One of the stranger objects in our solar system
is also one that gets very little attention in comparison to planets like Mars. In reality, however, Venus stands as a planet
completely unique in the solar system, and harbors some of the solar system’s oddest
natural features. So here are ten strange aspects of Planet
Venus. Number 10. It Snows Metal on Venus. When radar images of the surface of Venus
were taken it was noticed that certain high elevation areas on venus were highly reflective. Initially, the reason for this was unknown,
and explanations such as loose soil and weathering differences were advanced, but none fit very
well. It was later found that Venus may contain
minerals that evaporate in the intense heat of the lowlands, and then precipitate out
at cooler, higher altitudes in the form of lead and bismuth sulfides. This happens at altitudes higher than 2600
meters in a process that can be compared to earth snow, but only superficially. The two are in reality radically different. Number 9. It’s a Planet Gone Horribly, Horribly Wrong. It has been said that Venus is, in many ways,
Earth’s twin. It’s Evil Twin. Venus was once very earth-like, and may have
even had oceans of liquid water for a time billions of years ago. But then something happened, and Venus transformed
itself into the vision of hell that it is today. But what? It’s thought that Venus is an example of
a runaway greenhouse effect. As the young sun increased in luminosity,
which it’s still doing today and will eventually bake earth, it’s thought that the Venusian
oceans began to evaporate. Water vapor is an insulating greenhouse gas,
and would have warmed that planet’s atmosphere further. Eventually, the oceans boiled away completely. But today Venus has comparatively little water
vapor, so where did it go? In short, it’s thought to have escaped into
space. One clue for this is another odd aspect of
Venus. It has a very high ratio of deuterium to hydrogen
in its atmosphere. It’s 150 times greater than that of earth. It could be that Venus water vapor made it
high enough in the atmosphere to be broken down by solar radiation. The resulting oxygen would recombine, providing
some of Venus’s current carbon dioxide atmosphere, which is also a greenhouse gas. But the hydrogen would escape, being too light
for Venus to hold onto. But the isotope deuterium is heavier, and
would generally be more easily retained, resulting in the higher concentrations in the atmosphere
over time. It’s essentially the leftovers of the ocean. The end result is the Venus we have today,
with searing hot surface temperatures, extreme atmospheric pressure, and a runaway greenhouse
effect on a world that at one time seems have been earth-like. But that’s not the end of the story for
Venus. In the far future, it’s an attractive candidate
for terraforming and may someday end up as true twin of earth, and like earth, inhabited
by humans. Number 8. Venus Has Astonishingly High Wind Speeds Venus’ upper atmosphere in some ways behaves
like earth, for example wind speeds in the upper atmosphere are comparable to earth’s
jet stream, which can exceed speeds of 100 miles per hour. Generally, wind speeds deeper within earth’s
atmosphere are slower, except under certain weather conditions, such as a tornado. Venus, however, has a very different lower
atmosphere, and much, much higher wind speeds. Lower in Venus’ atmosphere, wind speeds
can reach past 700 kilometers per hour, or four hundred miles per hour. This is far faster than any wind speed ever
recorded on earth. But as you move even deeper into the atmosphere,
near the surface, the extremely high atmospheric pressure drops wind speeds to almost nothing,
and behaves a bit more like liquid flowing than gas moving. But, at pressures that great, even slow winds
can move rocks. And, there’s also a mystery involved with
Venus’ winds. Based on cloud top observations, Venus’s
wind speeds appear to be increasing over time, suggesting a cycle of some sort. It’s unclear what’s causing that. Number 7. The Entire Planet has Recently Been Resurfaced. One noteworthy thing about Venus’s surface
is that has very little cratering when compared to other objects in the solar system. This suggests that its surface is young, having
recently been resurfaced an estimated 300 to 500 million years ago. Earth resurfaces itself as well, but in our
case in addition to weathering we also have plate tectonics that return material from
the crust to the mantle and vice versa. Venus does not appear to have active plate
tectonics. This opens up a very apocalyptic possibility. That as radioactive materials in Venus’
core decay, they produce heat, but that heat becomes trapped causing the mantle of the
