June 17, 2021 • 41 mins
Venus is so hot lead would melt on the planet’s surface. It spins backwards. Its year is shorter than its day. Venus is amazingly awesome.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Clark and there's Charles w Chuck Bryan over there, and
Jerry's lurking in the background like a total creep, which
is super appropriate for Jerry. And this is stuff you
(00:23):
should know. Have you been singing the song all day?
Venus as a boy? How can you not sing that song?
I don't know. I mean, I guess you could be
singing that um shocking blue song Venus that Banana Rama covered.
Oh no, that's the one that I was talking about. Oh,
I was talking about the b York song Venus as
(00:44):
a boy. Oh no, no, no, sorry, I was thinking
of It's a good one. I'm mel Venus actually funny enough, Like, honestly,
that had not popped into my head and now I
won't be able to get it out. So thanks a lot.
I thought of you yesterday. I was someone some don't
even know who it was. It was just one of
those Facebook posts that comes into your feed said. All
it said was now the final countdown by Europe is
(01:08):
in your head. That's all it was like, is that? Josh, Wow,
that's amazing that's the catchiest song of all time. It
was pretty funny. That's great. So, um, chuck, we're doing Venus.
And I was like skimming the House of Work site
looking for articles and I started to see I saw
this one article about how Venus is um starting to
(01:30):
get some love again from the space agencies, and um,
how little we actually know about it. And so I
was like this, you know, we've never done one on Venus.
We don't usually do planet yet. Maybe we should eventually
do all the planets over time. Um, but this is
a pretty good place to start. Because the more I
dug into Venus, the more I was like, this is
one of the most interesting planets of all time. Actually, yeah, like, uh,
(01:54):
you know it's described in this article that you put
together as a hell escape, and when you start reading
get to it, it's like, wow, you will melt and
boil if you get near it, or be destroyed. You
won't even get near it because the sulphuric acid in
the clouds will destroy you, yeah, and your teeth. Yeah.
So it's like, yeah, not not a hospitable place, but
(02:15):
possibly once was, yeah, which makes the whole thing even
more compelling. It wasn't always like this, you know. Um,
it's like the mom and what's eating Gilbert grape when
she sees um is it? Juliette Lewis and says I
wasn't always like this? And Juliet Lewis says, I wasn't
always like this. It's just like that it is, basically,
(02:36):
except on a planetary scale. Yeah, And I think the
cool thing about Venus to which we can put a
pin in this but um, we're starting to gain more
interest in Venus now because it could offer a peak
into our own bleak future as a planet. Yes, just
like you said, put a pin in that and smoke
it in your hat. Um. So it's weird that Venus
(02:57):
is this hellscape now that we understand it, because it's
a it's a very ancient planet as far as human
consciousness of it goes, because it is so bright. It's
actually the third brightest object in the sky after the
Sun and the moon, thanks comes Venus. Um. So like
humans have been able to see it long before we
had anything like telescopes or anything like that. And in fact,
(03:18):
as far back as I think sixteen sixty BC or
the six hundred BC, um, the Babylonians were tracking it,
and they called the Ishtar after the goddess of love
and war after the movie. And then yeah, then they
would say it Ishtar black, and then some would go, hey,
it's not as bad as everyone says, that's right, and
(03:40):
then that person would get shouted down, and then the
whole cycle would start over again. Yeah, it went by
quite a few different names. It was Ishtar, uh they
you know, before the Hellenistic Greeks came along, they thought
it was actually two different stars, so it was known
as both Vesper the evening star, and Lucifer or Phosphorus
the morning star. That's right. And then eventually Pythagoras said,
(04:03):
it's just one star everyone, and can we settle on
a name? And the Hellenstic Greek said, how about Aphrodite,
And then of course the Romans came along said no,
we call it Venus. That's right, and that's where we've
settled because the the Western world is modeled on the
Roman world. I guess. But Venus, the idea that it
is this feminine planet, that it has to do with
(04:26):
love and beauty, Uh, it really isn't start contrast to
how we understand it today. Since we we did start
really exploring it in the nineteen sixties. But even still,
if you if you look at um some of the
details of Venus that have been named by people. Apparently
almost all of the features on Venus are named after women,
(04:46):
Like there's a crater named after Chicago Way, there's a
canyon named after Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt,
so it's it's all about feminine beauty. But it's also
like this crazy health gape that will make your teeth
fall out and burn you alive. So it's a real
paradox in terms, you know what I mean totally. Uh.
It is the second planet from the sun um, which
(05:10):
is makes Venus our little neighbor, and which also means
that if Venus is getting sunlight, it's getting that light
a couple of minutes before we do. Uh. It is terrestrial,
so it's made of rocks and solid things as opposed
to being like a gas planet like Jupiter and Saturn.
And there's also a boundary between the surface of the
planet in the atmosphere, so you know, it is like
(05:33):
Earth in some ways, but also not like Earth in
a whole lot of ways. Well it, I mean, it
is often called Earth's twin and then sometimes Earth's toxic twin.
I think that's an Aerosmith reference. But um, because it
is closer to the Sun than we are, it's one
one planet in it's orbit actually is between us and
(05:55):
the Sun. It falls within our orbit around the Sun,
which means that to us here on Earth, Venus seems
to have phases like the Moon does, which is pretty cool. Yeah,
I think Galilee figure that out in sixteen ten Galileo. Yeah, Oh,
you're on a first name basis. Yeah, and I go
away back. I can veil him out of jail once.
(06:16):
He's just call him Galley, yeah, the gal or Gigi.
Uh so. Yeah, when Venus is on the opposite side
of the Sun, it's in full phase, and then it's
looks like it's in the new phase when it's between
the Earth and the Sun. Yeah, and every once in
a while, our alignment with Venus and the Sun is
like a perfect line. And it just happened in two twelve,
(06:38):
and I don't think I bothered to look, because I
don't remember looking. But the next time it's gonna happen
is seen. And unless aging researchers really have some sort
of breakthrough, I'm not gonna be around to see that
you didn't look, and you call yourself a friend of
Gali of Gigi. Yeah, I know you would be so disappointed.
It'd be is so disappointed into me. Come on, the
(06:59):
jos just look into the sky, right, Uh? So, Venus
is they call it the Earth's twin for the similarities,
um and not the differences obviously, even though like you said,
it's an evil twin. It's about about the same size.
It has about of our mass, but is almost a
perfect sphere because it is a slow roller. The Earth spins, obviously,
(07:23):
everyone knows, very quickly, revolving once every day every twenty
almost every twenty four hours, exactly twenty hours and fifty
six minutes, which means of course that that centrifical centrifugal
motion is going to bulge the equator. So we're technically
an ellipsoid in shape. But Venus spins the very very
(07:43):
slowly once every two dred and forty three days earth days.
That is, it spends on its axis. It's the slowest
spinner in our solar system and a really kind of
perfect little sphere because of that. Yeah, it doesn't produce
that bulge because it's so unsightly. And also because of
that same slow spin, it has an iron core and
(08:07):
molten mantle a lot like Earth does UM and through
that that that's that rocky core, that metallic core UM.
Earth's magnetic field is produced. But it's also produced because
it's spin so fast. Well, even though it has the
same kind of core and mantle that the Earth does,
Venus spin so slowly, it can't produce a magnetic field,
(08:30):
at least one that's not very strong. UM. I think
venus Is magnetic field is fift ten thousands of a
percent the strength of Earth's magnetic field. Nothing like you
try to use a magnet up there, it's just gonna
it'll just melt in your hand, You dummy, don't even
try it, and you're dead anyway. Yeah, exactly. Uh. There's
(08:51):
some pretty cool theories about some interesting aspects of Venus. UM.
One is, and this is in a theory. It is
a fact Venus has no moon. But one of the
theories is that Earth's moon used to orbit Venus, but
our gravity was so strong we just came in and
said that's ours. Now, we'll be taking that moon. I know,
(09:11):
imagine seeing that moon approach out of nowhere to would
be like melancholy. You know, Oh my god, that movie.
I love that movie to just see recently, uh not
too recently. I mean I loved it too. I'm glad
you didn't say I enjoyed it, because that's the movie enjoyed,
right exactly. I read this article once it called it
(09:32):
was um I think it was titled like Lars von
Trier is campy, and they were basically like everybody's taking
Lars von Trier incorrectly, like this is all He's like
a huge joke, sir, Like this is all in jest.
