080 give me the deets on the chat. I mean, things go, 0:11:32.760 --> 0:11:36.080 you know weird. That's that's the Again, this is not 0:11:36.160 --> 0:11:39.080 an Outer Limits episode that I've seen, but perhaps we 0:11:39.120 --> 0:11:41.120 have listeners you can chime in on it. And then, 0:11:41.120 --> 0:11:43.960 of course Venus plays an important role in the expanse 0:11:44.400 --> 0:11:49.560 Uh TV series adaptation of the novels. No spoilers, but 0:11:49.600 --> 0:11:52.320 it does have a pretty cool plot line involving life 0:11:52.400 --> 0:11:56.640 and Venus. And there's also early mentioned in the books 0:11:56.640 --> 0:11:58.920 and perhaps the TV series as well about a failed 0:11:58.920 --> 0:12:02.040 attempt by humans to established cloud colonies there. Oh yeah, 0:12:02.120 --> 0:12:04.120 that is an interesting idea I've read about the idea 0:12:04.120 --> 0:12:06.439 of trying to create um I don't know whether you 0:12:06.520 --> 0:12:11.560 call them aerostatic or hydrostatic, basically floating colonies. That would 0:12:11.600 --> 0:12:13.760 be not too hard to do, actually, because of how 0:12:13.800 --> 0:12:18.160 dense the atmosphere is. Yeah, cloud City right out of Empire. Yeah, 0:12:18.400 --> 0:12:20.160 except I don't know, best Bin didn't look all that 0:12:20.160 --> 0:12:22.840 cloudy compared to Venus. Yeah. Well, I mean they were 0:12:22.920 --> 0:12:25.079 up there, right, It's been a long time since they've 0:12:25.080 --> 0:12:26.959 seen Empire, so I don't remember how cloudy was or 0:12:27.000 --> 0:12:30.200 if it became more cloudy in the special editions that 0:12:30.240 --> 0:12:32.680 came out. Who knows. Oh yeah, they're really cged some 0:12:32.720 --> 0:12:36.120 more clouds in there. It's it was worth it. Uh No. 0:12:36.520 --> 0:12:39.800 I think it's interesting that Venus doesn't get as much 0:12:39.880 --> 0:12:43.760 attention as Mars does in terms of the possibility of 0:12:43.800 --> 0:12:46.960 finding microbial life forms. I mean, you know, way back 0:12:46.960 --> 0:12:49.280 in the day, people used to think, before we'd explored 0:12:49.320 --> 0:12:52.360 Mars that there, you know, there might be whole civilizations there. 0:12:52.480 --> 0:12:54.720 People would look through telescopes and see what looked like 0:12:54.760 --> 0:12:57.800 canals on Mars, and they'd say, oh, you know, there 0:12:57.800 --> 0:12:59.880 are people on Mars, just like there are people here. 0:13:00.000 --> 0:13:02.680 Now we pretty much can rule that out. I wonder 0:13:02.720 --> 0:13:05.800 if part of it is because we went from being 0:13:05.840 --> 0:13:08.920 so geocentric, the idea that the Earth is the center 0:13:08.960 --> 0:13:13.920 of all things, and then we went to a heliocentric model, 0:13:14.120 --> 0:13:16.840 and then of course we expanded beyond that. But if 0:13:16.960 --> 0:13:20.760 if we're still kind of thinking heliocentrically, So the Sun 0:13:20.880 --> 0:13:24.200 is the center of of our solar system, and therefore 0:13:24.240 --> 0:13:27.560 it's kind of a center of order and and the known. 0:13:28.120 --> 0:13:30.800 And this is not doesn't something not not something that 0:13:30.800 --> 0:13:34.040 actually matches up necessarily with our our scientific understanding of everything, 0:13:34.080 --> 0:13:37.160 But it is. It is a center. And therefore Venus 0:13:37.240 --> 0:13:39.280 is closer to the center, It's closer to the center 0:13:39.280 --> 0:13:42.200 of the known, whereas Mars is a little beyond us, 0:13:42.440 --> 0:13:45.480 like Mars is a little more on the outskirts. And 0:13:45.520 --> 0:13:48.640 therefore it makes this more it makes more sense that 0:13:48.720 --> 0:13:52.360 it would have more mystery to it. That's where the 0:13:52.480 --> 0:13:54.200 that's where the ghosts and goblins are going to live, 0:13:54.280 --> 0:13:55.640 right they're not gonna live in the middle of the city, 0:13:55.640 --> 0:13:58.000 They're gonna live on the outskirts of town. Well, yeah, 0:13:58.040 --> 0:14:01.600 it's the outer limits. You don't talking about the or limit. Though. 