Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / What will the new probes to Venus reveal?

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What will the new probes to Venus reveal? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, Jorge, if you had to move to another planet,
0:12
Speaker 1: where would you go? I don't know. People seem to
0:14
Speaker 1: like mark a lot. That sounds pretty cool. Isn't it
0:17
Speaker 1: like really really cold, like colder than Antarctica? That sound
0:20
Speaker 1: cozy to you, That's what I meant. I said, it
0:22
Speaker 1: sounds cool. Well, have you considered Venus? It's nice and toasty.
0:27
Speaker 1: I heard it's a little too toasty for me. So
0:30
Speaker 1: you don't want it too hot, you don't want it
0:31
Speaker 1: too cold. So then where would you go? You're interested
0:34
Speaker 1: in the clouds of diamonds on Neptune. I know, but
0:37
Speaker 1: I heard the You know there's there are oceans in Europa.
0:40
Speaker 1: That sounds pretty nice. Yeah, if you can hold your
0:42
Speaker 1: breath forever and you're like swimming in the dark. All right,
0:46
Speaker 1: may I'll just stay home. Was that one of Golden
0:49
Speaker 1: Lockers options? Why didn't she just stay home? It was
0:52
Speaker 1: too homie? Maybe? Hi? I'm poor handmade cartoonists and the
1:09
Speaker 1: creator of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle
1:13
Speaker 1: physicist and a professor at U See Irvine, where the
1:16
Speaker 1: weather is always just right. Oh yeah, it never rains
1:21
Speaker 1: or never gets cold. It rains just the right amount,
1:23
Speaker 1: and it gets just cold enough for you to sometimes
1:26
Speaker 1: have to zip closed your fleece. You have it rough there. Yeah, Well,
1:31
Speaker 1: we get to act like it's cold and we're all
1:33
Speaker 1: bundling up in front of the fire, when it's only
1:35
Speaker 1: really like one man's sixty degrees is another man's venus winter.
1:42
Speaker 1: Welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe,
1:44
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio, in which we take
1:46
Speaker 1: a tour of the chiliest and the hottest parts of
1:49
Speaker 1: the universe. We explore everything from the driest to the wettest,
1:53
Speaker 1: from the smallest to the largest, to the oldest to
1:56
Speaker 1: the youngest. All of the extremes of the universe are
1:59
Speaker 1: welcome intellectual fodder for this podcast, where we try to
2:02
Speaker 1: dig into why everything is the way that it is
2:05
Speaker 1: and why it's not the way that it's not. Yeah,
2:08
Speaker 1: because it is a pretty cozy universe and a pretty
2:10
Speaker 1: cozy planet we live in. It seems to be not
2:13
Speaker 1: too hot and not too cold for us. It seems
2:15
Speaker 1: to be just about right for us and bears apparently,
2:19
Speaker 1: And so we like to talk about all the things
2:20
Speaker 1: in it and all the things that are there for us.
2:23
Speaker 1: To explore and to learn about. And as we cast
2:25
Speaker 1: our minds out into the universe, we discover that our
2:29
Speaker 1: little place, our little corner of the universe, this rock
2:32
Speaker 1: that we find ourselves on, seems pretty wonderful and toasty.
2:36
Speaker 1: There's not a lot of other places in the Solar
2:38
Speaker 1: System you'd like to live. Yeah, we're pretty lucky to
2:41
Speaker 1: have this nice blue planet here with water that's liquid
2:44
Speaker 1: that we can swim around in and go to the
2:46
Speaker 1: beach and enjoy. And also not too hot that would
2:49
Speaker 1: you know, kind of crush us and melt us when
2:52
Speaker 1: we step outside. It's pretty nice. I would go to
2:55
Speaker 1: five stars. A good thing we only have one star,
2:58
Speaker 1: or it would get too hot anyway. But a big
3:00
Speaker 1: question in modern astronomy is how often do you get
3:03
Speaker 1: Earth like planets? And one way that we ask that
3:06
Speaker 1: question is by looking at other Solar systems and wondering
3:10
Speaker 1: how often do you get rocky planets about this size
3:13
Speaker 1: orbiting those suns that just the right distance. But it's
3:17
Speaker 1: not clear that that's enough. Just because you have a
3:19
Speaker 1: rocky planet in the habitable zone in the Goldilocks zone,
3:23
Speaker 1: is that enough to make a planet a cozy place
3:26
Speaker 1: to live? Yeah, and it's a pretty big question with
3:28
Speaker 1: huge ramifications, I think, because it can not only kind
3:31
Speaker 1: of affect where humans might go outside of the Solar System,
3:35
Speaker 1: but it also kind of tells you how rare life
3:37
Speaker 1: is in the universe. Are we super looking at are
3:40
Speaker 1: we the only life in the universe or in our galaxy?
3:43
Speaker 1: Or are planets like Earth full of theming plants and
3:45
Speaker 1: animals pretty common? That's right, And it might also tell
3:48
Speaker 1: us something about the future of Earth and whether it
3:51
Speaker 1: will be habitable. We don't know how long planets like
3:54
Speaker 1: Earth are cozy places for life, or if they turn
3:57
Speaker 1: into crazy hot ovens or super dry frozen deserts. How
4:02
Speaker 1: long will Earth continue to be a nice place to live? Yeah,
4:05
Speaker 1: and humans are not really helping in that department, are we.
4:08
Speaker 1: We're sort of not maintaining our house very well. That's right.
4:10
Speaker 1: We're certainly heating up the planet. And it brings to
4:13
Speaker 1: mind our neighbors in the habitable zone. You know, when
4:16
Speaker 1: you look next door, over to Mars and over to Venus,
4:19
Speaker 1: you find a couple of very different examples for outcomes
4:23
Speaker 1: for planets that are pretty close to our neighborhood. Yeah,
4:26
Speaker 1: we're always looking for other planets that might be habitable
4:29
Speaker 1: or might have been habitable. It's sort of like looking
4:31
Speaker 1: at your siblings and using them to gauge how well
4:34
Speaker 1: you're doing in life. I see, why is my siblings
4:37
Speaker 1: so much hotter than I? Yeah, or cooler? Or is
4:41
Speaker 1: my case richer? Exactly? Why is my siblings so much
4:46
Speaker 1: gasier than that? When I'm glad about exactly? There are
4:52
Speaker 1: points of envy. But because those Excel planets and other
4:55
Speaker 1: Solar systems are so far away, we can see that
4:58
Speaker 1: they're there, but we aren't yet able to understand if
5:01
Speaker 1: there are liquid oceans on the surface and little critters
5:04
Speaker 1: swimming around in them. But we can look around in
5:06
Speaker 1: our neighborhood and ask questions like why did Venus turn
5:09
Speaker 1: out so differently from us? What is it about Mars
5:12
Speaker 1: that makes it so frozen and inhspitable? Yeah, and we've
5:16
Speaker 1: talked about Mars a lot on this podcast. I feel
5:18
Speaker 1: like we've talked about it's oceans and water and probes
5:21
Speaker 1: and things we send there and plans to go there, um,
5:24
Speaker 1: But we rarely talked about Venus. It's sort of like
5:26
Speaker 1: the ignored sibling of the Solar system. That's right, and
5:29
Speaker 1: It's not just been ignored by this one podcast. It's
5:32
Speaker 1: been overlooked a lot by science agencies. Mars has been
5:35
Speaker 1: the target of rovers and missions and orbiters, but Venus
5:39
Speaker 1: has been mostly ignored for a long long time. So
5:43
Speaker 1: Venus needs some more attention. Yeah, do you think that's
5:45
Speaker 1: why it's fuming right now? It's just doing their feeling
5:48
Speaker 1: resentful that we're ignoring it. There's always a favorite child,
5:51
Speaker 1: you know. That's true, even if everybody denies it. There's
5:54
Speaker 1: always a favorite child, that's right. You just hope that
5:56
Speaker 1: your favorite child is one of yours. That's right. It's Jupiter.
5:59
Speaker 1: Jupiters my every Well, what if we discovered our favorite
6:03
Speaker 1: planet is like in another solar system? Then with the sun?