And once since I read that, I was like, I
really started to appreciate his stuff a lot differently. Yeah,
(09:54):
I mean those are a lot of his films are
tough to get through. Yeah, Dad, what you what a
part that is once you realize that it's like a joke,
or at least as far as large von Trier is concerned,
it's a joke, like it definitely, it's just easier to
take and watch and it's actually kind of funny and something.
But is that true or were they just sort of
(10:14):
I don't I don't know that they They had him
quoted as saying like, yeah, you got me, but they
made such a strong case that it's tough to tough
to not see it that way. I'll see if I
can dig it up and send it to you. Yeah,
that sounds really interesting. Alright, so no moon. Earth perhaps
took the moon. Another really interesting thing that has sprung
(10:35):
a few different theories is that the backwards spin of
Venus relative to Earth. And this is interesting and that
some scientists say, yeah, it's backwards because it used to
spend relative to us the same then it slowed down
and stopped and started spending the other way. And we
(10:56):
can tell this because it's slowing down again. They measured
it sixteen years apart, and at the end of that
run it spuns six point five minutes slower, which is
a lot considering the Earth's rotation slows only by about
one point eight milliseconds every hundred years. So that's the
one theory. Others said it's not and never did quote
(11:17):
unquote spin backwards. It just got knocked a d and
eighty degrees on its axis. So it looks backwards. Yeah,
like the planet got flipped upside down somehow, and so
to us it looks like it's spinning backwards, but it's
spinning the same way it always has, And they're like, well,
how would the planet get knocked upside down? Obvious idea
is a planetoid or a meteor or something like that
(11:39):
striking it in just the right spot, which is the
right force that it flipped the planet upside down. Another
one is that the um that Venus's atmosphere so thick.
How thick is it? It's so thick it's possible the
Sun can create gravitational tides like tides in this atmosphere,
(12:00):
and that these tides started slashing back and forth at
some point and got so um forceful and strong that
they eventually flipped the planet over. I think this is
a really good start. How do you feel? I think
it's pretty great actually, And I have one more fact
I want to give out chuck um about the the
day relative to the year. So you know how the
(12:22):
day of Venus is two d forty three earth days. Yeah,
this one's a little bit of a head twister. Well,
it turns out that Venus orbits the Sun in two
hundred and twenty five earth days, which means that the
Venusian day is longer than the Venusian year. Which is
a pretty amazing fact in and of itself. Because Venus
(12:45):
spins backward relative to the direction it orbits the sun
sunrise to like a day night cycle from sunrise to
sunrise is actually only a hundred and seventeen earth days
because the sun kind of catches up with vn Us
in its spin, So it's not a two dtree three
days stretch between sunrise. It's actually a hundred and seventeen.
(13:07):
So there's three big numbers you need to remember for
Venus day night cycles. A hundred and seventeen days, the
year is two D five days, but the day is
two hundred forty three days, all relative to us, of course.
Well yeah, I mean what else counts nothing? So a
minute ago and I said, I think we're off to
a good start. I was kind of lying something felt missing.
(13:29):
But now we're really off to a good start. I
think so too. So we'll take a break and we'll
talk a little bit about the surface of this weird healthscape.
Right after this all right, surface of Venus A lot
(14:13):
of clues because you know, we're we're still trying to
figure out Venus, and like you said, it's getting more
interesting to us more recently, which is kind of cool.
But there are clues kind of everywhere. The surface of
Venus is one clue that maybe something pretty big did happen,
and it's sort of recent past because Venus is about
the same age as Earth is um somewhere in the
(14:35):
neighborhood of four point eight billion years old, And they
look at impact craters to sort of gauge how old
a planet might be, like how many things have hit
it over time, because they know about how often that
might happen, and you know, these are good rough estimates.
But when you look at Venus, the crust of Venus
basically looks like it's only a few hundred million years old,
(14:59):
so like maybe up to eight hundred million, maybe as
little as a hundred and eighty million years old. So
that is a big clue that like, yeah, something happened
to kind of remake the surface of Venus at some point,
which is really really interesting. Yeah, And I mean Earth's
crust is much younger than the planet itself, but Earth
has plate tectonics, which you know basically is crust recycling.
(15:23):
Venus doesn't have that, so it is significant that the
crust is that much younger than the rest of the planet.
And it's also made up mostly of basalt um, which
I think in the history of stuff you should know
the thirteen year history. It's the first time I said
it correctly right off the bat instead of what we
used to say basalt or basil, basalt, basalt. I love
little sprinkle of basalt cream. Yeah, it's old bay mixed
(15:48):
with salt man um so uh, which is volcanic rock,
which makes sense because Venus has the most volcanoes of
any planet in the Solar System, something like six hundred.
That's they might even still be active right now. So so,
but it's weird that the crust would be that old,
because it's like, why would have you know, all the
(16:09):
volcano has been erupting at around the same time in
such measure that it would have remade the entire crust
of the planet. It's a it's a head scratcher, as
you say it is. The surface of Venus has some
huge mountain ranges, some as high as Everest. They have
a couple of gigantic highlands um the size of Australia
(16:30):
and South America. You mentioned all those volcanoes, which is
just remarkable, Like the most volcanic planet in our Solar
system for sure, right, Yeah, by far, I mean I
think Earth only has like nine seven. Uh. They have
about the same gravity as we do here on Earth,
(16:52):
so you'd feel about the same weight. But there's a
little caveat there because of their dense atmosphere, which we're
gonna talk about a little bit more in a menu
it here, there's tons of surface pressure, so if you
were there's no way you would be alive on Venus.
But if you happen to be, let's just say, it's
about ninety times the pressure that we have here on Earth,
So it would be like you're about a full kilometer
(17:15):
down underwater into the ocean, yeah, which is kind of crushing.
I was like, oh, you'd be crushed like a tin can,
And actually that's not entirely true. I think the diving
record is a little deeper than one kilometer, so a
human can withstand it, but it's not the kind of
thing you want to do. And when you combine it
with all the other issues that you've got going on
(17:35):
now that you're standing on Venus, somehow that pressure would
probably actually be the least of your worries before it
would be the heat. Yeah, you would have a lot
of trouble with the heat because, Um, here's another fun
fact for you. Mercury is the planet that's closest to
the Sun. It's twenty three million miles closer to the
Sun than Venus is. But Venus is the hottest planet
(17:58):
in our solar system. Want that for a second. Yeah,
and that'll all be clear here in a second. Um,
we're kind of dancing around it. But it's it's gonna
be fun, so just wait. But in the nineteen sixties, uh,
and we'll talk also talk about the various sort of
spacecraft that the USSR and NASA has kind of sent
up to explore. But the Mariner too recorded did a
(18:20):
little fly by and recorded surface temperatures, temperatures between three
d and four hundred degrees uh. And it turns out
that maybe about half I think recently they calculated it's
probably more like eight hundred and eighty degrees fahrenheit, which
basically will melt almost anything. M well, definitely aluminum, zinc,
(18:40):
and lead for sure. Yeah. So, um, it's super hot,
and it's there's a tremendous amount of pressure at surface level.
And I read this article from I think it might
have been space dot Com or NASA. I'm not sure
where you see Boulder Astronomer Planetary scientists named Kevin McKay
drake said, you can feel what it's like. I'm Venus
(19:02):
here on Earth. Heat a hot plate until it glows red,
place your palm on its surface, and then run over
that hand with the truck. I didn't get that quote.
He was saying, it's very hot and there's a tremendous
amount of pressure. I think degrees so is it no?
But I mean really, I think once you reach a
certain temperature and you're placing your hand, I think red hot?
(19:24):
Is that that that line where it's like after that?
Doesn't really think he was trying to be you know,
he's trying to appeal to the common person. I think
so they take an extra class or two now in
planetary science speak, their yeah you know, all right. So
I guess we've been dancing around like why is it
(19:45):
so hot? If it's not as close to the sun
as mercury, how can it be that much hotter than mercury?
And it is because Venus is a an environmental nightmare basically,
and which is one reason why we're a little more
interested now because it gives us a peek, like I said,
to what could happen to us in a very long time.
