The great dream of landing on Mars around 2035 is news that makes hundreds of millions of Chinese people happy. However, few people have considered why we are on Mars instead of Venus, which is also a "neighbor" and is even closer to the earth.
In fact, no one has tried to explore Venus in history. However, none of these plans succeeded, and all ended in destruction and failure. Human beings still dare not provoke this "unruly" planet anymore, and even call it one of the most terrifying planets in the solar system.
What terrible things did humans discover on Venus?
Compared with Mars, the data of Venus is more like the earth
If you just look at the data of Venus, the sister planet of the earth is really worthy of its name. The diameter of Venus is 12,100 kilometers, which is 95% of the diameter of the Earth, while the diameter of Mars is only half that of the Earth. The mass of Venus is 48.7 trillion tons, which is 81.5% of the Earth. The mass of Mars is only 11% of the Earth.
On Venus, the gravity is almost the same as on the Earth, while on Mars, the gravity is only 1/3 of the Earth. In other words, if you can jump up to 2 meters on Earth, you can jump up to 6 meters on Mars. . Moreover, Venus is only 40 million kilometers away from the earth when it is closest, which is far smaller than Mars' 54 million kilometers. Moreover, Venus also has an atmosphere and a fixed temperature. It is so similar to the Earth in every aspect. Why don't humans explore Venus first and go to Mars first instead of going far away?
Ancient Venus Research
As early as ancient my country, wise ancestors had paid attention to this planet and called it Taibai. When Venus appeared in the east in the morning, it was called Qiming, and when it appeared in the west at night, it was called Qiming. Chang Geng. In the 8th year of the Western Han Dynasty, the famous historian Sima Qian combined his own observations in the book "Historical Records Tianguan Shu" and recorded that the Taibai star that people often say is indeed white, and among the five elements, white belongs to gold. So it was officially named Venus.
In 1032 AD, the Persian astronomer Avicenna made his first observation: there was an object like a small black spot passing by the surface of the sun. This observation is the famous transit of Venus. Avicenna suddenly realized that this observation may mean that Venus is closer to the sun than the Earth. Later, in the 12th and 13th centuries, many astronomers in the West observed the same phenomenon, proving that Avicenna's view was very correct.
In the 17th century, a genius who used an astronomical telescope appeared. This was the famous Italian physicist Galileo Galilei. When he aimed his high-power telescope at Venus for observation, he found that Venus, like the moon, also undergoes changes in cloudiness, waxing and waning. When Venus is at its greatest distance, it appears semicircular; when it is closest to the sun, it appears The round shape of a new or full moon. This is only possible with Venus orbiting the Sun. This is very different from the geocentric theory often said by the church. If the earth is the center of the universe, then what we should see is Venus revolving around the earth, but the reality is that Venus revolves around the sun. This caused Galileo to re-examine the geocentric theory and deny this view, thus supporting the heliocentric theory of Copernicus . It can be said that the observation of Venus has completely changed mankind's view of astronomy and even promoted natural science to advance a lot.
In 1761, Russian scholar Lomonosov discovered the atmosphere of Venus for the first time. German astronomer Schlott later confirmed this discovery through observation and calculation. Therefore, people have more expectations for Venus. Scientists have even estimated that Venus's autobiographical period is also 24 hours. Many scientists even believe that Venus is so similar to the Earth that there may be life on it, and there may even be intelligent creatures like us. The legend of Venusians was the mainstream of science fiction at that time.
However, when humans had the space probe , everything they discovered shocked the scientific community.
Two seemingly separated brothers
On February 12, 1961, the first Venus exploration satellite Venus 1 was launched. Subsequently, the Soviet Union and the United States launched more than 30 detectors to Venus. In 1982, the Soviet Union's Venera 13 probe broke through all obstacles for the first time and successfully landed on the surface of Venus for the first time, finally revealing the mysterious face of this planet's closest neighbor to the Earth.
Venus not only has an atmosphere, but also an extremely dense atmosphere. The mass of the atmosphere is 93 times that of the Earth, and its surface pressure is 92 times that of the Earth's surface, which is basically equivalent to the ocean pressure at a depth of about 1,000 meters on Earth. Not to mention people, just some small submarines on the earth, they were crushed to pieces.
This is not the end, because 96.5% of the atmosphere of Venus is carbon dioxide, forming the strongest greenhouse effect in the entire solar system. Its surface temperature reaches 462°C, which is enough to melt steel.
Let's make a comparison and you will understand better. Mercury is closer to the sun and its maximum temperature is only 420°C.
The distance between Venus and the sun is about twice that of Mercury. The amount of solar radiation received is only 1/4 of Mercury, but it has hell-like high temperatures. At this temperature, not to mention humans, even bacteria There is no possibility of survival.
If you think this environment is not hellish enough, let’s talk about the climate conditions on Venus.
Venus is the only planet in the solar system where a day is longer than a year. It takes 225 days to orbit but 243 days to rotate once. The wind speed at the top of the dense atmospheric clouds can be as high as 300km per hour, and it can orbit Venus every four or five days. Such wind speed is 60 times its rotation speed, and the highest wind speed on the earth is only 10~20% of the earth's rotation speed.
The surface of Venus also has 167 large volcanoes with a diameter of more than 100 kilometers. On Earth, only the complex volcanoes on the Big Island of Hawaii can rival the volcanoes of Venus.
Even many volcanoes on Venus are still erupting, and Venus is accompanied by dazzling lightning and rumbling thunder from time to time. Due to the eruption of the volcano, sulfuric acid rain will fall above the atmosphere, but because the temperature is too high, it will be completely evaporated 25km away from the ground.
It is precisely because of the hellish environment of Venus that Venus 13 completely scrapped after operating for 127 minutes, but it still sent back the only color photo of Venus to mankind so far.
The terrible greenhouse effect
Why does Venus, which is about the same size, mass, size, and even distance from the sun as the Earth, have a hellish environment that is completely different from the Earth?
Scientists also have different opinions. A simulation experiment conducted by the scientific community in 2019 put forward a hypothesis:
Venus was actually quite cool, and the surface maintained liquid water for 2 billion to 3 billion years. There may also be life, but Everything turned upside down due to an unknown mysterious event 700 million years ago.
Seventy million years ago, volcanic activity on Venus caused a large amount of magma to gush out, releasing carbon dioxide from the molten rock into the atmosphere. When the magma reached the ground, it solidified, and the gas could not be reabsorbed and had to stay in the atmosphere, triggering an out-of-control greenhouse effect. So Venus now has a high temperature of 462°C.
There is also a theory in the mainstream scientific community that the out-of-control greenhouse effect on Venus may not be due to volcanoes, but due to the increase in brightness of the early sun, causing the amount of water vapor in the Venus atmosphere to increase, and the temperature of the atmosphere to increase, thus increasing The evaporation of the oceans eventually causes the oceans to boil, and all the water is evaporated into the atmosphere.
But in any case, Venus has shown us the terrible consequences of the greenhouse effect caused by too much carbon dioxide. Today's earth, with the intensification of human activities, if carbon emissions are not controlled, it is difficult to say that it will not follow the footsteps of Venus.
Based on scientific simulation data, it is speculated that if the situation on Venus occurs on the earth, the surface temperature of the earth can exceed 900°C, all oceans will disappear, the earth will become a huge desert, and plate activity will completely stop. Plants have long since become extinct.
Therefore, caring for the environment and reducing carbon emissions is not just an empty talk, but a major event related to our future generations. After all, we only have one Earth, and so far, only one highly intelligent creature of ours has been found in the solar system.