6:05
Speaker 1: Get mad? Wait what are you saying? We might have
6:08
Speaker 1: children with other sons? But now now I'm confused here
6:12
Speaker 1: about this family arrangement. Well, you know, if we find
6:16
Speaker 1: beautiful planets around Alpha Centauri that are bigger than Earth
6:20
Speaker 1: and even more hospitable than we might look for an upgrade.
6:22
Speaker 1: Oh boy, you're already retiring the Earth. You haven't even
6:26
Speaker 1: found this better planet in it, and you're already looking.
6:28
Speaker 1: I'm just saying the sky is the limit. You know,
6:30
Speaker 1: the Earth is wonderful, but we don't know if it's
6:32
Speaker 1: the best thing out there. Always keep shopping, you know.
6:36
Speaker 1: It sounds like you're suffering from a fomo fear of
6:40
Speaker 1: missing out on science fumos fomo fear of missing out
6:44
Speaker 1: on Earth's But yeah, we're talking about Venus today because
6:47
Speaker 1: it's sort of an interesting planet. Like you said, it's
6:49
Speaker 1: right next to us, and it's very similar to planet Earth,
6:52
Speaker 1: right it is. It has a lot of the same
6:54
Speaker 1: sort of initial conditions. It's about the same size as
6:57
Speaker 1: about the same density, it's very close to us, gets
6:59
Speaker 1: just about the same amount of sun, but its fate
7:02
Speaker 1: was very, very different than our Yeah, well we are
7:05
Speaker 1: here enjoying some blue oceans and beautiful mountain vistas. Venus
7:10
Speaker 1: is pretty uninhabitable. I mean, it's pretty dangerous there, right. Yeah,
7:13
Speaker 1: it's not a place you want to go on vacation.
7:15
Speaker 1: But scientists think that maybe it was sort of like
7:17
Speaker 1: Earth at some point in the past, like maybe it
7:19
Speaker 1: had oceans in life and maybe underground water, and so
7:22
Speaker 1: a big question is what happened. Yeah, it might be
7:25
Speaker 1: that Venus had oceans of water for billions of years.
7:29
Speaker 1: And maybe even life swimming around there. But something happened
7:32
Speaker 1: a few hundred million years ago, and now it's toxic
7:36
Speaker 1: and scritching and nowhere you want to go. So it's
7:39
Speaker 1: a great opportunity to learn something about the fate of planets,
7:42
Speaker 1: maybe the future of the Earth. And recently NASA decided, finally,
7:46
Speaker 1: after decades of overlooking Venus, to send a couple new
7:50
Speaker 1: probes that way. Yeah, it's pretty exciting. And so today
7:53
Speaker 1: on the podcast we'll be asking the question will the
8:00
Speaker 1: new missions to Venus teach us? It's kind of a
8:03
Speaker 1: mouthful their missions to Venus teaches exactly. But I do
8:07
Speaker 1: feel like Venus has secrets and there are things we're
8:11
Speaker 1: gonna learn about life or planets or geology that are
8:14
Speaker 1: unique to Venus. I really feel like it's got something
8:17
Speaker 1: for us to learn. Do you think there's something interesting
8:20
Speaker 1: there in its history, like you want to dig into
8:22
Speaker 1: Psyche maybe figure out what happened. Yeah, I do think so.
8:25
Speaker 1: I think every planet in the Solar System has a
8:28
Speaker 1: crazy story. You know. It's sort of like you show
8:30
Speaker 1: up in this family when everybody's in their fifties and
8:32
Speaker 1: they're all already mad at each other and there's these
8:35
Speaker 1: references to things that happened twenty years ago that nobody
8:37
Speaker 1: wants to talk about. And that's our solar system. We
8:40
Speaker 1: evolved on this planet very recently and we have no
8:42
Speaker 1: idea what's been going on. Maybe Jupiter used to orbit
8:45
Speaker 1: really close to the Sun. Maybe there was another planet
8:48
Speaker 1: that got thrown out of the Solar system when things
8:50
Speaker 1: moved around. We're liking a Jonathan Friends and novel. Everybody
8:54
Speaker 1: is grumpy and nobody wants to talk about it. Sounds
8:56
Speaker 1: like you speak from experience. Then one of the whites
8:59
Speaker 1: and familys are like I have a large Jewish family,
9:02
Speaker 1: so there's a lot of these like feuds, you know,
9:05
Speaker 1: where people aren't talking to somebody else because it's something
9:08
Speaker 1: that happened fifty years ago. I'm not joking. It's crazy.
9:12
Speaker 1: And you also have kids in other solar systems. Maybe
9:16
Speaker 1: not that I'm admitting on the podcast, I mean listens
9:20
Speaker 1: to this anyways, Nobody we know, nobody. In my mother's generation,
9:25
Speaker 1: there was one branch of the family that only discovered
9:28
Speaker 1: in their thirties that they had a sibling who had
9:30
Speaker 1: been committed to a mental institution. We had been told
9:33
Speaker 1: that is like a novel, man, it was it Jupiter.
9:37
Speaker 1: There's definitely a lot of drama there. All right, Well,
9:39
Speaker 1: this is a pretty interesting question. There's an idea of
9:42
Speaker 1: exploring Venus, and so we're sending missions and so we
9:44
Speaker 1: want to know what are they going to find? And so,
9:46
Speaker 1: as usual, we were wondering what people out there thought
9:49
Speaker 1: we could find in this interesting planet. So thanks to
9:52
Speaker 1: everybody who participates in this segment of the podcast. We
9:55
Speaker 1: love hearing what you have to say about these questions.
9:58
Speaker 1: Now it's just because we love hearing your voices, we do,
10:01
Speaker 1: but also because it gives us a stance for what
10:03
Speaker 1: people out there might already know. So thank you very
10:05
Speaker 1: much for volunteering. And if you out there would like
10:08
Speaker 1: to participate in a future segment, please don't be shy
10:11
Speaker 1: and write to me at questions at Daniel and Jorge
10:14
Speaker 1: dot com. So think about it for a second. Use
10:16
Speaker 1: your imagination. What do you think the Venusian probes are
10:20
Speaker 1: going to teach us? Here's what people had to say.
10:22
Speaker 1: I don't know too much about Venus, so I can't
10:24
Speaker 1: really say for sure, but I do know Venus has
10:28
Speaker 1: really high temperature, and I know that it's got a
10:32
Speaker 1: weird atmosphere relative to ours. I know that it doesn't
10:36
Speaker 1: have any moons, and I know Venus is a good
10:39
Speaker 1: analog to talk about climate change and climate sensitivity to Earth.
10:44
Speaker 1: So maybe we'll uncover some more information that will help
10:47
Speaker 1: us figure out our own atmosphere and how it responds
10:50
Speaker 1: to things that we keep doing to our planet. Well,
10:54
Speaker 1: last year we had the announcement of the phosphene, but
10:58
Speaker 1: I know the data has been reanalyzed sense then and
11:00
Speaker 1: it's not as promising as they thought it was. But
11:05
Speaker 1: I also know that the surface of Venus is crazy extreme.
11:10
Speaker 1: I remember this hearing the Soviet prose barely survived a
11:13
Speaker 1: couple of minutes. I don't know how much art materials
11:17
Speaker 1: have changed since then, So I would think that the
11:20
Speaker 1: probes are going to be analyzing the atmosphere of Venus.
11:23
Speaker 1: I've heard of van Husen before, but I can't remember
11:27
Speaker 1: who that is or what he invented um, but I'm
11:33
Speaker 1: sure that the van Husen probes are probing something to
11:41
Speaker 1: maybe find out about a planet or a moon, or
11:49
Speaker 1: probing some sort of planetary object. Best guess answer here,
11:54
Speaker 1: Since the core word and that is Venus, I would
11:57
Speaker 1: have to say that their probes have been sent or
12:01
Speaker 1: are being considered being sent to Venus, which would lead
12:05
Speaker 1: me to believe that they would learn about the atmosphere
12:09
Speaker 1: or possibly even the surface of the plane of Venus. Oh,
12:13
Speaker 1: I like that Venusian, Like it's a name, it's a
12:17
Speaker 1: Venusian or Venusian. I think it's Venusian. But one of
12:21
Speaker 1: our listeners, I think, was also confused. He was like,
12:23
Speaker 1: who is this Venusian guy? And what did he invent?