(20:06):
But it is. It is a a CEO two nightmare
on Venus. Yes, so UM, Venus is locked into a
run what's called a runaway greenhouse effect UM, and I
actually talked about it in the End of the World
with Josh Clark Um in the Natural Existential Risks episode. UM.
But the kind of the broad strokes of it is
(20:28):
that the greenhouse effect. You you want to have some
degree of the greenhouse effect where you have um visible
light coming in from the sun warming the planet, and
then the planet re releases some of that heat back
through the atmosphere as infrared heat, and not all of
it gets re emitted. Some of it is captured by
(20:49):
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And this is actually, like
I was saying, you want to have this. This is
a beneficial thing because it prevents wild temperature swing between
day and night. There's like a nice average temperature that
you're going to keep throughout the day and throughout the
night because the atmosphere is acting like a blanket preventing
(21:10):
all of the heat from re escaping, So you do
want some greenhouse gas. But what Venus is teaching us
is that there's a there's a point where you can
where you can reach this this point of no return
where your greenhouse gas greenhouse effect. Um, it just goes
hey wire and becomes it gets locked into a positive
(21:30):
feedback loop that is positive only in the most academic
sense of that term. In no way is it a
good thing at least as far as life or habitability goes. Yeah,
and Venus hit this tipping point a few hundred million
years ago. Um, the atmosphere got really hot. They basically
think the oceans literally boiled off. And you know, because
(21:52):
there used to be make oceans and rivers and it
used to be a lot more earth like. But these
oceans boiled off turned the atmosphere into water vapor, which
just made the problem a lot worse because that's another
greenhouse gas. And it just sort of accelerated this thing.
And then eventually that water vapor was broken apart by
radiation from the sun, by this ultra violet radiation, and
(22:15):
all this hydrogen escaped into space, left behind oxygen combining
with that carbon, and what you've got is, oh, what
carbon dioxide and no water vapor in the atmosphere. No,
and so Earth has I think point zero four carbon
dioxide in our atmosphere and we still are able to
(22:37):
maintain like a healthy greenhouse gas effect. So so the
fact that that it's a runaway greenhouse effect that seems
to have made um Venus into this hell escape that
it is, that's what kind of makes it a cautionary
tail or at least something that's worth investigating much more
deeply to find out, like how did it reach this point?
(22:58):
Like where was that tipping point? Because you know, here
on Earth we're contributing atmospheric CEO two more and more
frequently thanks to the burning of fossil fuels. So it's like, okay,
you know, did it hit that point when it reached
like uh an atmosphere carbon dioxide or point zero zero eight?
You know what's the what's the difference? And it really
(23:19):
matters to us here on Earth because at some point
that the the atmospheric concentration of c O two or
other greenhouse gases becomes enough that visible I can come in,
infrared heat won't go back out, and you've got that
that runaway effect that just locks it in and you're
in big trouble. So we need to find that out.
(23:40):
And it's a good thing that people are starting to
talk about exploring Venus now again for the first time
in a while. Let me ask you a question. The
End of the World with cho Josh Clark. Is that
available on Apple podcast or wherever you find your podcasts?
You know, Chuck, as far as I know, wherever you
find podcasts, you can find The End of the World
with Josh Clark. Attend part series. They don't pull it
(24:01):
like Netflix after they're done with you. I don't think.
So I haven't checked something in a little while, I'd
be very dismayed. Now it's an excellent series, And if
this kind of thing turns you on, then you can
listen to that and then quite a few other ways
that we might all become extinct. Or if me just
speaking for forty five minutes in a monotone turns you
(24:23):
on and you're gonna la that's right. Uh So, that's
why it's hot on Venus. That's why you know you
would just melt if you've managed to reach the surface
of Venus. But you wouldn't even manage to reach the
surface of Venus. Because of that atmosphere that we're talking about.
You talked about our teeth. Along with nitrogen, the biggest
(24:46):
component of the atmosphere of Venus is sulfuric acid, which
we call battery acid. And uh yeah, it would uh,
I mean, your teeth would be the least of your problems,
because you would your skin would burn, your lungs would explode.
Just these massive clouds blanket Venus, full of these lightning
storms in sulfuric acid. And it's it's literally like something
(25:08):
out of a sci fi movie, right, And if up
to this point you're like prepare for this. The Venus
member spins on its axis once every two and forty
three days, it's a Venutian day. But the upper atmosphere
is so um uh yes, that the clouds that make
(25:29):
up the upper atmosphere spin around the planet once every
four days. They're moving that fast, faster than any tornado
here on Earth. I saw. Um. But then down below,
towards the surface, the winds are just like a few
miles an hour, So that difference in wind speed creates
huge vortices. Apparently there's a vortex that has not fallen
apart that stayed raging for a very long time now
(25:52):
at the south pole of Venus, and they don't foresee
any time when it's going to stop. So there's huge
lightning storms, clouds of surf sulfuric acid that formed vortices
in this atmosphere that at surface level is the same
surface pressure for the same pressure that you would find
one kilometer down in Earth's oceans. Yeah, and then consider
(26:15):
that for you know, several billion years. Venus was a
lot like us. Like I said, it was habitable, it
had you know, it was fairly temperate, had oceans and
rivers and streams, and was kind of balmy, and it
was this greenhouse runaway greenhouse gas effect that uh, that
kind of made it into this hell escape And like
I said, it's a big reason we're going maybe we
(26:38):
should look into Mars, but also look into Venus. Yeah.
So I didn't know this, but um there was another
space dot com article that did a good job kind
of chronicling some of the like the history of exploring Venus.
You know, growing up as a Cold War school kid,
they didn't tell us like, oh, by the way, the
Soviets just had a great breakthrough on Venus. The other
(27:00):
let's tell you all about it. I don't remember hearing
any of this stuff to you, no, but I think
that's a great little dramatic teaser. Okay, so let's take
a little message break and we'll tell you what the
what the Rooskys were doing in the nineties sixties right
after this. Okay, Chuck, I can't take it any longer.
(27:47):
My teeth are falling out from from the suspense. Is
that Bob Newhart thing again? Uh? Yeah, So I didn't
learn about this since well either, But in the nineteen
from like the sixties to the eighties, the USSR was, uh,
they were into Venus. They were they were checking it
(28:09):
out with pretty decent regularity through their Venera and Vega programs.
And some of these milestones that they hit are some
of the like first milestones in just space exploration period UM,
not only for Venus UM and sixties. Seven October sixty seven,
Venera four was the first probe to ever beam data
(28:30):
back from another planet from the atmosphere of another planet.
And that's when they said, whoa super hot, very thick.
It was that good? No, yeah, okay, uh they I
think the Veneera for technically did make a hard landing.
(28:50):
The parachutes of course melted and this thing actually transmitted
data for about twenty minutes with photographs before you know,
it melted into nothing. And then I think a few
years after that, the Nara seven had the first soft
landing on any planet other than Earth. Another first in
(29:11):
in visiting our Solar system, like before we did stuff
like that. Yeah, well I did not realize it, but
apparently Venus is the first planet humanity has ever visited,
which is pretty cool. I mean not personally, but you know,
we sent some some machines up there as our emissaries,
you know. UM in n Venera thirteen recorded the first
(29:32):
ever audio on the service of another planet, which is
pretty cool. UM. Vega one and two missions in the
mid eighties deployed balloons into the atmosphere to make measurements.
So a lot of what we know about Venus came
from these early Soviet explorations. UM. But it's not like
the you know, the United States just completely ignored Venus.