0:14:01.640 --> 0:14:04.880 I do really enjoy science fiction that that goes inward 0:14:04.920 --> 0:14:07.280 instead of goes outward. Actually, I mean, this is something 0:14:07.320 --> 0:14:10.000 I really liked about that movie Sunshine that came out, 0:14:10.840 --> 0:14:12.640 which you know, I had a lot of problems. I 0:14:12.640 --> 0:14:14.440 think some of the writing kind of fell apart in 0:14:14.480 --> 0:14:17.320 the third part of the movie, but it explored the 0:14:17.360 --> 0:14:21.520 idea that there was this deep, kind of ghostly mystery 0:14:21.560 --> 0:14:24.480 to the Sun, and as you come closer and closer 0:14:24.520 --> 0:14:27.160 to the Sun, it's sort of activates these instincts within 0:14:27.240 --> 0:14:30.440 you that are sort of borderline supernatural, but at least 0:14:30.440 --> 0:14:33.800 seemed to go deeper than the human or mammalian parts 0:14:33.800 --> 0:14:36.200 of your nervous system, where you know, where the Sun 0:14:36.480 --> 0:14:39.600 is the closest thing to a literal god there is 0:14:39.680 --> 0:14:43.320 in the physical universe, right, it's the creator of us. Yeah, yeah, 0:14:44.320 --> 0:14:46.480 I think that ye coupled with the fact that every 0:14:46.720 --> 0:14:49.000 humans just want to keep going out and it's one 0:14:49.000 --> 0:14:50.720 of the reasons probably that more people have been to 0:14:50.760 --> 0:14:52.840 the Moon than to the bottom of than to the 0:14:52.840 --> 0:14:55.360 deepest portions of the ocean. Well, I think we should 0:14:55.360 --> 0:14:58.040 ignore this impulse to go out and we should go in. 0:14:58.280 --> 0:15:01.120 Let's go in towards Venus, get closer to the Sun, 0:15:01.480 --> 0:15:05.520 move one orbit in and start looking at this hothouse planet. Yeah. 0:15:05.520 --> 0:15:08.560 Why go to a planet that doesn't have enough atmosphere 0:15:08.560 --> 0:15:10.720 when instead you can take your your dreams and your 0:15:10.720 --> 0:15:13.160 imagination to a place that has more atmosphere than you 0:15:13.200 --> 0:15:15.200 can handle. Let's take a quick break and when we 0:15:15.240 --> 0:15:20.640 come back, we will explore the surface of Venus. Thank alright, 0:15:20.640 --> 0:15:23.560 we're back now. You're probably familiar with some of the 0:15:23.600 --> 0:15:26.240 most basic features of Venus as a planet, right that 0:15:26.400 --> 0:15:29.520 it's very much known as an Earth analog, and that 0:15:29.720 --> 0:15:32.440 is a fair way to characterize it. It's very close 0:15:32.480 --> 0:15:35.480 to the size and mass of the Earth. It's gonna 0:15:35.800 --> 0:15:37.840 you know, it was created around the same time and 0:15:37.840 --> 0:15:41.320 the accretion disk of the inner rocky planets um so 0:15:41.440 --> 0:15:43.760 in many ways, it is a lot like the Earth 0:15:44.200 --> 0:15:47.560 until you get down into the atmosphere. So, Robert, can 0:15:47.640 --> 0:15:50.760 you take me on a tour of the surface of Venus. Yeah. 0:15:50.800 --> 0:15:54.840 I actually chatted with astrobiologist David Grinspoon about the surface 0:15:54.880 --> 0:15:57.960 of Venus several years back, as well as with JPL 0:15:58.040 --> 0:16:01.400 scientists Susanne smrit Car. So, I want to run through 0:16:01.400 --> 0:16:03.560 some of the attributes of the planet here that they 0:16:03.600 --> 0:16:06.080 stressed to me. All right, let's take a stroll through 0:16:06.120 --> 0:16:09.400 the toxic soup. Alright. So, so Grinsman pointed out that 0:16:09.560 --> 0:16:12.320 first and foremost, this is a planet that's very rich 0:16:12.400 --> 0:16:17.560 and volcanoes and mountains and tech tonic features. Now not 0:16:17.640 --> 0:16:20.520 to be confused