12:27
Speaker 1: My question is, what if you had more than one Venus,
12:29
Speaker 1: would they be Veni or Venus? Is? It sounds like
12:32
Speaker 1: Alexander the Great motto Veni venni vici. That's right, Veni
12:38
Speaker 1: vici exactly Yes, I came, I saw a bunch of
12:40
Speaker 1: Venuses I conquered. Isn't one of those? I drank a
12:43
Speaker 1: bunch of wine. I came, I drank wine. I want Veni.
12:48
Speaker 1: Oh I get it. Yeah, maybe that's what we'll find
12:50
Speaker 1: in Venus, some great vineyards. Yes, exactly right, the vineyards
12:54
Speaker 1: of Venus. That sounds like an excellent science fiction novel.
12:57
Speaker 1: But it is interesting to think about what will line
13:00
Speaker 1: in Venus, Daniel, So maybe take us back to the basics,
13:04
Speaker 1: like what do we know about Venus. Venus is remarkably
13:07
Speaker 1: similar to Earth. It's very close to Earth that it
13:10
Speaker 1: receives about the same amount of light. It's about the
13:12
Speaker 1: same size as Earth. It's like the mass of the Earth,
13:16
Speaker 1: meaning that on the surface the gravity is like and
13:19
Speaker 1: you know, showing up near Earth in the Solar System
13:22
Speaker 1: also means that it's made out of roughly the same
13:24
Speaker 1: stuff as the Earth. You know, the stuff in the
13:26
Speaker 1: Solar System as it forms, a lot of the gas
13:29
Speaker 1: collapses towards the Sun and in the outer Solar system
13:32
Speaker 1: you have more ice. And that's why we have like
13:33
Speaker 1: rocky planets here, because the gas is stripped away as
13:36
Speaker 1: the Sun is formed. And so Venus and Earth are
13:39
Speaker 1: like made of two scoops of basically the same stuff,
13:42
Speaker 1: and they're very close to each other, and technically they're
13:45
Speaker 1: both in thehabitable zone. If you look in other Solar systems,
13:49
Speaker 1: it's very rare defind to other planets, so similar, so
13:54
Speaker 1: near each other inhabitable zone. Interesting, they're almost like fraternal twins,
13:58
Speaker 1: kind of like, you know, more from the same scoop. Yeah,
14:01
Speaker 1: and while Earth is a very nice place to live,
14:04
Speaker 1: Venus is scorching and totally hostile. And so like a
14:07
Speaker 1: really deep and interesting question is what happened? Why did
14:10
Speaker 1: Venus end up that way? Is it because of its
14:13
Speaker 1: location our planet's really that sensitive to their location? Or
14:17
Speaker 1: is because there's some event in Venus's history, some one off,
14:20
Speaker 1: random thing that happened to it that changed its fate.
14:23
Speaker 1: And so this is a deep question in modern planetary physics. Yeah,
14:27
Speaker 1: like maybe something happened to it that could also happen
14:30
Speaker 1: to us potentially exactly that we should be careful about.
14:33
Speaker 1: Maybe humans happened to it exactly, and that might happen
14:36
Speaker 1: to Venus. They'll watch out. But but I guess the
14:38
Speaker 1: question is how close is it? You say, it's really close?
14:41
Speaker 1: Like what are we talking about? It? So it's closer
14:43
Speaker 1: to the Sun than we are, right, so wouldn't it
14:44
Speaker 1: be a little hotter. It is closer to the Sun
14:46
Speaker 1: than we are, and so it is a little hotter. Yeah,
14:49
Speaker 1: but that doesn't account for its incredibly hot temperatures. Like
14:52
Speaker 1: Venus on the surface is eight nine degrees fahrenheit. That's
14:56
Speaker 1: four seventy c. Like you could melt lead on the
14:59
Speaker 1: surface of Venus. It's ridiculously hot. Wow, Like if you
15:03
Speaker 1: just had to block a lead on the surface, it
15:05
Speaker 1: would be in a glass. In a glass basically would melt. Yeah,
15:08
Speaker 1: and that's one of the reasons that it's so difficult
15:10
Speaker 1: to explore Venus. Like you try to land something on
15:12
Speaker 1: the surface of Venus, it doesn't last for very long
15:15
Speaker 1: because it's crazy, you know, and not only is it
15:19
Speaker 1: very very hot, but it's very high pressure. Venus has
15:22
Speaker 1: an atmosphere that's like ninety times the Earth pressure, so
15:26
Speaker 1: it's like being deep, deep under the oceans. So everything
15:29
Speaker 1: we sent to Venus has melted and basically been crushed
15:33
Speaker 1: as it landed. Wow, it's kind of interesting to think,
15:36
Speaker 1: you know, just because it is, as you say, very
15:38
Speaker 1: similar to Earth, Like it's almost like a copy of Earth,
15:41
Speaker 1: and it's in a similar place in the Solar System,
15:43
Speaker 1: but it's so different there, right Like I would have
15:45
Speaker 1: thought that maybe just the distance to the Sun is
15:48
Speaker 1: kind of what determines your atmosphere and what it's like
15:51
Speaker 1: on the surface, But there's a whole lot more to
15:53
Speaker 1: living on the surface of the planet exactly. And what
15:55
Speaker 1: we've learned recently from studying our own climate is that
15:58
Speaker 1: what's in that app sphere totally determines the temperature on
16:02
Speaker 1: the surface. It's much more than just how much light
16:04
Speaker 1: is hitting you from the sun. It's where does that
16:07
Speaker 1: light go? And Venus is bathed in blankets and blankets
16:11
Speaker 1: of carbon dioxide. We talked about this intense pressure on
16:14
Speaker 1: the surface. Well of its atmosphere is c O two
16:18
Speaker 1: and c U two is like a blanket, and so
16:21
Speaker 1: not only is it getting a little bit more sun
16:23
Speaker 1: than Earth is, but it's very very good at keeping
16:26
Speaker 1: that heat on the surface. Wow. Yeah, CEO two acts
16:29
Speaker 1: like a greenhouse effect right basically, and they have a
16:31
Speaker 1: n greenhouse exactly, have a very intense greenhouse there, and
16:36
Speaker 1: that's why it's so hot. Is this crazy amount of
16:38
Speaker 1: c O two, this blanket that surrounds it. I guess
16:41
Speaker 1: the question is how did it get so much c
16:43
Speaker 1: O two? But does it just occur naturally in this
16:45
Speaker 1: solar system? Well, that's one of the deep questions about
16:48
Speaker 1: the formation of Venus, because we don't think that it's
16:50
Speaker 1: been that way the entire time. As we study the
16:53
Speaker 1: models of Venus, we try to understand, like, how did
16:55
Speaker 1: it get there? That's exactly the question. People think that
16:58
Speaker 1: Venus started off in a very similar way to Earth.
17:00
Speaker 1: And so one question that we'll talk about is where
17:02
Speaker 1: this c U two might have come from. Is it
17:04
Speaker 1: from vulcanism, did something impact Venus? Where did all this
17:08
Speaker 1: come from? How did it end up with this crazy atmosphere? Right,
17:11
Speaker 1: because I think Earth used to have mostly CEO two,
17:13
Speaker 1: Like we used to have an atmosphere without any oxygen,
17:16
Speaker 1: and we sort of only have oxygen because of life
17:19
Speaker 1: basically makes it. That's right, that's where the oxygen comes from.
17:22
Speaker 1: But you know, the issue here, I think is more
17:24
Speaker 1: the balance of the c O two with the other
17:26
Speaker 1: non greenhouse gases. Like we have a lot of nitrogen
17:29
Speaker 1: in our atmosphere, so if we had c O two,
17:32
Speaker 1: we also whatever very very hot surface, and so it's
17:34
Speaker 1: not as much the oxygen is like the nitrogen that's
17:37
Speaker 1: keeping the Earth from overheating. And it's not just the error.