(29:54):
We did have some interest in and I think we
had the first ever um I buy of Venus with
our Mariner two probe back in nineteen sixty two, I believe, Yeah,
that was the one I mentioned earlier that recorded um
what what seems like half accurate temperature the Venus. But
(30:15):
there was also the Mariner five and the Mariner ten
in sixty seven and seventy four, and then we started
to get a little more intense with it, and seventy
eight we launched uh an orbiter and a and a multiprobe,
the Pioneer Venus orbiter and the the PV multiprobe, and
(30:35):
I think the multiprobe sent four different things for entry
craft into the atmosphere in December, and then the orbiter
you know, did its thing. It orbited, kind of studied,
studied things from a safer distance until nine. Yeah, so
we're getting some stuff on Venus, but then it just
kind of went away. We stopped. We stopped researching it
(30:58):
actually after Magellan, which has launched from the Space Shuttle UM,
which by the way, I was reading like the official
accident report on the Columbia UM crash, and it is
just it's jarring, but it's amazing what this just you know,
scientific explanation of it. Really dry technical stuff still can
(31:21):
like really jog your imagination and kind of put you,
like in in the catastrophe. Even though they don't seem
to be trying to. It's just for some reason, it
really kind of gets you in the right way online. Yeah. Yeah,
it's like just you know, four page document about what
exactly went wrong, exactly when down to you know, I
(31:41):
think maybe the the deaths of Second if not the milliseconds. Um, yeah,
they really, they really dug into it. Documentary. It's still
out there. It's kinna just it's stirring. It's gonna just
knock you on your But have you seen twelve years
of slave yet? No? You're gonna ask you that like
(32:01):
once a year. You have you have homework this this weekend.
But oh I know. Um. But anyway, as I was saying,
Magellan was launched from the space shut in and it
was kind of hanging out monitoring Venus until and then
after that, and even kind of a little bit before that. Um,
just the focus on Venus kind of started to die,
(32:23):
in no small part because of the collapse of the
Soviet Union, right yeah, I mean they were they were
way more into it, into it than we were, and
then you know, that collapsed and so a lot of
that stuff stopped. Um NASA said, you know what, you
get a lot more out of your exploration dollar by
going to Mars because it's it's way more hospitable than
(32:47):
Venus is, and so we can use these robots and
now you know with Mars landers and it's just amazing,
like the stuff that we're bringing back from Mars. But
as Yeah, but as a result, Venus was sort of
like cast aside because it's just it's tough. I think
that Venera thirteen and a T two has the record
(33:07):
for the longest man made object ever on Venus, and
that was two hours before it melted. Yeah, that's it.
And that's a lot of dough to sink into something
that you know, like and you know that was when
a T two we could I'm sure we could get
something up there for for more hours than that now,
but I'm not sure how much longer. No, but we
(33:28):
need to figure it out. And the only way to
figure it out it is to start going back there.
And so so we are I think this, uh, this
month June NASA said, hey, everybody, get this. We've got
two visits planned, two missions planned for Venus. By um
there's the Veritas mission, which has a bunch of different
(33:49):
scientific instruments named in its name. It's a big acronym.
There's also Da Vinci Plus, which sounds like a new
streaming service for maybe PBS, and they're both gonna be
going by. But it's not just the United States who
has it's it's UM eyes trained on our sites, trained
on on Venus, Europe UM, the E s A has
(34:11):
a Venus program in the works, India does as well,
Russia does as well. And there's a private company called
rocket Lab that's going to be sending something up there
by three. Actually, Venus is literally hot right now. It is.
I have seen it in the news and I think, uh,
did you mention how the old house stuff works? Website
(34:32):
that we worked for had a really recent article on
on this right like why we were poking around? That's
what initially caught my attention about did you see the thing? Though? Also, um,
there was a big big to do. I think in
June of or at least sometime in there was a
bunch of press on Venus because some British researchers said, hey,
(34:55):
we were examining the Venusian atmosphere with radio telescope and
we found a bio signature phosphine, and everybody said, what
are you talking about and they said, no, really check
it out. So they wrote this paper, and um, it
does make kind of sense to an extent that that
you might find life at some port, some like point
(35:17):
in the Venetian atmosphere, because parts of it are you know,
the same temperature and in air pressure as you'd find
on Earth. But it also just makes zero sense because
it's just so inhospitable too, you know, yeah, I mean
it would have to have really evolved to be able
to survive. And again, maybe possible. But then some other
(35:37):
scientists came along because they, you know, they smelled something
rotten and they said, let me see those papers. And
they looked him over and they said, you know what,
we're not gonna say this is We're not going to
falsify this and say this is definitely wrong. But maybe
you might have gotten this confused with sulfur dioxide instead
of phosphine because they these chemicals both absorb radio waves
(36:01):
that are similar frequency, and everyone sort of has made
this mistake at some point. Guys, he shouldn't feel too bad,
but it's probably sulfur dioxide. It makes a lot more sense. Um,
But like like I said, they didn't definitely shoot it down,
and I think it just sort of piqued everyone's interest
to kind of get going again. And with these you know,
(36:24):
with these radio telescopes, we can finally you know, I
think for a long time we couldn't even see anything
at all because of the telescopes that we had, right, Yeah,
it's just blanketed by the super thick atmosphere that light
can't even penetrate any longer. It's so um. Now that
we have radio telescopes, we can see a lot more
clearly into it. But yeah, we're just on the very
(36:45):
beginning cusp of starting to study it. And it is
possible that there is that there was a biosignature and
the Bridge didn't get it wrong, um, because it would
have to be a low oxygen um like anaerobic type
of life, and that that's exactly the kind of um
organism that produces phosphine. So it's not like it's been settled,
(37:05):
like you were saying. But um, the it's just tantalizing,
you know. It's just in in addition to learning more
about Venus and maybe the lessons it can teach us
about what we need to do or not do here
on Earth, the idea that maybe there's some weird rando
life swirling around at hundreds of miles an hour in
the Venusian atmosphere. Just it's like, yeah, let's let's go
(37:26):
check Venus out now. Yeah, I feel like I never
hear about space programs from many other countries except for
like China, the US and in the old Soviet Union. Yeah,
I never hear about the Brits exploring space. Well there
with the E s A, I believe, so they just
all got together, I think so. And then um, yeah,
(37:48):
India has its own program now too. That's pretty ambitious
as well. So what about Japan? Did they have a
space program? Yeah, they have a space program. I don't
remember what it's called, but they definitely do. Um. There's
a lot more collaboration than there used to be during
the Cold War from understand Yeah, sure, yeah, yeah, because
we're trying to solve global problems here, and you know,
(38:10):
Venus might hold the key to some of those. Yeah,
it's it's our Venus, it's our fire, what's our desire?
That's right. You gotta go listen to Venus as a
boy too. You're gonna love it. Uh. There's also Venus
in fur velvet underground and then uh, Venus, I can't
(38:32):
come up with a good joke, let's just forget about
it and really beat it out Bob Newhart style. Yeah,
if Bob Newhart would have finished the joke, that's why
I'll never fill his shoes. Uh. If you want to
know more about Venus, well, then just look skyword and
see what you think, and maybe do a little research
to while you're at it. And since I said look Skyword,
(38:52):
that means it's time for listener mayoel. I'm gonna call
this Pug's Military follow up because we heard from uh
quite a few military members already and that was in
our real time. It was just released earlier today from
US service people who we're quite fond of the little
pog currency that they had over there. A long time
(39:15):
listener guys love the show. Just listen to the episode
and thought i'd write in. I was in the Air
Force for just shy of a decade when you mentioned
the Army and Air Force exchange services POGs, and it
brought me back. Instead of using coins, they would give
you these pods as changed. So if you bought something
for oh nine cents, the cashier would give you a
five cent pog. Subsequently, if you bought something for ninety
(39:35):
three cents, they would still give you a five cent
pog because there were no one cent POGs, so they
rounded down. I guess it's gonna cheap, uh, So you
would frequently lose money on those transactions. I remember being
frustrated when my first experienced this. If I remember correctly,
there being only five, ten and twenty five cent POGs. Yeah,
(39:58):
five tents and twenties. I remember having stacks and stacks
of these POGs all overseas, and I rendered them completely worthless.
Looking back, I'm sure it could have bought a dollar
worth of POGs and exchange them for real US currency,
but the thought never crossed my mind. I think they
owe me some money. I wish I would have remembered
my pog days. I was also way into POGs in
(40:19):
the nineties because that would have been a good way
to pass the time while over there. Thanks for aways
being there on my hour commute to work, I look
forward to Tuesdays and Thursdays every week p s. My
family was moving recently and I was going through an
old box of my things and found a loan pog
with Maggie Simpson on it. I'm not sure why I
(40:40):
decided to keep that one after all these years, but
I did, and that is from Jeff. That's an awesome email, Jeff,
thanks a lot for that one, agreed. Uh. If you
want to get in touch with this like Jeff did
and tell us about the pog you found, or what
your tour of duty was like, or anything like that,
you can get in touch with us via e mail
(41:00):
at stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you
Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
H
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Clark and there's Charles w Chuck Bryan over there, and
Jerry's lurking in the background like a total creep, which
is super appropriate for Jerry. And this is stuff you
(00:23):
should know. Have you been singing the song all day?
