A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Solar System - Venus

Next up we have our closest planetary neighbor, Venus. The acidic, boiling hot, toxic, generally deadly planet sized wasteland which was ironically named after the goddess of love (nice going Romans). It is often referred to as the sister planet of Earth, as they are incredibly similar in size (only 638 km in difference) and they are both very close together. Because of this it is also the second brightest object in the night sky after the moon and can even be seen in the day on occasion. Its usefulness, in ancient times earned it the names morning star and evening star, as it could sometimes be seen before sunrise, and sometimes just after sunset.

As romantic as all of the names and coincidences may sound it doesn’t change the fact that Venus is effectively a planet sized death trap. The atmospheric pressure on Venus is equivalent to 92 times that on earth which is the same as in the deep sea. This means that any humans on the surface would simply be squished and that is if the rest of it didn’t kill them first.

Venus is a fair amount closer to the sun than Earth, however it experiences unexpectedly high surface temperatures due to its thick atmosphere of sulfuric acid and carbon dioxide.This is an example of a runaway greenhouse effect where more and more heat is trapped by the sun, which means that the surface temperature of Venus is a cosy 462 degrees and the fact that there is no seasonal variation really does not help.

Despite this (and by the power of human stubbornness) various probes have actually been sent to Venus and several Russian landers actually landed on the planet (where each of them have been promptly destroyed). The most successful mission to date has been Venera 13 which managed to survive 2 hours on the surface of the planet, despite being designed to last 30 minutes) and has also sent back colour photographs of the surface of the planet.

This sister to Earth is fascinatingly deadly, and due to its unique atmosphere and composition, gives extremely interesting data for our scientists to study. However it is also a sharp reminded of how dangerous our solar system is, that even our own “sister planet” would kill us in only a matter of seconds.