17:41
Speaker 1: There are also sulphuric acid on Venus. Right everywhere the
17:45
Speaker 1: Venus is covered in these clouds, so if you look
17:48
Speaker 1: at Venus through a telescope, you can't see the surface,
17:51
Speaker 1: which makes it like very secretive. And people were wondering,
17:54
Speaker 1: like what's going on on the surface of Venus, And
17:57
Speaker 1: before we had ever sent a probe there to like
17:59
Speaker 1: map its surface. People had no idea what the temperature
18:02
Speaker 1: was like. Before the sixties, scientists speculated like maybe there
18:05
Speaker 1: were oceans on Venus today, or maybe there's like a
18:08
Speaker 1: jungle like environment down there. Nobody had any idea because
18:11
Speaker 1: we couldn't see through those clouds. And those clouds are
18:14
Speaker 1: more than just blocking your view, as you said, they're
18:16
Speaker 1: made of sulfuric acid there, especially because the really high
18:21
Speaker 1: pressure means that even a gentle wind, you know, like
18:24
Speaker 1: five or seven kilometers per hour, would feel on Earth
18:27
Speaker 1: like a fifty kilometer per hour wind because you're just
18:29
Speaker 1: getting hit by so much stuff. Wow. And and it's
18:32
Speaker 1: sephuric acid, So it would totally eat you up just
18:36
Speaker 1: to be out there in the wind. Yeah, exactly. So
18:38
Speaker 1: it's not a very pleasant place to hang out. But
18:40
Speaker 1: it's sort of not just kind of what's on the surface.
18:42
Speaker 1: There's also something kind of fundamental about Venus in that
18:45
Speaker 1: it doesn't rotate as fast as the Earth. Venus is
18:48
Speaker 1: very weird because it rotates super duper slowly. Like the
18:52
Speaker 1: Earth takes twenty four hours to do one rotation, Venus
18:55
Speaker 1: takes two hundred and forty three Earth days, right, which
18:59
Speaker 1: is about the same length as the Venus year. And
19:02
Speaker 1: not only that, but it rotates the other direction from
19:04
Speaker 1: the Earth. Most of the things in solar system are
19:06
Speaker 1: spinning the same direction that they're moving around the Sun,
19:10
Speaker 1: which is the same direction that the Sun itself is rotating.
19:12
Speaker 1: Cause everything is mostly in sync except for Venus and Urinus.
19:16
Speaker 1: Everything is rotating the same way. So Venus is rotating
19:19
Speaker 1: sort of backwards and super duper slowly. Wow, it's like
19:22
Speaker 1: that sibling that just decided to go its own way exactly,
19:26
Speaker 1: And it's really weird that it rotates though slowly. It
19:28
Speaker 1: means that like basically you have one day per year, right,
19:31
Speaker 1: Like the sun rises and sunsets are super rare on Venus.
19:35
Speaker 1: You mean, like if I'm standing on the surface, I
19:37
Speaker 1: would only see a sunset once a year, or like
19:40
Speaker 1: once every two and forty three days. And could that
19:44
Speaker 1: somehow explain what's going on or what happened to Venus
19:47
Speaker 1: because I imagine, you know, being spun around like the Earth,
19:50
Speaker 1: it's sort of like a marshmallow where everything gets sort
19:52
Speaker 1: of more evenly toasted. But you know, maybe not turning
19:56
Speaker 1: kind of makes you toasting one side more than the
19:58
Speaker 1: other side. Yeah, it might be, although you know, the
20:01
Speaker 1: atmosphere I think transfers this energy around Venus pretty efficiently.
20:05
Speaker 1: But it might also be a clue as to what
20:07
Speaker 1: happened to Venus. If you look at the surface of Venus,
20:10
Speaker 1: you get some evidence that something happened dramatically, like four
20:14
Speaker 1: or five million years ago. And it might be that
20:16
Speaker 1: the Venus was like hits by some huge impact or
20:20
Speaker 1: that changed its spin. So it might not be that
20:23
Speaker 1: the spin is the cause of its overheating. It might
20:25
Speaker 1: be the clue as to what happened to Venus. And
20:28
Speaker 1: this is pretty interesting. Venus has no moons, like we
20:31
Speaker 1: have the moon and Mars says a couple of moons,
20:33
Speaker 1: but Venus has no moons. Yeah, Venus has no moons
20:36
Speaker 1: at all, which is really really weird. And I think
20:39
Speaker 1: it might be consistent with Venus getting smacked sometime in
20:42
Speaker 1: the past and sort of losing its moons along the way.
20:45
Speaker 1: It's not that the moons abandoned Venus like you would have.
20:50
Speaker 1: All Right, well, let's get more into Venus and what
20:52
Speaker 1: we know about its past, and is their life in
20:55
Speaker 1: there and what are we going to learn when we
20:57
Speaker 1: send these probes to study it. But first let's take
20:59
Speaker 1: a quick break. All right, we're talking about Venus, the planet,
21:15
Speaker 1: not the I guess Greek goddess or is it Roman goddess.
21:18
Speaker 1: I can never keep track of which ones are Roman
21:20
Speaker 1: and which ones are Greek. It's all Greek to you, mythology.
21:24
Speaker 1: But we are thinking of sending some pros or I guess,
21:26
Speaker 1: our planets, to send pros there to study it because
21:29
Speaker 1: it might have an interesting past Venus. So, Daniel, what
21:32
Speaker 1: do we know about venus is past? We don't know
21:34
Speaker 1: very much, because of course we can only observe Venus today.
21:38
Speaker 1: But we can look at the surface of Venus and
21:40
Speaker 1: we can build models that try to tell us the
21:42
Speaker 1: story of how Venus could have gotten to where it
21:45
Speaker 1: is today, and that might reveal what it's past was like.
21:48
Speaker 1: And so, you know, people go on their computer and
21:50
Speaker 1: they say, well, what happens to a planet in this
21:53
Speaker 1: scenario or in that scenario, and they try to come
21:55
Speaker 1: up with like simulated versions of planets that end up
21:58
Speaker 1: where Venus is today that can tell us a story
22:01
Speaker 1: about how we got from an earth like planet to
22:04
Speaker 1: Venus today. Right, because I guess the hypothesis is that
22:07
Speaker 1: you know, the Earth, Venus, Mars, we all sort of
22:10
Speaker 1: formed together at almost at the same time, I imagine,
22:13
Speaker 1: within the history of the Solar system, and there was
22:15
Speaker 1: a shower of comments that gave us water. It probably
22:18
Speaker 1: also gave water to Mars and to Venus until the ideas,
22:21
Speaker 1: and maybe Venus and Mars also had oceans at some
22:24
Speaker 1: point in their history exactly, And we now have evidence
22:27
Speaker 1: for water on Mars today, like we know that there
22:30
Speaker 1: is water on the surface of Mars and underground, but
22:32
Speaker 1: we think that Mars might have had liquid surface oceans
22:36
Speaker 1: for hundreds of millions of years early in its history,
22:39
Speaker 1: although then they probably evaporated. It didn't last for very long.
22:42
Speaker 1: Now on Venus, people suspect that it might also have
22:46
Speaker 1: had liquid oceans of water, but in this case for
22:49
Speaker 1: maybe two or three billion years. There might have been
22:52
Speaker 1: a long period there where our solar system had like
22:55
Speaker 1: two blue jewels. Earth and Venus both very similar with
22:59
Speaker 1: lots of water on the surface. And that's fascinating because
23:03
Speaker 1: we know that life started fairly early in the history
23:06
Speaker 1: of Earth. It didn't take a billion years for life
23:08
Speaker 1: to start. So if Venus had water on its surface
23:11
Speaker 1: for more than a billion years. You know that leads
23:14
Speaker 1: to the obvious question, was their life on Venus? Wow?
23:18
Speaker 1: But I guess a question, though, is how do we
23:20
Speaker 1: know this? Like, how do we know Venus had oceans
23:23
Speaker 1: for two billion years? We don't know for sure, right.