Venus as a boy? How can you not sing that song?
I don't know. I mean, I guess you could be
singing that um shocking blue song Venus that Banana Rama covered.
Oh no, that's the one that I was talking about. Oh,
I was talking about the b York song Venus as
(00:44):
a boy. Oh no, no, no, sorry, I was thinking
of It's a good one. I'm mel Venus actually funny enough, Like, honestly,
that had not popped into my head and now I
won't be able to get it out. So thanks a lot.
I thought of you yesterday. I was someone some don't
even know who it was. It was just one of
those Facebook posts that comes into your feed said. All
it said was now the final countdown by Europe is
(01:08):
in your head. That's all it was like, is that? Josh, Wow,
that's amazing that's the catchiest song of all time. It
was pretty funny. That's great. So, um, chuck, we're doing Venus.
And I was like skimming the House of Work site
looking for articles and I started to see I saw
this one article about how Venus is um starting to
(01:30):
get some love again from the space agencies, and um,
how little we actually know about it. And so I
was like this, you know, we've never done one on Venus.
We don't usually do planet yet. Maybe we should eventually
do all the planets over time. Um, but this is
a pretty good place to start. Because the more I
dug into Venus, the more I was like, this is
one of the most interesting planets of all time. Actually, yeah, like, uh,
(01:54):
you know it's described in this article that you put
together as a hell escape, and when you start reading
get to it, it's like, wow, you will melt and
boil if you get near it, or be destroyed. You
won't even get near it because the sulphuric acid in
the clouds will destroy you, yeah, and your teeth. Yeah.
So it's like, yeah, not not a hospitable place, but
(02:15):
possibly once was, yeah, which makes the whole thing even
more compelling. It wasn't always like this, you know. Um,
it's like the mom and what's eating Gilbert grape when
she sees um is it? Juliette Lewis and says I
wasn't always like this? And Juliet Lewis says, I wasn't
always like this. It's just like that it is, basically,
(02:36):
except on a planetary scale. Yeah, And I think the
cool thing about Venus to which we can put a
pin in this but um, we're starting to gain more
interest in Venus now because it could offer a peak
into our own bleak future as a planet. Yes, just
like you said, put a pin in that and smoke
it in your hat. Um. So it's weird that Venus
(02:57):
is this hellscape now that we understand it, because it's
a it's a very ancient planet as far as human
consciousness of it goes, because it is so bright. It's
actually the third brightest object in the sky after the
Sun and the moon, thanks comes Venus. Um. So like
humans have been able to see it long before we
had anything like telescopes or anything like that. And in fact,
(03:18):
as far back as I think sixteen sixty BC or
the six hundred BC, um, the Babylonians were tracking it,
and they called the Ishtar after the goddess of love
and war after the movie. And then yeah, then they
would say it Ishtar black, and then some would go, hey,
it's not as bad as everyone says, that's right, and
(03:40):
then that person would get shouted down, and then the
whole cycle would start over again. Yeah, it went by
quite a few different names. It was Ishtar, uh they
you know, before the Hellenistic Greeks came along, they thought
it was actually two different stars, so it was known
as both Vesper the evening star, and Lucifer or Phosphorus
the morning star. That's right. And then eventually Pythagoras said,
(04:03):
it's just one star everyone, and can we settle on
a name? And the Hellenstic Greek said, how about Aphrodite,
And then of course the Romans came along said no,
we call it Venus. That's right, and that's where we've
settled because the the Western world is modeled on the
Roman world. I guess. But Venus, the idea that it
is this feminine planet, that it has to do with
(04:26):
love and beauty, Uh, it really isn't start contrast to
how we understand it today. Since we we did start
really exploring it in the nineteen sixties. But even still,
if you if you look at um some of the
details of Venus that have been named by people. Apparently
almost all of the features on Venus are named after women,
(04:46):
Like there's a crater named after Chicago Way, there's a
canyon named after Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt,
so it's it's all about feminine beauty. But it's also
like this crazy health gape that will make your teeth
fall out and burn you alive. So it's a real
paradox in terms, you know what I mean totally. Uh.
It is the second planet from the sun um, which
(05:10):
is makes Venus our little neighbor, and which also means
that if Venus is getting sunlight, it's getting that light
a couple of minutes before we do. Uh. It is terrestrial,
so it's made of rocks and solid things as opposed
to being like a gas planet like Jupiter and Saturn.
And there's also a boundary between the surface of the
planet in the atmosphere, so you know, it is like
(05:33):
Earth in some ways, but also not like Earth in
a whole lot of ways. Well it, I mean, it
is often called Earth's twin and then sometimes Earth's toxic twin.
I think that's an Aerosmith reference. But um, because it
is closer to the Sun than we are, it's one
one planet in it's orbit actually is between us and
(05:55):
the Sun. It falls within our orbit around the Sun,
which means that to us here on Earth, Venus seems
to have phases like the Moon does, which is pretty cool. Yeah,
I think Galilee figure that out in sixteen ten Galileo. Yeah, Oh,
you're on a first name basis. Yeah, and I go
away back. I can veil him out of jail once.
(06:16):
He's just call him Galley, yeah, the gal or Gigi.
Uh so. Yeah, when Venus is on the opposite side
of the Sun, it's in full phase, and then it's
looks like it's in the new phase when it's between
the Earth and the Sun. Yeah, and every once in
a while, our alignment with Venus and the Sun is
like a perfect line. And it just happened in two twelve,
(06:38):
and I don't think I bothered to look, because I
don't remember looking. But the next time it's gonna happen
is seen. And unless aging researchers really have some sort
of breakthrough, I'm not gonna be around to see that
you didn't look, and you call yourself a friend of
Gali of Gigi. Yeah, I know you would be so disappointed.
It'd be is so disappointed into me. Come on, the
(06:59):
jos just look into the sky, right, Uh? So, Venus
is they call it the Earth's twin for the similarities,
um and not the differences obviously, even though like you said,
it's an evil twin. It's about about the same size.
It has about of our mass, but is almost a
perfect sphere because it is a slow roller. The Earth spins, obviously,
(07:23):
everyone knows, very quickly, revolving once every day every twenty
almost every twenty four hours, exactly twenty hours and fifty
six minutes, which means of course that that centrifical centrifugal
motion is going to bulge the equator. So we're technically
an ellipsoid in shape. But Venus spins the very very
(07:43):
slowly once every two dred and forty three days earth days.
That is, it spends on its axis. It's the slowest
spinner in our solar system and a really kind of
perfect little sphere because of that. Yeah, it doesn't produce
that bulge because it's so unsightly. And also because of
that same slow spin, it has an iron core and
(08:07):
molten mantle a lot like Earth does UM and through
that that that's that rocky core, that metallic core UM.
Earth's magnetic field is produced. But it's also produced because
it's spin so fast. Well, even though it has the
same kind of core and mantle that the Earth does,
Venus spin so slowly, it can't produce a magnetic field,
(08:30):
at least one that's not very strong. UM. I think
venus Is magnetic field is fift ten thousands of a
percent the strength of Earth's magnetic field. Nothing like you
try to use a magnet up there, it's just gonna
it'll just melt in your hand, You dummy, don't even
try it, and you're dead anyway. Yeah, exactly. Uh. There's
(08:51):
some pretty cool theories about some interesting aspects of Venus. UM.
One is, and this is in a theory. It is
a fact Venus has no moon. But one of the
theories is that Earth's moon used to orbit Venus, but
our gravity was so strong we just came in and
said that's ours. Now, we'll be taking that moon. I know,
(09:11):
imagine seeing that moon approach out of nowhere to would
be like melancholy. You know, Oh my god, that movie.
I love that movie to just see recently, uh not
too recently. I mean I loved it too. I'm glad
you didn't say I enjoyed it, because that's the movie enjoyed,
right exactly. I read this article once it called it
(09:32):
was um I think it was titled like Lars von
Trier is campy, and they were basically like everybody's taking
Lars von Trier incorrectly, like this is all He's like
a huge joke, sir, Like this is all in jest.