planet to heat up until eventually mantle material is so hot it forces itself up through
the crust causing a planet-wide lava flow. In short, Venus may periodically crack open
and resurface itself. Number 6. From the Perspective of Earth, Venus does
Strange Things Being among the brightest objects in the sky,
Venus has been watched in the night sky by humans for many thousands of years, probably
the entirety of our existence on this planet in fact. But also, due to that brightness, Venus can
often be observed in the day through a telescope if you know where to look. But, historically, occasionally, somehow,
it seems to have been fully visible to the naked eye in daylight. In 1716, Edmund Halley calculated its brightness
when residents of the city of London became alarmed over a daylight apparition of Venus. Other times this seems to have happened was
during the 1865 second inauguration of Abraham Lincoln. More, Napoleon Bonaparte likewise witnessed
a daylight apparition of Venus while in Luxembourg. In the past, these daylight apparitions were
looked at superstitiously, but in reality Venus can become naked eye visible from earth
if the planet is positioned well and seeing conditions in the sky are good. But that’s not the only oddity involved
with Venus’ as we see it from earth. Telescope observations of Venus also hold
a mystery known as the ashen light. Over the centuries there have been reports
of a glow on the unilluminated side of Venus, which like the moon goes through phases. No one really knows what causes it, or if
it really exists. It could be an illusion, where when observing
a small but very bright crescent, it is perceived by the brain to be a complete circle. Others have suggest that it may be due to
lightning in the Venusian atmosphere, some kind of auroral activity, and even upper atmosphere
chemistry. Yet, we’ve sent spacecraft to Venus and
none of them have detected this light. On the other hand, reports of it are really
persistent, stretching back to 1643 with many credible astronomers witnessing it, even to
the present day. Number 5. Venus May or May Not Have a Solid Core One striking feature of Venus is that it has
little or no magnetic field of its own, rather it effectively borrows the magnetic field
it does have from the solar wind, leading to a comet like magnetic tail quite unlike
earth, which internally produces its magnetic field through convection of liquid in the
core. An earth-like convection deep inside Venus
does not appear to be occurring leading to the possibility that Venus has a solid core. But if it’s so similar to earth in composition
and size, why wouldn’t it be liquid? Another possibility is that it’s simply
too hot for convection to occur, bolstering the idea that Venus traps heat, and only occasionally
releases it when it cracks open and resurfaces itself, in which case it has a molten core,
but one very different from earth. Number 4. Venus Rotates Very Slowly … and Backwards One of the strangest aspects of Venus, and
one of the hardest to explain, is the fact that the planet rotates backwards in respect
to the rest of the planets of the solar system. It also rotates very slowly, it’s day is
243 earth days long, which is actually longer than its year. While it might seem intuitive to suspect some
past cataclysm is the reason for this, such as some kind of impact, that doesn’t appear
to be the case. It may be that Venus simply formed a little
bit differently within the solar nebula than the other planets, and that some mix of tidal
effects from the sun’s gravitation on Venus’ thick atmosphere and chaotic spin changes
through planetary perturbations affected how it rotates today. More, it’s unclear what the effects on the
planet are with that thick atmosphere and very high winds. But Venus may not be without its cataclysms. If researches at the California Institute
of Technology are right, Venus may have once had a moon created in a similar way to how
Earth’s moon is thought to have been created. A huge object crashed into protovenus and
knocked the material off that would coalesce into a moon. But, here’s the kicker, about ten million
years later another impact reversed Venus’ spin direction. This would have caused the moon to spiral
inward and impact Venus. Alternatively the strong solar tidal effects
might have destabilized the moon, explaining why Venus is oddly moonless for a planet in
our solar system. Number 3. Venus May Have Lightning … But it Shouldn’t When it was first suggested decades ago that
Venus might have lightning, it sparked a controversy within the scientific community in that it