23:25
Speaker 1: All we can do is look at Venus today and
23:27
Speaker 1: ask the question how did it get here? And we
23:29
Speaker 1: can look at its surface. There are a few little clues,
23:33
Speaker 1: like if you look at the pattern of rocks on
23:35
Speaker 1: the surface of Venus, then you can ask, like, how
23:37
Speaker 1: do you get those rocks? And some geologists think that
23:40
Speaker 1: some of the rocks on the surface of Venus require
23:43
Speaker 1: water to form, Like you don't get this precise crystal structure,
23:46
Speaker 1: you don't get granite like rocks forming without water. Though
23:49
Speaker 1: I did read a bunch of papers from people who
23:51
Speaker 1: are like, no, there was never any water on Venus
23:53
Speaker 1: and here's why. So there's definitely a lot of scientific controversy.
23:57
Speaker 1: And one of the problems is that we just don't
23:58
Speaker 1: have a lot of great data about the surface because
24:01
Speaker 1: Venus is so inhospitable, and because the clouds are so thick,
24:04
Speaker 1: and because we basically haven't gone there in thirty years
24:07
Speaker 1: since our instruments have improved, right, yeah, it's been thirty years.
24:10
Speaker 1: It's kind of visit. But I think it is that,
24:13
Speaker 1: you know, like when the Earth form, we had water, right,
24:16
Speaker 1: like the Earth form with water, that water evaporated and
24:19
Speaker 1: then we got maybe showered with comments to replenish that water.
24:22
Speaker 1: And since Venus is so closed, it probably happened the
24:25
Speaker 1: same way, right Like, it probably started with water and
24:28
Speaker 1: maybe it evaporated as well or or not, and then
24:30
Speaker 1: must have also gone in water from comments. Yeah, And
24:33
Speaker 1: the idea is then something might have triggered on Venus,
24:35
Speaker 1: this runaway greenhouse effect. You get a little bit more
24:39
Speaker 1: c O two in your atmosphere than things get hot,
24:41
Speaker 1: then that makes more CEO two like come out of
24:44
Speaker 1: the rocks that are on the surface and lead to
24:46
Speaker 1: evaporation of those oceans, which just leads to more greenhouse effect,
24:50
Speaker 1: which raises the temperature. And so it's this cycle that
24:53
Speaker 1: repeats itself. And so you know, you might have like
24:55
Speaker 1: a nice stable situation like we have here on Earth,
24:57
Speaker 1: you get too far away from that, it's just some
24:59
Speaker 1: dramatic thing that happens that kicks you off of that stability.
25:02
Speaker 1: Then you could veer off into this crazy hot, inhospitable
25:05
Speaker 1: climate like they have now it turns into the sauna basically, yeah, exactly,
25:10
Speaker 1: and you could evaporate like all of the oceans. Imagine
25:12
Speaker 1: evaporating all the oceans from Earth. It's crazy to think about.
25:16
Speaker 1: The Pacific is huge, but relative to the size of
25:19
Speaker 1: the Earth, it's like this very very thin layer of
25:22
Speaker 1: water on the surface. That's what you're saying that A
25:25
Speaker 1: big question is could life a form during those billions
25:28
Speaker 1: of years that Venus head water? Like is there life there? Now?
25:31
Speaker 1: We don't know. We don't think there's a lot of
25:33
Speaker 1: life living on the surface because it's a pretty crazy environment.
25:36
Speaker 1: Although there was a report in September of twenty that
25:39
Speaker 1: they discovered this compound in the clouds of Venus bosphen
25:43
Speaker 1: pH three in very high concentrations, concentrations that were much
25:47
Speaker 1: higher than could be explained by like volcanoes. This is
25:50
Speaker 1: something which is typically produced by life. So for a
25:52
Speaker 1: little while, everybody was very excited, Oh my gosh, did
25:55
Speaker 1: we discover life in the clouds of Venus. Because far
25:58
Speaker 1: up in the clouds it's much cooler and the pressure
26:00
Speaker 1: is much much lower, so it makes sense for something
26:02
Speaker 1: to like maybe be living up there. Oh, I see interesting.
26:05
Speaker 1: They found like basically like the farts, more farts than
26:09
Speaker 1: would be normal in a rocky planet. And so they thought, hey,
26:12
Speaker 1: maybe there's something there, but it would, like you said,
26:14
Speaker 1: it would have to be living sort of in the clouds.
26:16
Speaker 1: It would have to be living in the clouds, which
26:18
Speaker 1: is kind of cool, right. Imagine like microbes floating in
26:21
Speaker 1: the clouds, is up there, you know, the pressure is reasonable.
26:24
Speaker 1: The problem is that you can't go to Venus and
26:26
Speaker 1: sample these clouds very easily. And so the day that
26:28
Speaker 1: they got was from telescopes looking at light reflecting off
26:32
Speaker 1: the atmosphere of Venus. And you know that by looking
26:35
Speaker 1: at the light you can tell what's there because different
26:37
Speaker 1: kinds of things glow in different frequencies. Every different element
26:40
Speaker 1: has its own fingerprint. So they thought they saw this
26:43
Speaker 1: dip in the frequencies right where phosphine would be absorbing light.
26:46
Speaker 1: But then later people went and looked at their data
26:48
Speaker 1: and try to examine it themselves, and they didn't see
26:51
Speaker 1: the same thing, And so that result got a lot
26:53
Speaker 1: of press, but it was almost instantly debunked. It was
26:57
Speaker 1: a misfire. It was an error in fitting. Is like
27:00
Speaker 1: in the mathematical analysis, they put in a very flexible
27:03
Speaker 1: polynomial and it could basically be consistent with a little dip.
27:06
Speaker 1: But if people come in with other models, like other
27:08
Speaker 1: arbitrarily chosen functional forms, they didn't see the same result,
27:12
Speaker 1: which means it's probably just an artifact of how they
27:14
Speaker 1: did the analysis. You would think they would be more
27:17
Speaker 1: tacking before announcing it to the public. You know, what
27:19
Speaker 1: they did is they checked with another telescope there, like,
27:22
Speaker 1: let's look at life from a totally different instrument, and
27:24
Speaker 1: they saw the same thing. That's cool, but they used
27:26
Speaker 1: the same analysis method on both telescopes, so that I
27:30
Speaker 1: think was a little bit tough. That's sort of like
27:32
Speaker 1: my scientific nightmare. You know. I talked about a scientific
27:34
Speaker 1: fantasy and being like discovering something new that blows everybody's minds.
27:38
Speaker 1: That's awesome. Scientific nightmare is like going out there with
27:40
Speaker 1: a big result and then very quickly discovering that you
27:43
Speaker 1: made a silly mistake and that your naked when the
27:46
Speaker 1: press rows up at your door. That's the scientific equivalent
27:50
Speaker 1: of being naked. But there are a lot of really
27:53
Speaker 1: interesting things about Venus that we do know and that
27:55
Speaker 1: are solid. Like, for example, we can look at the
27:58
Speaker 1: surface of Venus by shooting radar through the clouds, and Venus'
28:02
Speaker 1: surface shows a lot of really interesting, very weird hints
28:05
Speaker 1: as to what might have happened to it, I mean
28:07
Speaker 1: from the rock formations and tectonics. Yeah, so Venus doesn't
28:11
Speaker 1: have tectonics. But we can look at the surface of
28:13
Speaker 1: Venus and we can look in the craters of the surface,
28:16
Speaker 1: and by looking at the craters you can tell something
28:18
Speaker 1: about sort of like the age of the surface, because
28:21
Speaker 1: if something is being like constantly remade, if you have
28:23
Speaker 1: a planet with this like constant volcanic eruptions, then any
28:26
Speaker 1: creators are going to get smoothed over. And if we
28:28
Speaker 1: look at the surface of Venus, we see a lot
28:30
Speaker 1: of huge craters that date to like three four hundred,
28:33
Speaker 1: five hundred million years ago, and then very little has
28:36
Speaker 1: happened since then. So it's sort of like something happened
28:39
Speaker 1: a big deal five hundred million years ago, a lot
28:42
Speaker 1: of craters, a lot of overturning, a lot of refreshing
28:44
Speaker 1: on the surface, and then since then, basically it's just
28:47
Speaker 1: been steady, like it's been frozen since then? Could it
28:51
Speaker 1: be the atmosphere, Like, is the atmosphere protecting the surface
28:54
Speaker 1: from getting you know, remade by other falling asteroids? Right,
28:58
Speaker 1: you might think Venus has a very thick app sphere
29:00
Speaker 1: and so doesn't it protect it from meteors. And it's
29:03
Speaker 1: true that we have a nice blanket and when rocks
29:05
Speaker 1: hit our atmosphere, they burn up and that's what gives
29:07
Speaker 1: you shooting stars. But the kind of rocks that make
29:09
Speaker 1: these craters, these are big guys and they just blow
29:11
Speaker 1: right through the atmosphere. So even Venus is thick atmosphere
29:15
Speaker 1: won't protect it from the kind of things that create
29:17
Speaker 1: these craters. So it's really interesting puzzle about, like what's
29:21
Speaker 1: going on there? Are there still active volcanoes on the surface.