And once since I read that, I was like, I
really started to appreciate his stuff a lot differently. Yeah,
(09:54):
I mean those are a lot of his films are
tough to get through. Yeah, Dad, what you what a
part that is once you realize that it's like a joke,
or at least as far as large von Trier is concerned,
it's a joke, like it definitely, it's just easier to
take and watch and it's actually kind of funny and something.
But is that true or were they just sort of
(10:14):
I don't I don't know that they They had him
quoted as saying like, yeah, you got me, but they
made such a strong case that it's tough to tough
to not see it that way. I'll see if I
can dig it up and send it to you. Yeah,
that sounds really interesting. Alright, so no moon. Earth perhaps
took the moon. Another really interesting thing that has sprung
(10:35):
a few different theories is that the backwards spin of
Venus relative to Earth. And this is interesting and that
some scientists say, yeah, it's backwards because it used to
spend relative to us the same then it slowed down
and stopped and started spending the other way. And we
(10:56):
can tell this because it's slowing down again. They measured
it sixteen years apart, and at the end of that
run it spuns six point five minutes slower, which is
a lot considering the Earth's rotation slows only by about
one point eight milliseconds every hundred years. So that's the
one theory. Others said it's not and never did quote
(11:17):
unquote spin backwards. It just got knocked a d and
eighty degrees on its axis. So it looks backwards. Yeah,
like the planet got flipped upside down somehow, and so
to us it looks like it's spinning backwards, but it's
spinning the same way it always has, And they're like, well,
how would the planet get knocked upside down? Obvious idea
is a planetoid or a meteor or something like that
(11:39):
striking it in just the right spot, which is the
right force that it flipped the planet upside down. Another
one is that the um that Venus's atmosphere so thick.
How thick is it? It's so thick it's possible the
Sun can create gravitational tides like tides in this atmosphere,
(12:00):
and that these tides started slashing back and forth at
some point and got so um forceful and strong that
they eventually flipped the planet over. I think this is
a really good start. How do you feel? I think
it's pretty great actually, And I have one more fact
I want to give out chuck um about the the
day relative to the year. So you know how the
(12:22):
day of Venus is two d forty three earth days. Yeah,
this one's a little bit of a head twister. Well,
it turns out that Venus orbits the Sun in two
hundred and twenty five earth days, which means that the
Venusian day is longer than the Venusian year. Which is
a pretty amazing fact in and of itself. Because Venus
(12:45):
spins backward relative to the direction it orbits the sun
sunrise to like a day night cycle from sunrise to
sunrise is actually only a hundred and seventeen earth days
because the sun kind of catches up with vn Us
in its spin, So it's not a two dtree three
days stretch between sunrise. It's actually a hundred and seventeen.
(13:07):
So there's three big numbers you need to remember for
Venus day night cycles. A hundred and seventeen days, the
year is two D five days, but the day is
two hundred forty three days, all relative to us, of course.
Well yeah, I mean what else counts nothing? So a
minute ago and I said, I think we're off to
a good start. I was kind of lying something felt missing.
(13:29):
But now we're really off to a good start. I
think so too. So we'll take a break and we'll
talk a little bit about the surface of this weird healthscape.
Right after this all right, surface of Venus A lot
(14:13):
of clues because you know, we're we're still trying to
figure out Venus, and like you said, it's getting more
interesting to us more recently, which is kind of cool.
But there are clues kind of everywhere. The surface of
Venus is one clue that maybe something pretty big did happen,
and it's sort of recent past because Venus is about
the same age as Earth is um somewhere in the
(14:35):
neighborhood of four point eight billion years old, And they
look at impact craters to sort of gauge how old
a planet might be, like how many things have hit
it over time, because they know about how often that
might happen, and you know, these are good rough estimates.
But when you look at Venus, the crust of Venus
basically looks like it's only a few hundred million years old,
(14:59):
so like maybe up to eight hundred million, maybe as
little as a hundred and eighty million years old. So
that is a big clue that like, yeah, something happened
to kind of remake the surface of Venus at some point,
which is really really interesting. Yeah, And I mean Earth's
crust is much younger than the planet itself, but Earth
has plate tectonics, which you know basically is crust recycling.
(15:23):
Venus doesn't have that, so it is significant that the
crust is that much younger than the rest of the planet.
And it's also made up mostly of basalt um, which
I think in the history of stuff you should know
the thirteen year history. It's the first time I said
it correctly right off the bat instead of what we
used to say basalt or basil, basalt, basalt. I love
little sprinkle of basalt cream. Yeah, it's old bay mixed
(15:48):
with salt man um so uh, which is volcanic rock,
which makes sense because Venus has the most volcanoes of
any planet in the Solar System, something like six hundred.
That's they might even still be active right now. So so,
but it's weird that the crust would be that old,
because it's like, why would have you know, all the
(16:09):
volcano has been erupting at around the same time in
such measure that it would have remade the entire crust
of the planet. It's a it's a head scratcher, as
you say it is. The surface of Venus has some
huge mountain ranges, some as high as Everest. They have
a couple of gigantic highlands um the size of Australia
(16:30):
and South America. You mentioned all those volcanoes, which is
just remarkable, Like the most volcanic planet in our Solar
system for sure, right, Yeah, by far, I mean I
think Earth only has like nine seven. Uh. They have
about the same gravity as we do here on Earth,
(16:52):
so you'd feel about the same weight. But there's a
little caveat there because of their dense atmosphere, which we're
gonna talk about a little bit more in a menu
it here, there's tons of surface pressure, so if you
were there's no way you would be alive on Venus.
But if you happen to be, let's just say, it's
about ninety times the pressure that we have here on Earth,
So it would be like you're about a full kilometer
(17:15):
down underwater into the ocean, yeah, which is kind of crushing.
I was like, oh, you'd be crushed like a tin can,
And actually that's not entirely true. I think the diving
record is a little deeper than one kilometer, so a
human can withstand it, but it's not the kind of
thing you want to do. And when you combine it
with all the other issues that you've got going on
(17:35):
now that you're standing on Venus, somehow that pressure would
probably actually be the least of your worries before it
would be the heat. Yeah, you would have a lot
of trouble with the heat because, Um, here's another fun
fact for you. Mercury is the planet that's closest to
the Sun. It's twenty three million miles closer to the
Sun than Venus is. But Venus is the hottest planet
(17:58):
in our solar system. Want that for a second. Yeah,
and that'll all be clear here in a second. Um,
we're kind of dancing around it. But it's it's gonna
be fun, so just wait. But in the nineteen sixties, uh,
and we'll talk also talk about the various sort of
spacecraft that the USSR and NASA has kind of sent
up to explore. But the Mariner too recorded did a
(18:20):
little fly by and recorded surface temperatures, temperatures between three
d and four hundred degrees uh. And it turns out
that maybe about half I think recently they calculated it's
probably more like eight hundred and eighty degrees fahrenheit, which
basically will melt almost anything. M well, definitely aluminum, zinc,
(18:40):
and lead for sure. Yeah. So, um, it's super hot,
and it's there's a tremendous amount of pressure at surface level.
And I read this article from I think it might
have been space dot Com or NASA. I'm not sure
where you see Boulder Astronomer Planetary scientists named Kevin McKay
drake said, you can feel what it's like. I'm Venus
(19:02):
here on Earth. Heat a hot plate until it glows red,
place your palm on its surface, and then run over
that hand with the truck. I didn't get that quote.
He was saying, it's very hot and there's a tremendous
amount of pressure. I think degrees so is it no?
But I mean really, I think once you reach a
certain temperature and you're placing your hand, I think red hot?
(19:24):
Is that that that line where it's like after that?
Doesn't really think he was trying to be you know,
he's trying to appeal to the common person. I think
so they take an extra class or two now in
planetary science speak, their yeah you know, all right. So
I guess we've been dancing around like why is it
(19:45):
so hot? If it's not as close to the sun
as mercury, how can it be that much hotter than mercury?
And it is because Venus is a an environmental nightmare basically,
and which is one reason why we're a little more
interested now because it gives us a peek, like I said,
to what could happen to us in a very long time.