really shouldn’t have lightning. Venus lacks the type of clouds that generally
produce lightning, and also lacks the vertical atmospheric convection that is a major factor
in the generation of earth’s lightning. Yet persistent measurements with exploratory
spacecraft have seemingly unambiguously detected lightning on Venus, and seems to be about
as common there as it is here on earth. What mechanism creates the lightning remains
uncertain. Number 2. If the Wrong Things Happen Venus May Someday
Collide With Earth The further one tries to project how the future
of the solar system will play out, the more uncertain it is. Modeling of this often produces varying results. But what is certain is that it will change
and the current arrangement of the planets will undergo changes and some scenarios can
be a bit disturbing, if unlikely. One possibility is that the planet Mercury
could see its orbit become even more elongated than it already is, causing gravitational
interactions with the rest of the solar system that could eject it entirely from the solar
system, or put it on a collision course with Venus. Still other possibilities include a small
chance of Earth getting ejected from the solar system, or even a collision where Mars passes
very close to earth, disturbing Venus and Earth and putting them on a collision course. But, never fear, these are among the least
likely scenarios for the future solar system. What is certain however is that nothing will
stop the evolution and aging of the sun and earth is most definitely in long term danger
there. But, Planetary migration is something that
can be managed over very long periods of time. Yes, it’s possible to move planets, links
to a collaboration I did with Fraser Cain on that very subject in the description below. And in the far future, if we’re still around,
we may be able to avert these collisions by shepherding the planets using the gravitational
influence of asteroids in deliberately altered orbits over very long periods of time. Number 1. Venus May Have Life At first glance, with all of the heat and
pressure, Venus would not seem to be a possible abode for life, at least as we know. But in fact, it is a candidate and may be
showing signs that some kind of biological activity is occuring there. The key to this is the upper atmosphere of
Venus, where temperatures and pressure drop to a situation similar to the surface of Earth. In fact, this level of Venus’ atmosphere
is among the most earth-like places in the solar system. Given that Venus once may have had liquid
water, it’s possible that microbial life arose there and as the planet slowly transformed
into what it is today that adapted to the changing conditions and may still be present
in the upper atmosphere. And, we may be seeing clues of this. The first of these is the chemical carbonyl
sulfide. This chemical is difficult to produce inorganically,
though it can be produced through volcanism. Another odd one are what are known as S8 molecules,
which are impervious to the effects of sulfuric acid. If the microbes had incorporated these molecules
into their makeup, they too might be impervious to the corrosive effects of the sulfuric acid
in Venus’ atmosphere. S8 molecules are known to exist in Venus’
atmosphere. More, the Venera missions detected unexplained
elongated particulate matter in Venus’ lower cloud layer that were about the size of a
bacterium. But perhaps the most tantalizing hint are
dark streaks that appear in Venus’ cloud layers that appear to be absorbing UV light
and it’s not clear why. But if those streaks are related to life,
then UV could be its energy source. Hopefully, we won’t have long to wait for
an answer, ROSCOSMOS is planning a mission, Venera D, if sent, may carry equipment to
try to detect that life. Thanks for listening! I am futurist and science fiction author John
Michael Godier currently snowed in, eyeing ANNA suspiciously and trying to warm up after
making videos in the driver’s seat of the LeBaron for a while. Speaking of, do check out my talk show channel,
Event Horizon, where I recently did an interview with one of the team members of the Chime
radio telescope, which recently discovered the second known repeating fast radio burst,
link in the description below and the end screen. And, coming soon on Event Horizon, an epic
second interview with Dr. Avi Loeb, perhaps the most cited scientist on this channel,
along with more scientists and even a Star Trek Alumnus for a nice sci fi show and be
sure to check out my books at your favorite online book retailer and subscribe to my channels
for regular, in-depth explorations into the interesting, weird and unknown aspects of
this amazing universe in which we live.