29:24
Speaker 1: It's something hit Venus five million years ago and like
29:27
Speaker 1: boil its oceans and cause this runaway greenhouse effect. Wow.
29:31
Speaker 1: Whereas I guess if you look at Earth, you know
29:33
Speaker 1: we have a relatively smooth surface, Like we don't have
29:36
Speaker 1: giant craters that you can go see, that's right. We
29:39
Speaker 1: have a couple, right, like Meteor Crater in Arizona, but
29:41
Speaker 1: we have we have a lot of activity on the surface.
29:43
Speaker 1: We have water, we have plate tectonics, We've got a
29:46
Speaker 1: lot of stuff sort of refreshing our surface early often
29:48
Speaker 1: we have bulldozers exactly. We've got new malls being built
29:52
Speaker 1: every year. Then you should just rebuild that mall. You're
29:55
Speaker 1: tearing it down already. H does really make the surface
29:57
Speaker 1: pretty dull too. There are some strip malls here in
30:01
Speaker 1: Orange County. I would like to see get hit by
30:02
Speaker 1: a vania. Or are we the bulldozer? I guess, but
30:05
Speaker 1: you said that we have like radar images of the
30:08
Speaker 1: surface of Venus. I guess we got that firm probes
30:10
Speaker 1: right that we've sent before in the past. Yeah, So
30:12
Speaker 1: Venus used to have a lot of attention. Like in
30:15
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, Venus was a sexy place to look. Scientifically,
30:19
Speaker 1: people were wondering, like maybe there's life on the surface.
30:21
Speaker 1: We don't know what's going on. Between sixty two and
30:23
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety there were like eighteen missions to Venus. Like
30:27
Speaker 1: you have to understand, it was the premier place to
30:29
Speaker 1: send your stuff. First spacecraft to reach another planet that
30:33
Speaker 1: was to Venus, the first thing to land on another
30:35
Speaker 1: planet that was Venus, The first pictures from another planetary surface.
30:39
Speaker 1: That was Venus. The first planetary atmosphere we measured, that
30:42
Speaker 1: was Venus. So everybody was looking towards Venus for decades
30:46
Speaker 1: and decades and decades. We sent lots and lots of
30:48
Speaker 1: these things. Was it because it's just closer, and so
30:51
Speaker 1: that's the first one we tried. It's closer, and it
30:53
Speaker 1: looks more like Earth like. You can look at Mars
30:55
Speaker 1: and you can already see because there are in clouds.
30:57
Speaker 1: There are not oceans on the surface. There's nothing heeaming
31:00
Speaker 1: on its surface. It looks like a desert. It doesn't
31:02
Speaker 1: look very attractive from a life point of view. But
31:05
Speaker 1: Venus was hidden by these clouds, and so people didn't know, like,
31:08
Speaker 1: are there oceans on the surface like today? Are there
31:11
Speaker 1: fish swimming around in them right now? We didn't know
31:13
Speaker 1: the answer to these questions until a few decades ago
31:16
Speaker 1: when we started sending probes and then we discovered, Wow,
31:19
Speaker 1: it's crazy hot on the surface. It's very intense, and
31:22
Speaker 1: it doesn't look like with anything going on right now. Wow.
31:25
Speaker 1: Interesting it was it was the fact that was veiled
31:27
Speaker 1: in mystery that made us want to go see it. Yeah,
31:29
Speaker 1: and again it's more earth like, like Mars is much
31:32
Speaker 1: smaller than Earth or Venus, and so it's harder for
31:35
Speaker 1: it to hold onto his atmosphere. It doesn't have a
31:36
Speaker 1: magnetic field, it's further away, it's cold, and so Venus
31:40
Speaker 1: really is a better candidate. Like fifty years ago, if
31:43
Speaker 1: you had to bet where were you more likely to
31:45
Speaker 1: find liquid water and life, you would definitely have bet
31:48
Speaker 1: Venus interesting. But then we sort of went there, we
31:51
Speaker 1: saw that it was kind of a crazy place, and
31:53
Speaker 1: so then wen we said forget about it, or what
31:55
Speaker 1: this is really interesting transition in sort of NASA's priorities
31:59
Speaker 1: and the world wide scientific priorities. In the late eighties,
32:02
Speaker 1: we sent some missions and we mapped the surface using radar.
32:06
Speaker 1: Magellan for example, map the surface using radar, and we
32:08
Speaker 1: discovered the like, wow, Venus is super hot and crazy
32:11
Speaker 1: and basically discovered in these lava like planes. And then
32:14
Speaker 1: people started to get more interested in Mars because there's
32:17
Speaker 1: something you can do on Mars which you can't do
32:19
Speaker 1: in Venus, which is you can like send her over
32:21
Speaker 1: there and it can last for more than an hour
32:24
Speaker 1: and last for like a year. It can drive around
32:27
Speaker 1: and they can do science. And then people started to
32:29
Speaker 1: get hints that there might still be water on Mars today.
32:33
Speaker 1: All right, we can't see if from Earth there's no
32:35
Speaker 1: huge oceans, but there might still be ice. There might
32:37
Speaker 1: be like water, like not far from the surface. So
32:40
Speaker 1: NASA has this real emphasis to like follow the water.
32:43
Speaker 1: And once Venus didn't look very hospitable and Mars started
32:45
Speaker 1: to look more attractive, basically the whole community shifted over
32:49
Speaker 1: and started sending stuff to Mars, and so Venus has
32:52
Speaker 1: been ignored for decades ever since. Interesting, it's it's really
32:55
Speaker 1: driven by this idea of life, right and is there
32:58
Speaker 1: life there? And could there be life there? Good? Our
33:00
Speaker 1: lives go there and move there, and it's really dreamed
33:02
Speaker 1: by that, it seems, yeah, and for a good reason,
33:04
Speaker 1: Like it's one of the deepest questions in science, right,
33:07
Speaker 1: we want to know is their life on other planets?
33:09
Speaker 1: And is there life today? Was their life billions of
33:12
Speaker 1: years ago? Really fascinating questions. If we find life on
33:16
Speaker 1: those planets, could there have been contamination from Earth? Because
33:19
Speaker 1: you know, every time a huge rockets Earth, bits of
33:21
Speaker 1: Earth get blown off and could land on Mars. We
33:24
Speaker 1: find bits of Mars on the Earth. So if you
33:26
Speaker 1: find life on Mars. You don't automatically know that life
33:29
Speaker 1: started in two places independently. It could have like spread already.
33:32
Speaker 1: The germs could have colonized Mars long before we sent
33:35
Speaker 1: our probes. So it's a really deep and fascinating question,
33:38
Speaker 1: and so I understand why NASA focus is on it.
33:40
Speaker 1: But this this bit of a culture, this this Mars community.
33:43
Speaker 1: People do their research on Mars and they propose Mars missions.
33:46
Speaker 1: There's basically nobody left around in the community who has
33:49
Speaker 1: experience in Venus, and so it's harder to get a
33:51
Speaker 1: Venus mission funded. Interesting. I wonder if that's something to
33:53
Speaker 1: do with the publication of the book. Men are from
33:55
Speaker 1: Mars and women are from Venis. Do you think that
33:58
Speaker 1: could have shifted things in a negative way. Perhaps it
34:02
Speaker 1: might be, you know, physics doesn't have a great record
34:05
Speaker 1: of gender balance, and so this could just be another example.