(20:06):
But it is. It is a a CEO two nightmare
on Venus. Yes, so UM, Venus is locked into a
run what's called a runaway greenhouse effect UM, and I
actually talked about it in the End of the World
with Josh Clark Um in the Natural Existential Risks episode. UM.
But the kind of the broad strokes of it is
(20:28):
that the greenhouse effect. You you want to have some
degree of the greenhouse effect where you have um visible
light coming in from the sun warming the planet, and
then the planet re releases some of that heat back
through the atmosphere as infrared heat, and not all of
it gets re emitted. Some of it is captured by
(20:49):
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And this is actually, like
I was saying, you want to have this. This is
a beneficial thing because it prevents wild temperature swing between
day and night. There's like a nice average temperature that
you're going to keep throughout the day and throughout the
night because the atmosphere is acting like a blanket preventing
(21:10):
all of the heat from re escaping, So you do
want some greenhouse gas. But what Venus is teaching us
is that there's a there's a point where you can
where you can reach this this point of no return
where your greenhouse gas greenhouse effect. Um, it just goes
hey wire and becomes it gets locked into a positive
(21:30):
feedback loop that is positive only in the most academic
sense of that term. In no way is it a
good thing at least as far as life or habitability goes. Yeah,
and Venus hit this tipping point a few hundred million
years ago. Um, the atmosphere got really hot. They basically
think the oceans literally boiled off. And you know, because
(21:52):
there used to be make oceans and rivers and it
used to be a lot more earth like. But these
oceans boiled off turned the atmosphere into water vapor, which
just made the problem a lot worse because that's another
greenhouse gas. And it just sort of accelerated this thing.
And then eventually that water vapor was broken apart by
radiation from the sun, by this ultra violet radiation, and
(22:15):
all this hydrogen escaped into space, left behind oxygen combining
with that carbon, and what you've got is, oh, what
carbon dioxide and no water vapor in the atmosphere. No,
and so Earth has I think point zero four carbon
dioxide in our atmosphere and we still are able to
(22:37):
maintain like a healthy greenhouse gas effect. So so the
fact that that it's a runaway greenhouse effect that seems
to have made um Venus into this hell escape that
it is, that's what kind of makes it a cautionary
tail or at least something that's worth investigating much more
deeply to find out, like how did it reach this point?
(22:58):
Like where was that tipping point? Because you know, here
on Earth we're contributing atmospheric CEO two more and more
frequently thanks to the burning of fossil fuels. So it's like, okay,
you know, did it hit that point when it reached
like uh an atmosphere carbon dioxide or point zero zero eight?
You know what's the what's the difference? And it really
(23:19):
matters to us here on Earth because at some point
that the the atmospheric concentration of c O two or
other greenhouse gases becomes enough that visible I can come in,
infrared heat won't go back out, and you've got that
that runaway effect that just locks it in and you're
in big trouble. So we need to find that out.
(23:40):
And it's a good thing that people are starting to
talk about exploring Venus now again for the first time
in a while. Let me ask you a question. The
End of the World with cho Josh Clark. Is that
available on Apple podcast or wherever you find your podcasts?
You know, Chuck, as far as I know, wherever you
find podcasts, you can find The End of the World
with Josh Clark. Attend part series. They don't pull it
(24:01):
like Netflix after they're done with you. I don't think.
So I haven't checked something in a little while, I'd
be very dismayed. Now it's an excellent series, And if
this kind of thing turns you on, then you can
listen to that and then quite a few other ways
that we might all become extinct. Or if me just
speaking for forty five minutes in a monotone turns you
(24:23):
on and you're gonna la that's right. Uh So, that's
why it's hot on Venus. That's why you know you
would just melt if you've managed to reach the surface
of Venus. But you wouldn't even manage to reach the
surface of Venus. Because of that atmosphere that we're talking about.
You talked about our teeth. Along with nitrogen, the biggest
(24:46):
component of the atmosphere of Venus is sulfuric acid, which
we call battery acid. And uh yeah, it would uh,
I mean, your teeth would be the least of your problems,
because you would your skin would burn, your lungs would explode.
Just these massive clouds blanket Venus, full of these lightning
storms in sulfuric acid. And it's it's literally like something
(25:08):
out of a sci fi movie, right, And if up
to this point you're like prepare for this. The Venus
member spins on its axis once every two and forty
three days, it's a Venutian day. But the upper atmosphere
is so um uh yes, that the clouds that make
(25:29):
up the upper atmosphere spin around the planet once every
four days. They're moving that fast, faster than any tornado
here on Earth. I saw. Um. But then down below,
towards the surface, the winds are just like a few
miles an hour, So that difference in wind speed creates
huge vortices. Apparently there's a vortex that has not fallen
apart that stayed raging for a very long time now
(25:52):
at the south pole of Venus, and they don't foresee
any time when it's going to stop. So there's huge
lightning storms, clouds of surf sulfuric acid that formed vortices
in this atmosphere that at surface level is the same
surface pressure for the same pressure that you would find
one kilometer down in Earth's oceans. Yeah, and then consider
(26:15):
that for you know, several billion years. Venus was a
lot like us. Like I said, it was habitable, it
had you know, it was fairly temperate, had oceans and
rivers and streams, and was kind of balmy, and it
was this greenhouse runaway greenhouse gas effect that uh, that
kind of made it into this hell escape And like
I said, it's a big reason we're going maybe we
(26:38):
should look into Mars, but also look into Venus. Yeah.
So I didn't know this, but um there was another
space dot com article that did a good job kind
of chronicling some of the like the history of exploring Venus.
You know, growing up as a Cold War school kid,
they didn't tell us like, oh, by the way, the
Soviets just had a great breakthrough on Venus. The other
(27:00):
let's tell you all about it. I don't remember hearing
any of this stuff to you, no, but I think
that's a great little dramatic teaser. Okay, so let's take
a little message break and we'll tell you what the
what the Rooskys were doing in the nineties sixties right
after this. Okay, Chuck, I can't take it any longer.
(27:47):
My teeth are falling out from from the suspense. Is
that Bob Newhart thing again? Uh? Yeah, So I didn't
learn about this since well either, But in the nineteen
from like the sixties to the eighties, the USSR was, uh,
they were into Venus. They were they were checking it
(28:09):
out with pretty decent regularity through their Venera and Vega programs.
And some of these milestones that they hit are some
of the like first milestones in just space exploration period UM,
not only for Venus UM and sixties. Seven October sixty seven,
Venera four was the first probe to ever beam data
(28:30):
back from another planet from the atmosphere of another planet.
And that's when they said, whoa super hot, very thick.
It was that good? No, yeah, okay, uh they I
think the Veneera for technically did make a hard landing.
(28:50):
The parachutes of course melted and this thing actually transmitted
data for about twenty minutes with photographs before you know,
it melted into nothing. And then I think a few
years after that, the Nara seven had the first soft
landing on any planet other than Earth. Another first in
(29:11):
in visiting our Solar system, like before we did stuff
like that. Yeah, well I did not realize it, but
apparently Venus is the first planet humanity has ever visited,
which is pretty cool. I mean not personally, but you know,
we sent some some machines up there as our emissaries,
you know. UM in n Venera thirteen recorded the first
(29:32):
ever audio on the service of another planet, which is
pretty cool. UM. Vega one and two missions in the
mid eighties deployed balloons into the atmosphere to make measurements.
So a lot of what we know about Venus came
from these early Soviet explorations. UM. But it's not like
the you know, the United States just completely ignored Venus.
(29:54):
We did have some interest in and I think we
had the first ever um I buy of Venus with
our Mariner two probe back in nineteen sixty two, I believe, Yeah,
that was the one I mentioned earlier that recorded um
what what seems like half accurate temperature the Venus. But
(30:15):
there was also the Mariner five and the Mariner ten
in sixty seven and seventy four, and then we started
to get a little more intense with it, and seventy
eight we launched uh an orbiter and a and a multiprobe,
the Pioneer Venus orbiter and the the PV multiprobe, and
(30:35):
I think the multiprobe sent four different things for entry
craft into the atmosphere in December, and then the orbiter
you know, did its thing. It orbited, kind of studied,
studied things from a safer distance until nine. Yeah, so
we're getting some stuff on Venus, but then it just
kind of went away. We stopped. We stopped researching it
(30:58):
actually after Magellan, which has launched from the Space Shuttle UM,
which by the way, I was reading like the official
accident report on the Columbia UM crash, and it is
just it's jarring, but it's amazing what this just you know,
scientific explanation of it. Really dry technical stuff still can
(31:21):
like really jog your imagination and kind of put you,
like in in the catastrophe. Even though they don't seem
to be trying to. It's just for some reason, it
really kind of gets you in the right way online. Yeah. Yeah,
it's like just you know, four page document about what
exactly went wrong, exactly when down to you know, I
(31:41):
think maybe the the deaths of Second if not the milliseconds. Um, yeah,
they really, they really dug into it. Documentary. It's still
out there. It's kinna just it's stirring. It's gonna just
knock you on your But have you seen twelve years
of slave yet? No? You're gonna ask you that like
(32:01):
once a year. You have you have homework this this weekend.