with tectonic activity. We'll get back to that. 0:16:21.200 --> 0:16:25.800 You won't find signs of water erosion. Uh, probably unless 0:16:25.800 --> 0:16:28.600 they're very, very ancient. And a lot of the topography 0:16:28.720 --> 0:16:32.640 is dominated by a sort of low aligned rolling planes 0:16:32.840 --> 0:16:36.320 that are largely ash. And this is punctuated by some 0:16:36.560 --> 0:16:40.680 high volcanic mountains and some other sort of high plateaus 0:16:40.760 --> 0:16:46.040 of titanically disrupted areas with with flows of ash. So 0:16:46.200 --> 0:16:48.680 this is a planet surface that has been sort of 0:16:48.720 --> 0:16:54.480 like hit and paved by volcanic activity. Yes, yeah, they're also, 0:16:54.560 --> 0:16:57.920 he says, they're seemingly steady, slow winds, always blowing east 0:16:57.920 --> 0:17:00.600 to west. And uh, as we've already touched on, the 0:17:00.640 --> 0:17:04.159 atmospheric pressure is very high now One interesting thing about 0:17:04.160 --> 0:17:07.560 the directionality of the movement of the atmosphere there is 0:17:07.600 --> 0:17:11.439 that Venus rotates opposite of the way that most of 0:17:11.480 --> 0:17:15.320 the planets in our Solar system rotate. It rotates in 0:17:15.359 --> 0:17:18.480 a retrograde way to its orbit, so the sun actually 0:17:18.600 --> 0:17:22.480 rises in the west and sets in the east on Venus. Yeah, 0:17:22.520 --> 0:17:25.200 it's it's interesting. It also has an extremely slow rotation 0:17:25.480 --> 0:17:28.679 two forty three terrestrial days, that's how long it takes, 0:17:29.280 --> 0:17:32.399 but its atmosphere only needs four days to rot to rotate. 0:17:32.720 --> 0:17:35.080 So yeah, there's already you can tell there's a lot 0:17:35.119 --> 0:17:37.800 of a lot of by the from a terrestrial standpoint, 0:17:37.840 --> 0:17:40.439 a lot of screwy things going on with Venus. If 0:17:40.480 --> 0:17:42.800 you were approaching the this is like approaching the Texas 0:17:42.880 --> 0:17:46.120 chainsaw mask or house and finding all sorts of bone 0:17:46.840 --> 0:17:50.879 based you know, voodoo doo. Dad's hanging in trees and bushes, right, 0:17:50.960 --> 0:17:55.560 some skull furniture. So the pressure is high, roughly ninety 0:17:55.640 --> 0:17:58.639 times the pressure at sea level on Earth. That's a 0:17:58.640 --> 0:18:00.359 lot of pressure of coal. Of course, is going to 0:18:00.480 --> 0:18:03.520 vary though depending on you know exactly what altitude you're 0:18:03.600 --> 0:18:06.359 at on Venus. We've already touched on the light a 0:18:06.400 --> 0:18:09.399 little bit, you'd find very dull light. Grinsman says that 0:18:09.400 --> 0:18:12.280 if you were suddenly transported to Venus, you would notice 0:18:12.320 --> 0:18:15.359 that the light is very different. It's always cloudy, and 0:18:15.359 --> 0:18:19.920 there's a very thick uh, the very thick atmosphere. So 0:18:20.200 --> 0:18:23.200 light is, he says, is kind of diffused and gathered 0:18:23.280 --> 0:18:25.800 so so much that it's a it's kind of reddish. 0:18:26.119 --> 0:18:28.560 And there, as you said, no shadows because there's no 0:18:28.640 --> 0:18:32.199 direct sunlight. It's all just clouds and scattered light. He 0:18:32.240 --> 0:18:34.800 says that there would be enough daylight to see, but 0:18:34.880 --> 0:18:37.280 it will be like a heavily overcast day on Earth. 