34:08
Speaker 1: Because the book came out in the early nineties, I think,
34:11
Speaker 1: right or late eighties. I don't know what the causal
34:13
Speaker 1: effect is here, but you're right, it's suspicious timing. All right, Well,
34:16
Speaker 1: let's get into what some of the probs that we
34:18
Speaker 1: sent there before have found and what the new ones
34:21
Speaker 1: are aiming to find But first let's take another quick break.
34:37
Speaker 1: All we're talking about proving Venus and Daniel. We've sent
34:41
Speaker 1: several missions to Venus before, like you said, in the
34:43
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies, and what did they find. Well, it
34:45
Speaker 1: took a while to get something that would survive. It's
34:48
Speaker 1: tripped down to the surface. Like the Soviet Union sent
34:51
Speaker 1: a bunch of really awesome probes, but the first six
34:54
Speaker 1: of them were all failed. They were crushed in the atmosphere,
34:57
Speaker 1: barely surviving for like a few minutes to even measure
35:00
Speaker 1: or the temperature. The first one to land on the
35:02
Speaker 1: surface and survive was in nineteen seventy is Venerous seven,
35:06
Speaker 1: and it lasted for twenty three minutes and it measured
35:09
Speaker 1: a temperature of four hundred and fifty c. So that
35:11
Speaker 1: was like the first time we had landed something on
35:13
Speaker 1: another planet and made measurements. It was an awesome, awesome
35:18
Speaker 1: moment for humanity. How did it land? Because I know,
35:21
Speaker 1: like to land in Mars, you need these like balloons
35:23
Speaker 1: or these cranes and these rockets. How do we do
35:25
Speaker 1: it in the nineteen seventies, how do we land something
35:28
Speaker 1: in another planet? So most of these things use parachutes
35:31
Speaker 1: because the density the atmosphere is so thick. These parachutes
35:34
Speaker 1: are very very effective. Like landing on Mars is hard
35:37
Speaker 1: because it's hard to break in the air, and Venus
35:39
Speaker 1: it's not that big a deal. It's like landing on
35:41
Speaker 1: the bottom of the ocean. You know, you open a
35:42
Speaker 1: parachute and you can very gently float down, So that's
35:45
Speaker 1: not that hard. Problem is surviving the crushing pressure of
35:48
Speaker 1: that atmosphere and it's high temperature. M hmm. I see, yeah,
35:52
Speaker 1: because I think if you're standing on Venus, you're feeling
35:55
Speaker 1: about of the gravity you feel on Earth, right, It's
35:58
Speaker 1: like I think, so it would feel like you're on
36:01
Speaker 1: Earth except that or you're at the bottom of the
36:04
Speaker 1: ocean exactly, and every gust of wind would feel like
36:07
Speaker 1: a huge wave. And also the ocean is made out
36:10
Speaker 1: of sulphuric acid, exactly. I hope you brought your goggles.
36:15
Speaker 1: But they kept sending a series of these. So the
36:17
Speaker 1: Vendora nine, for example, is the first thing to ever
36:20
Speaker 1: take a picture from another planet and send it home.
36:22
Speaker 1: And I just like to imagine what it was like
36:24
Speaker 1: for those Soviet scientists getting this image from their robot
36:28
Speaker 1: from another planet. Imagine being the first person to ever
36:31
Speaker 1: see one of these images, and it's like coming across
36:33
Speaker 1: the screen. For those of you who remember what it's
36:35
Speaker 1: like to like download pictures from the Internet in the nineties,
36:38
Speaker 1: and you get like a row of pixels, another row
36:40
Speaker 1: of pixels, another road of pixels, and they're in this
36:43
Speaker 1: moment like, what's it gonna show us? Is there going
36:45
Speaker 1: to be an alien? There are We're gonna look at
36:47
Speaker 1: an ocean, you know, and if you look at the picture,
36:49
Speaker 1: you can google it. You see it's just a bunch
36:51
Speaker 1: of rocks. Well that's interesting. You're saying all of these
36:54
Speaker 1: probes that we said, the ones that made it, and
36:56
Speaker 1: the pictures they're all Russian. Yeah, the Soviets were really
37:00
Speaker 1: in the Venus race back in the seventies, I guess,
37:03
Speaker 1: the race to discover that you don't want to go there. Well,
37:07
Speaker 1: nobody knew, right, nobody knew, and you know, the Soviet
37:10
Speaker 1: science program obviously exceptional. I mean, this is in the
37:13
Speaker 1: height of the Cold War and the space race, and
37:16
Speaker 1: so everybody's building lots of weapons, and everybody's building lots
37:19
Speaker 1: of space technology, and so from the point of view
37:21
Speaker 1: of like you got a physics project that has a
37:23
Speaker 1: huge price tag. Not such a big deal. People were
37:26
Speaker 1: shoveling money towards expensive physics projects in the eighties. But
37:30
Speaker 1: like you said, this image is available online if you google,
37:32
Speaker 1: I guess Venera nine and Venus, and you can look
37:35
Speaker 1: at a picture of another planet like you were there,
37:38
Speaker 1: Like you were there somebody's boring vacation video, except it's
37:41
Speaker 1: from Venus, and it sort of just looks like a desert,
37:44
Speaker 1: kind of like a rocky desert. Yeah, exactly. So the
37:47
Speaker 1: air is mostly transparent, it's mostly CU two. You can
37:50
Speaker 1: see through it. It's not like Jupiter, where if you
37:53
Speaker 1: tried to descend, it would just become opaque and you're
37:55
Speaker 1: just like sitting inside of a cloud. Once you descend
37:58
Speaker 1: below the clouds that have or above Venus, you can't
38:01
Speaker 1: see where you're going, but you know, it's pretty unpleasant
38:05
Speaker 1: once you get there. And then the US started sending probes, right, yeah,
38:09
Speaker 1: that actually made it to Yeah exactly. So we sent
38:11
Speaker 1: Pioneer Venus one, which orbited Venus for a long time
38:15
Speaker 1: and took data from orbit. Pioneer Venus to survive for
38:18
Speaker 1: a whole hour on the surface before being crushed, and
38:21
Speaker 1: so that was a big success. We also sent the Magellan,
38:24
Speaker 1: which made a very detailed radar map of the surface.
38:27
Speaker 1: It's on the basis of that, then we know a
38:28
Speaker 1: lot about the geology of Venus, but also inspires a
38:32
Speaker 1: lot of our questions about what's going on on Venus
38:34
Speaker 1: and inside Venus. Interesting it took a whole picture of
38:37
Speaker 1: the whole planet, or just like where Atlanta, No, Magellan
38:39
Speaker 1: didn't land, and so it used radar to map the
38:41
Speaker 1: whole surface of Venus. And so we know, for example,
38:44
Speaker 1: what Venus looks like. It's basically seventy five percent lowland
38:48
Speaker 1: lava plans, sort of like the ocean basins of Earth,
38:51
Speaker 1: except it's all lava, not like the ocean floor. And
38:53
Speaker 1: then there's two big continents sort of raised above it.
38:56
Speaker 1: One is like the size of Africa and one the
38:58
Speaker 1: size of Australia. Wait, did you say lava like their
39:01
Speaker 1: oceans of lava. Well, it's like frozen, it's like cold lava.
39:06
Speaker 1: And so the surface of Venus is mostly covered in
39:08
Speaker 1: these lowland lava planes, solid lava, solid lava exactly. We
39:14
Speaker 1: don't know if there's still volcanoes erupting on Venus today.
39:16
Speaker 1: That's one thing we'd like to understand. I see, so
39:18
Speaker 1: the floor is lava and Venus. Yet one more reason
39:23
Speaker 1: not to book that trip. And then we've also had
39:27
Speaker 1: more recent data for Venus from the Parker Solar Probe. Right, Yeah,
39:31
Speaker 1: a lot of things we send to the Inner Solar
39:33
Speaker 1: System end up flying by Venus. It helps with like
39:35
Speaker 1: giving a gravitational slingshot and changing direction without burning fuel.