But oh I know. Um. But anyway, as I was saying,
Magellan was launched from the space shut in and it
was kind of hanging out monitoring Venus until and then
after that, and even kind of a little bit before that. Um,
just the focus on Venus kind of started to die,
(32:23):
in no small part because of the collapse of the
Soviet Union, right yeah, I mean they were they were
way more into it, into it than we were, and
then you know, that collapsed and so a lot of
that stuff stopped. Um NASA said, you know what, you
get a lot more out of your exploration dollar by
going to Mars because it's it's way more hospitable than
(32:47):
Venus is, and so we can use these robots and
now you know with Mars landers and it's just amazing,
like the stuff that we're bringing back from Mars. But
as Yeah, but as a result, Venus was sort of
like cast aside because it's just it's tough. I think
that Venera thirteen and a T two has the record
(33:07):
for the longest man made object ever on Venus, and
that was two hours before it melted. Yeah, that's it.
And that's a lot of dough to sink into something
that you know, like and you know that was when
a T two we could I'm sure we could get
something up there for for more hours than that now,
but I'm not sure how much longer. No, but we
(33:28):
need to figure it out. And the only way to
figure it out it is to start going back there.
And so so we are I think this, uh, this
month June NASA said, hey, everybody, get this. We've got
two visits planned, two missions planned for Venus. By um
there's the Veritas mission, which has a bunch of different
(33:49):
scientific instruments named in its name. It's a big acronym.
There's also Da Vinci Plus, which sounds like a new
streaming service for maybe PBS, and they're both gonna be
going by. But it's not just the United States who
has it's it's UM eyes trained on our sites, trained
on on Venus, Europe UM, the E s A has
(34:11):
a Venus program in the works, India does as well,
Russia does as well. And there's a private company called
rocket Lab that's going to be sending something up there
by three. Actually, Venus is literally hot right now. It is.
I have seen it in the news and I think, uh,
did you mention how the old house stuff works? Website
(34:32):
that we worked for had a really recent article on
on this right like why we were poking around? That's
what initially caught my attention about did you see the thing? Though? Also, um,
there was a big big to do. I think in
June of or at least sometime in there was a
bunch of press on Venus because some British researchers said, hey,
(34:55):
we were examining the Venusian atmosphere with radio telescope and
we found a bio signature phosphine, and everybody said, what
are you talking about and they said, no, really check
it out. So they wrote this paper, and um, it
does make kind of sense to an extent that that
you might find life at some port, some like point
(35:17):
in the Venetian atmosphere, because parts of it are you know,
the same temperature and in air pressure as you'd find
on Earth. But it also just makes zero sense because
it's just so inhospitable too, you know, yeah, I mean
it would have to have really evolved to be able
to survive. And again, maybe possible. But then some other
(35:37):
scientists came along because they, you know, they smelled something
rotten and they said, let me see those papers. And
they looked him over and they said, you know what,
we're not gonna say this is We're not going to
falsify this and say this is definitely wrong. But maybe
you might have gotten this confused with sulfur dioxide instead
of phosphine because they these chemicals both absorb radio waves
(36:01):
that are similar frequency, and everyone sort of has made
this mistake at some point. Guys, he shouldn't feel too bad,
but it's probably sulfur dioxide. It makes a lot more sense. Um,
But like like I said, they didn't definitely shoot it down,
and I think it just sort of piqued everyone's interest
to kind of get going again. And with these you know,
(36:24):
with these radio telescopes, we can finally you know, I
think for a long time we couldn't even see anything
at all because of the telescopes that we had, right, Yeah,
it's just blanketed by the super thick atmosphere that light
can't even penetrate any longer. It's so um. Now that
we have radio telescopes, we can see a lot more
clearly into it. But yeah, we're just on the very
(36:45):
beginning cusp of starting to study it. And it is
possible that there is that there was a biosignature and
the Bridge didn't get it wrong, um, because it would
have to be a low oxygen um like anaerobic type
of life, and that that's exactly the kind of um
organism that produces phosphine. So it's not like it's been settled,
(37:05):
like you were saying. But um, the it's just tantalizing,
you know. It's just in in addition to learning more
about Venus and maybe the lessons it can teach us
about what we need to do or not do here
on Earth, the idea that maybe there's some weird rando
life swirling around at hundreds of miles an hour in
the Venusian atmosphere. Just it's like, yeah, let's let's go
(37:26):
check Venus out now. Yeah, I feel like I never
hear about space programs from many other countries except for
like China, the US and in the old Soviet Union. Yeah,
I never hear about the Brits exploring space. Well there
with the E s A, I believe, so they just
all got together, I think so. And then um, yeah,
(37:48):
India has its own program now too. That's pretty ambitious
as well. So what about Japan? Did they have a
space program? Yeah, they have a space program. I don't
remember what it's called, but they definitely do. Um. There's
a lot more collaboration than there used to be during
the Cold War from understand Yeah, sure, yeah, yeah, because
we're trying to solve global problems here, and you know,
(38:10):
Venus might hold the key to some of those. Yeah,
it's it's our Venus, it's our fire, what's our desire?
That's right. You gotta go listen to Venus as a
boy too. You're gonna love it. Uh. There's also Venus
in fur velvet underground and then uh, Venus, I can't
(38:32):
come up with a good joke, let's just forget about
it and really beat it out Bob Newhart style. Yeah,
if Bob Newhart would have finished the joke, that's why
I'll never fill his shoes. Uh. If you want to
know more about Venus, well, then just look skyword and
see what you think, and maybe do a little research
to while you're at it. And since I said look Skyword,
(38:52):
that means it's time for listener mayoel. I'm gonna call
this Pug's Military follow up because we heard from uh
quite a few military members already and that was in
our real time. It was just released earlier today from
US service people who we're quite fond of the little
pog currency that they had over there. A long time
(39:15):
listener guys love the show. Just listen to the episode
and thought i'd write in. I was in the Air
Force for just shy of a decade when you mentioned
the Army and Air Force exchange services POGs, and it
brought me back. Instead of using coins, they would give
you these pods as changed. So if you bought something
for oh nine cents, the cashier would give you a
five cent pog. Subsequently, if you bought something for ninety
(39:35):
three cents, they would still give you a five cent
pog because there were no one cent POGs, so they
rounded down. I guess it's gonna cheap, uh, So you
would frequently lose money on those transactions. I remember being
frustrated when my first experienced this. If I remember correctly,
there being only five, ten and twenty five cent POGs. Yeah,
(39:58):
five tents and twenties. I remember having stacks and stacks
of these POGs all overseas, and I rendered them completely worthless.
Looking back, I'm sure it could have bought a dollar
worth of POGs and exchange them for real US currency,
but the thought never crossed my mind. I think they
owe me some money. I wish I would have remembered
my pog days. I was also way into POGs in
(40:19):
the nineties because that would have been a good way
to pass the time while over there. Thanks for aways
being there on my hour commute to work, I look
forward to Tuesdays and Thursdays every week p s. My
family was moving recently and I was going through an
old box of my things and found a loan pog
with Maggie Simpson on it. I'm not sure why I
(40:40):
decided to keep that one after all these years, but
I did, and that is from Jeff. That's an awesome email, Jeff,
thanks a lot for that one, agreed. Uh. If you
want to get in touch with this like Jeff did
and tell us about the pog you found, or what
your tour of duty was like, or anything like that,
you can get in touch with us via e mail
(41:00):
at stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you
Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For
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