0:18:37.720 --> 0:18:39.760 And of course on the night side it would be dark. 0:18:39.880 --> 0:18:42.520 Aside from whatever kind of like you you would probably 0:18:42.560 --> 0:18:45.399 notice the dull red glow of the red hot rocks 0:18:45.440 --> 0:18:49.040 in the ground lighting things a bit creepy. And he 0:18:49.080 --> 0:18:51.919 pointed out that it is pretty much Earth's alter ego. 0:18:52.040 --> 0:18:55.800 It's the only Earth sized planet in our Solar system only, uh, 0:18:56.400 --> 0:18:59.359 and the only other roughly Earth sized planet that we 0:18:59.400 --> 0:19:02.720 can send a spa acecraft two and study in detail. Uh, 0:19:02.760 --> 0:19:04.600 that will and that's going to be true for a 0:19:04.720 --> 0:19:08.720 long long time. And uh, indeed, Earth and Venus probably 0:19:08.720 --> 0:19:12.040 had similar origins. Uh, it could have been, and they 0:19:12.040 --> 0:19:15.240 could have been a nearly identical states in the beginning, 0:19:15.520 --> 0:19:19.280 and yet we have gone down very difficerent routes in 0:19:19.400 --> 0:19:23.440 terms of how our climates and surface conditions have turned out. So, yeah, 0:19:23.600 --> 0:19:26.520 we started in similar states. What happened to Venus to 0:19:26.560 --> 0:19:30.280 make it so different from us? Well, runaway greenhouse effect 0:19:31.320 --> 0:19:34.560 boiled away the oceans long ago and they were lost 0:19:34.600 --> 0:19:37.199 to space, and then it it became essentially stuck with 0:19:37.240 --> 0:19:40.159 its present climate. It's so it's it's often touted as 0:19:40.200 --> 0:19:42.760 kind of a worst case example of what climate change 0:19:42.760 --> 0:19:45.000 on Earth could amount to. Yeah, now you might have 0:19:45.040 --> 0:19:48.399 heard of this idea of the runaway greenhouse effect invoked, 0:19:48.440 --> 0:19:51.439 but if you're wondering exactly how that works, Basically what 0:19:51.560 --> 0:19:54.600 happens is you've got some liquid on the surface of 0:19:54.600 --> 0:19:57.919 your planet. You've got like a liquid water oceans, and 0:19:57.960 --> 0:20:00.680 if you heat the oceans up to much, they begin 0:20:00.720 --> 0:20:04.360 to evaporate a lot of water vapor into the atmosphere. 0:20:04.400 --> 0:20:07.600 But of course water vapor is an excellent greenhouse gas. 0:20:08.080 --> 0:20:10.080 And then when there's a lot of water vapor in 0:20:10.080 --> 0:20:13.280 the atmosphere, because it's a greenhouse gas, sunlight can pass 0:20:13.440 --> 0:20:15.960 through it one way, coming in to heat the Earth 0:20:16.040 --> 0:20:18.320 or heat the planet, but then it does not allow 0:20:18.359 --> 0:20:21.120 as much energy to reflect back off of the planet 0:20:21.119 --> 0:20:25.080 and radiate back out into space. So like other greenhouse gases, 0:20:25.280 --> 0:20:28.359 this water vapor let's energy in but not back out, 0:20:28.720 --> 0:20:32.160 and this warms the planet even more. As the planet warms, 0:20:32.480 --> 0:20:35.600 the water vapor just keeps evaporating even more because it's 0:20:35.600 --> 0:20:38.520 getting hotter and hotter, making the effect worse and worse 0:20:38.560 --> 0:20:41.560 in this net positive feedback loop. So there's sort of 0:20:41.600 --> 0:20:45.840 these tipping points for planets with liquid on the surface. 0:20:45.880 --> 0:20:48.080 You don't want to get the water hotter than a 0:20:48.080 --> 0:20:50.560 certain level because if you do, it's just going to 0:20:50.640 --> 0:20:54.480 create this runaway effect that you kind of can't stop. Now. 0:20:54.760 --> 0:20:59.000 I mentioned plate tectonics earlier. There are no plate tectonics 0:20:59.000 --> 0:21:01.680 that we know of on Venus of all, but the 0:21:02.200 --> 0:21:05.040 certainly there's a lot of volcanic activity. The volcanoes, though, 0:21:05.080 --> 0:21:07.800 don't spring up along plate borders like they do on Earth. 0:21:07.920 --> 0:21:10.520 They just pop up all over, so it's just kind 0:21:10.520 --> 0:21:14.200 of surprise volcano. Yeah. So yeah, it's it's a different 0:21:14.200 --> 0:21:18.000 pattern of convection, uh or so it seems according to Grinspoon. 0:21:18.640 --> 0:21:23.840 Now in addition to the greenhouse gas issue, uh he 0:21:23.880 --> 0:21:26.239 did drive home that a lot of the differences may 0:21:26.280 --> 0:21:29.720 also just be due to orbit. You know. Obviously Venus 0:21:29.960 --> 0:21:32.480