39:39
Speaker 1: So sometimes they fly by, like multiple times. So the
39:42
Speaker 1: Parker Solar Probe seven fly by's the solar orbiter is
39:46
Speaker 1: going to do eight fly bys between twenty thirty so
39:49
Speaker 1: each of these as it flies by, it can take
39:51
Speaker 1: some data, take some pictures, this kind of stuff. But
39:53
Speaker 1: now soa every once in a while puts out a
39:55
Speaker 1: call for missions, like suggest a new mission, and people
39:58
Speaker 1: all compete, like, oh, let's send something to You're in this,
40:00
Speaker 1: I know, let's send something to Pluto, and let's send
40:02
Speaker 1: something to Mercury. And the folks who work on the
40:04
Speaker 1: Venus missions have been proposing Venus missions for decades and
40:07
Speaker 1: getting shot down until very recently. All right, so that's
40:10
Speaker 1: what we've learned before. What are these new missions gonna
40:14
Speaker 1: learn or look for in venus. So these are the
40:16
Speaker 1: first new mission since nine eight. The first one is
40:19
Speaker 1: called DA VINCI, which is a crazy acronym for deep
40:22
Speaker 1: atmosphere Venus investigation of noble gases, chemistry and imaging. Right,
40:27
Speaker 1: just ignore the gases and you'll have a perfect acronym exactly.
40:30
Speaker 1: And so this one has an orbiter. It's going to
40:32
Speaker 1: go around and probe the atmosphere, but also it's going
40:35
Speaker 1: to drop a descent sphere. It's like one meter sphere.
40:39
Speaker 1: It's going to drop into the atmosphere and trying to
40:41
Speaker 1: measure like what's in the atmosphere and take a bunch
40:43
Speaker 1: of pictures and use spectrometers to figure out exactly what
40:47
Speaker 1: components there are. But what do you mean like a
40:49
Speaker 1: descent sphere, like a like a balloon, or like just
40:52
Speaker 1: a little probe that looks like a like a ball.
40:54
Speaker 1: It's like a probe that looks like a ball and
40:56
Speaker 1: it will have a parachute to slow it down and
40:58
Speaker 1: it might make it to the surface. But mostly here
41:00
Speaker 1: they're interested in like probing the atmosphere on the way down,
41:02
Speaker 1: So slowly descend. And you know, we've gotten much better
41:06
Speaker 1: at miniaturizing scientific instruments in the thirty years or forty
41:09
Speaker 1: years since we've been to Venus, So you can put
41:11
Speaker 1: much more refined scientific instruments like mass spectrometers, etcetera into
41:16
Speaker 1: these probes and get much more detailed measurements about what's
41:18
Speaker 1: in the atmosphere of these planets. M I guess the
41:21
Speaker 1: attention now is sort of on the atmosphere, right, like
41:23
Speaker 1: could there be life up there? And what exactly is
41:26
Speaker 1: in those clouds? And those clouds can help us understand
41:30
Speaker 1: what might have happened to Venus's ocean, like was there
41:32
Speaker 1: an ocean there? Did it boil away? By understanding the
41:35
Speaker 1: exact chemistry of what's going on in the clouds when
41:37
Speaker 1: we're can refine our models that try to describe the
41:39
Speaker 1: history of Venus, what happened to it? How to end
41:42
Speaker 1: up being so crazy hot today? Can we sort of
41:44
Speaker 1: tell from space if there's water in those clouds? We
41:47
Speaker 1: can do some probes from space, but because they're opaque,
41:49
Speaker 1: it's not easy to penetrate in and see what's going
41:52
Speaker 1: on in the lower levels of the clouds, and only
41:54
Speaker 1: so to really examine the top surfaces. That's cool, when
41:57
Speaker 1: when is that one launching so this one is not
41:59
Speaker 1: launching until these were recent decisions by NASA to fund
42:03
Speaker 1: these two probes, and so they're building it and they're
42:05
Speaker 1: a launch it in twenty eight but you know, Venus
42:07
Speaker 1: is pretty close. This is not like sending a mission
42:09
Speaker 1: to Pluto where you've gotta wait ten years. It only
42:12
Speaker 1: takes a few months to get to Venus, and so
42:14
Speaker 1: we'll get some data pretty soon after it takes off.
42:17
Speaker 1: Assuming that this thing lasts for more than you know,
42:19
Speaker 1: a second in the atmosphere. Well, I think it was
42:22
Speaker 1: probably the acronym that got it approved pretty sweet, and
42:25
Speaker 1: that's one of two interesting ones that have been approved recently.
42:29
Speaker 1: There's also one going up in yeah, so VERITAS, which
42:33
Speaker 1: stands for Venus Emissivity, radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy.
42:38
Speaker 1: So that's an acronym that has another acronym inside of it,
42:42
Speaker 1: acronym such an acronym exactly. This one is not going
42:45
Speaker 1: to go to the surface, but it's going to map
42:47
Speaker 1: the surface very finely using very powerful radar, and it's
42:51
Speaker 1: going to help us understand what happened to Venus by
42:53
Speaker 1: getting like an idea of the surface elevation and basically
42:56
Speaker 1: build a three d map of the surface cool and again,
43:00
Speaker 1: getting to know the surface is important because just looking
43:02
Speaker 1: at the surface tells us a lot about the history
43:03
Speaker 1: of the planet right exactly, like are there glowing links
43:06
Speaker 1: of lava right now? Or has anything cooled? Is there
43:09
Speaker 1: evidence there from like the heavy bombardment in the early
43:11
Speaker 1: Solar System, or has the surface been reshaped? And so
43:14
Speaker 1: a lot of our clues about what happened to Venus
43:17
Speaker 1: and whether something slammed into it three hundred million years
43:19
Speaker 1: ago come from this understanding of the geology of the surface.
43:23
Speaker 1: So this is really important data. It's gonna be much
43:25
Speaker 1: much finer than the previous data we got from Magellan. Also,
43:28
Speaker 1: I love this project because it has one of these
43:30
Speaker 1: deep space atomic clocks on it. Remember we talked about
43:33
Speaker 1: how to measure time really, really finally and to navigate
43:36
Speaker 1: the Solar System with precision, you have to have very
43:38
Speaker 1: precise atomic clocks. Interesting, so they've built these miniaturized atomic
43:42
Speaker 1: clocks and they put a new version, deep Space Atomic
43:45
Speaker 1: Clock number two onto Veritas. So you're basically like, anything
43:49
Speaker 1: that helps anyone get there more on time is cool
43:52
Speaker 1: with me. I'm all for it, exactly exactly. I just
43:56
Speaker 1: think it's super cool. These really precise atomic clocks built
43:59
Speaker 1: to go into space and these tiny little contraptions. I
44:02
Speaker 1: just think it's an awesome feed of engineering. Well, these
44:04
Speaker 1: are going up in a few years, I guess seven
44:07
Speaker 1: or eight years from now, because I guess it takes
44:09
Speaker 1: a long time to to get these missions prepared, to
44:12
Speaker 1: design them, and to make sure that they they're going
44:14
Speaker 1: to work exactly. And so kudo to the Venus community
44:16
Speaker 1: out there for continuing to propose these missions for decades,
44:19
Speaker 1: getting shot down over and over and over and over again,
44:22
Speaker 1: and finally succeeding in convincing those folks that NASA that
44:25
Speaker 1: Venus is worth a return trip. And do you call
44:27
Speaker 1: Venusians or vina Venuswegians? All right, Well, so stay tuned.
44:35
Speaker 1: Maybe in about ten years there'll be some new discoveries
44:38
Speaker 1: about Venus and maybe tell us a lot about life
44:41
Speaker 1: on the Solar System, that how we got to be
44:44
Speaker 1: where we are, and maybe what might happen to us
44:47
Speaker 1: in the future if we're not careful exactly, So look
44:51
Speaker 1: forward in about ten years to peeling back those clouds
44:54
Speaker 1: and feeling the truth of Venus just where you know,
44:56
Speaker 1: like iron gloves, because they are so for out exactly,
45:01
Speaker 1: take proper precautions, always wear eye protection, and don't sue us.
45:04
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for
45:06
Speaker 1: joining us, see you next time. Thanks for listening, and
45:16
Speaker 1: remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a
45:18
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcast for my
45:22
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H